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Chapter One: Invincible2,944 words
Chapter Two: Numb2,731 words
Chapter Three: Vigilant1,963 words
Chapter Four: Protective2,084 words
Chapter Five: Stalwart1,865 words
Chapter Six: Numbered1,971 words
Chapter Seven: Deserving1,685 words
Chapter Eight: Escorted2,031 words
Chapter Nine: Discussed2,571 words
Chapter Ten: Contacted1,789 words
Chapter Eleven: Known877 words

Chapter One: Invincible

Unknown

Chapter One: Invincible

I opened my eyes. With a sharp intake of breath, took in the frosted glass in front of my face. I didn’t know where I was, nor how I came to be here—wherever here was. The last thing I remembered was donning my armour. Where was my armour? I tried to move, to look, but I found my limbs imprisoned within the vice of steel cables that cut into my flesh.

It was freezing. I tried to scream, to voice my frustration and resent at being incarcerated in this container of ice, but the only sound that emerged from my parched throat was a strangled croak. My heavy breathing fogged up the glass, reducing my visibility of the outside world to nothing.

I hung my head, trying to conserve what little energy I had left. The cold created an all-encompassing numbness that was giving way to the radiating heat of hypothermia—it was frigid, yet I felt the tingling sensation of warmth.

This was it. This was how I died—locked in place as I slowly froze, unknowing of where I was or why I was here.

As I prepared for the end, with the last vestiges of my strength trickling into nothingness, I heard the sound of a violent hiss, and the glass covering slowly inched its way open, the steel cords that kept me still withdrawing like so many slithering snakes.

Freedom.

Weak and delirious from pain and cold, I tried to step out only to fall onto the steel, grated floor. I felt many incisions along my bare skin, each cut slicing through my numbness and bringing pain to the forefront of my mind.

Pain. I remembered pain. I embraced it, using it as a focal point to clear my thoughts. Pain never changed, and its familiarity was a comfort.

With a body that felt like I had just ran a marathon, I forced myself upright, balancing myself on unsteady feet. The metallic taste of blood mingled with the acidic tinge of my saliva. I placed an unsteady hand on my forehead and withdrew my appendage. It was now covered in a sticky, sickly, red fluid. Blood.

I remembered blood well. No matter where I went, no matter what I did, blood followed. It was as inevitable as the sun rising, or the tide shifting.

Taking in my surroundings, I saw frigid, condensed air congeal along the edges of the lonely, dull-grey room. I was alone. Cracked fluorescent lights flickered intermittently, illuminated by whatever electricity still worked. By the look of it, the entire complex would be shrouded in darkness soon, save for the infrequent, raised reflective markers that brightened small portions of the damp, seemingly endless hallway. The hallway made up the sole exit. My eyes tried to pierce the void, but to no avail.

All around me were cryogenic freezers, the majority of them opened, like mine. A few of them were cracked, while the rest were pristine. In a pile of broken glass, a mangled and bloody corpse looked at me with lifeless eyes, as naked as I was. I turned away.

I could hear the soft sound of empty static broadcasted through a speaker in the wall. I also heard the repetitive sound of a foul-smelling, viscous liquid that was drip-dripping from the ceiling and trickling along the segmented, skeletal section of the wall. There were dents and twisted metal everywhere, along with the occasional sparking wire.

A solitary porthole stood alone in the room, showcasing the vast, black unknown outside. Dark shapes begot other dark shapes, and I couldn't decipher one from the other. Beside the window, two deep dents in the metal wall and a large, curved, jagged line twisted upward in a grim impression of a smile. The invisible eyes stared at me. I shivered, and it wasn't from the cold seeping out from the cryo freezer.

What happened?

I wished I knew the answer to my own question. I should've known the answer. I could feel the answer, but it escaped me whenever I tried to seize it.

Then it hit me like bullet.

A battle. War. We were going to war, launched from flying fortresses, dropped onto the enemies in their most secure compounds. Death from above. Yet here I was, standing in the wreck of the Daedalus-class ship, having been woken up from cryosleep too late.

I felt my heartbeat steadily increase, revving like an engine that sputtered to life on a cold winter morning. I could feel the blood start to flow, taking my numbness with it.

A chill ran down my spine, this time from the cold. Goosebumps began to rise on my exposed flesh. Finding some apparel to wear would be my first step.

Exiting the room and following the staggered, orange lights, I carefully plodded along the lone hallway. No matter how far I went, it never seemed to end. I winced with every step as the metal floor dug into my bare feet.

Just when I thought I saw the onset of a turn approaching, the lights gave a last, dying flash before sputtering twice, then going dark.

I froze. I felt the darkness creeping towards me, a tangible thing that wanted nothing more than to siphon my soul from my body, leaving me no more than a withered husk. I gritted my teeth and kept going, using the wall as a guideline. The darkness could not harm me.

Then the entire complex exploded with noise and motion, throwing me off balance and causing me to slam my already bleeding head into a metal wall. As I sat there with my back to the support struts, groaning, the lights flickered back on, the sound died, and it stopped shaking.

It must have been the engine attempting to start, which meant that someone else must be nearby. We must have crash-landed somewhere: there was no other explanation. They survived the crash like I had. I didn't know where we were, or how bad it was, but I guessed we weren't under the ocean, as I likely would have never woken up from my induced sleep had that been the case.

I stood up and kept going. When I finally reached the end of the hallway, I stopped. Above me, on a plaque, was the word 'COCKPIT' with an arrow pointing to the right. The only problem was that the entire hallway leading to the cockpit had collapsed. Live wires swayed to and fro, small arcs of electricity zapping from them as if to taunt me with how easily plans could change.

Looking left, and seeing that the path was clear, I had no choice but to take it, as I couldn't remember how the ship was laid out even in the best of circumstances.

It's not like I hadn't tried to learn. But when all you do is eat, armour up, fight, and 'sleep' there was hardly any time or place to learn where the other sections of the ship were located. I was not allowed to explore unattended.

I bent down and picked up a bent plaque. I straightened it out. It read 'KITCHEN' with an arrow pointing to the left.

Good. There were jumpsuits there, as well as food.

My stomach gurgled, announcing its displeasure.

To the Kitchen, then.

\\\\\

It was a mess. The steel benches were no more than twisted metal, and cutlery and bowls were strewn about every which way. The actual kitchen itself was no better, with nothing recognizable among the stainless steel and wiring.

I managed to procure a jumpsuit one size too large. It hung uncomfortably loose, but at least it provided some protection from the cold. When my teeth had stopped chattering long enough for me to consume the remnants of a pot of stew that had miraculously kept most of the contents inside, I continued towards the Arming Room.

I walked slowly, in no rush. There was no rush, and why would there be? Everyone else was either dead, maimed, or captured. Whoever had started the engine had probably done so accidentally. An enemy combatant searching the remains of the once-great ship, and pressing the wrong button.

For the first time in what felt like forever, I had nowhere to be, and no orders to accomplish. Rescue wasn't going to happen: Daedalus-class vehicles never flew over friendly territory and when one was destroyed the resulting crash was catastrophic. My only chance of 'rescue' would be to surrender to the enemy, and that was out of the question.

So I walked.

I passed the body of a man wearing chef's apparel. Amazingly, he was still breathing, which was strange considering he had a solid titanium strut impaled through his right pectoral. There was nothing I could do: I had no medical training, and the man's mind was probably already gone as his body clung to life. I briefly considered cutting his throat with a piece of jagged metal, but I was unsure if that thought was merciful or cold dis-attachment. I kept walking.

Eventually, I came to the room that was most familiar to me: the Arming Room. Rows and rows of battle-hardened weapons and equipment, all made of the highest quality that the government could afford for us. And the armour. While the weapons may have shown some signs of degradation, the armour was always kept in pristine condition. We were as much a symbol to our people as we were a tool of destruction.

I walked over to the stand that held my own custom-made battle suit, and began the arduous process of putting it on.

\\\\\

As I locked the last piece into place, the ship shook again from the force of the engines starting, but this time, I remained standing. I grabbed my helmet and looked at my reflection before putting it on. A scarred, sunken face looked back. My hair was longer than I remembered—how long had I been in that cryogenic chamber? I remembered the last firefight I was in, but I had no way to determine the actual length of time that had passed since. It could have been a day or a month or a year ago, yet it still felt like yesterday.

I equipped a gas mask before turning the helmet around and putting it on. The padding was comfortable and familiar, and the reinforced Plexiglas visor was spotless. My breathing was shallow and controlled, and the reverberating sound of it was familiar.

Looking over at the arsenal of weaponry, I decided to forgo the typical combat shield in favour of carrying another light machine gun. In normal instances, the shield would be invaluable in the slow, methodical pushes towards the heart of the enemy encampment. Now, it would only be a burden.

I intended to go out with a bang, rather than a whimper.

I grabbed two identical machine guns, both with box clips, along with a number of spare ammunition boxes should the need arise for them. Old technology in a new form, but still as potent as the day they were conceived.

Armed and armoured, I plodded methodically towards the launching bay.

\\\\\

There were people outside.

I could hear them through the broken hangar doors, speaking in a language that I couldn't understand. Enemy, then. If the tone of their voices was anything to go by, they sounded confused and concerned.

I readied both guns, one in each hand. They weren't particularly heavy—the bulkiness was the biggest issue, and they weighed my arms down. I walked to the edge of the broken hangar door, my footsteps echoing obscenely, and kicked the weak point. The hole to the outside became wider, and I thought I saw light shining down.

I kicked again, and I was bathed in a beam of sunlight. The voices outside stopped.

I kicked a final time, and the hangar door crashed both inward and outward, falling into itself and flooding the hangar full of broken helicopters with noonday sun. I pointed my weapons outward, and waited for my eyes to adjust before I pulled the triggers.

For the first time in my life, I was glad that I didn't shoot.

The creatures outside weren't people—they weren't even human.

I didn't lower my weapons, but I took my fingers off of the triggers.

They looked at me like I them—confused and wary. Although, they most certainly had fear in their expressive eyes whereas mine did not. Fear was something that had no place in the battlefield.

We remained this way for a while, me and them, staring at each other, trying to decipher each other's secrets. I was outnumbered severely, almost a hundred to one, but they didn't press their advantage of numbers, so I didn't press my advantage of size and weaponry. They didn't appear to bring any weapons of their own.

The creatures themselves were very strange looking. I didn't know what to call them until an old memory surfaced, naming them as horses from a half-remembered story read to me as a child. But even then, I knew that they weren't horses—they were aliens, extra-terrestrials. I had seen nothing like them before. Their colours varied extensively, going from the darkest blue to the lightest red, and everything in-between. I couldn't name many of the colours I was presented with.

Where was I? As far as I knew, there were no horse-aliens on Earth, unless gene-splicing had truly gone out of hand. Was I on another planet? How? Why had the ship crashed here instead of Earth?

I had no answers, and many questions.

I thought some more on the subject of foreign planets, and my fingers subconsciously resumed their trigger-resting status.

What was I, a Juggernaut, a soldier of blood and steel, supposed to do in a situation like this? I was spliced and trained to kill, not confront an alien species. My country had enough enemies as it was.

One of the horse-creatures detached from the main group, making me focus on it. It plodded forward carefully, with controlled movements, almost like it was trying not to startle me. Strange behaviour.

I followed the creature with one barrel, making a mental effort to keep my finger off of the trigger. One slip, one twitch, and I would have a hundred small problems, but if I didn't keep a gun trained on it, the creature might cause me one very big problem.

Slowly and surely, the creature walked towards me, stepping around the various metal debris that had surrounded the area from the crash before climbing up the steel ramp that led to the hangar. When the creature was around a car-length away, it stopped and waited.

Its colour was a mixture of green and blue that I had no name for, and it had a strange protrusion atop its head. The thing looked at me, eyes wide with fright and curiosity. It didn't know where to look: it would glance at my machine guns, then at my torso, then at my head before repeating the process.

With a feeling that I would regret it later, I lowered my weapons. If the creature was surprised, it gave no heed. It looked back at the main group of onlooking creatures to seemingly gain their approval before it turned to me, took a deep breath, and spoke.

I didn't understand what it was trying to convey. The language was light and melodic, but the words were surprisingly complex and utterly incomprehensible to me.

When I made no motion that I heard or even acknowledged the speaker, it backed away slowly, much in the same way that it had approached, only in reverse. This time, I slowly followed it with the intention of at least discerning which terrain the ship had crashed in. If it was concerned that I was walking in its steps, it didn't show it. I walked down the sloped ramp that led into the hangar bay, which was mostly intact, and looked around, ignoring the herd of creatures.

The ship had fallen on a forest. Splintered and scorched wood surrounded the area and mixed with the shredded remains of the ship's exterior plating. Dirt was piled up high along the edge from the massive furrow that the ship must've caused. The ground appeared to not have much water in it according to the amount of dust in the air.

Information acquired, I turned around, walked up the ramp, and climbed back through the debris of the fallen hangar door without a backwards glance. When I was safely inside, I slung one machine gun over my shoulder. What I was about to do required a level of finesse that dual-wielding wasn't capable of providing.

I rested my finger on trigger, took aim briefly, then pulled the trigger and did not let go until I ran out of ammunition.

Empty now, I placed the weapon on the floor beside me and equipped the other.

I continued along from where I had left off, and only stopped shooting when I was certain that I had done all I could with bullets. Then I tossed that gun aside, smoking.

Gripping an exposed piece of metal as a handhold, I put all of my immense weight into a single stomp on the hangar ramp.

The metal groaned and wailed, and with a screech that rang my ears, the entire ramp that I had meticulously cut away from the ship with hot lead fell to the ground in a tremendous crash that shook the earth. Several of the closer aliens jumped backwards in surprise.

I hoped that the creatures realized that meant I didn't want company.

Author's Note:

Click for a dramatic reading done by Applesaws. It is now slightly outdated as many sentences have been slightly altered.

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Sirbob

Sirbob #1 · Jun 2nd, 2013 · · ·

Bueno... Bueno...

Dry Monkey

Dry Monkey #2 · Jun 2nd, 2013 · 13 · 2 ·

So he wasted an entire magazine to show that he wanted to be alone?

DauntedSuperior

DauntedSuperior #3 · Jun 2nd, 2013 · 16 · 1 ·

2664831
Why not? He's got an entire armory full of it and plenty of other weapons should he run out of that type of ammo.

Pwner1

Pwner1 #4 · Jun 3rd, 2013 · · ·

Marvelous. I've been craving for this.

The Gargoyle

The Gargoyle #5 · Jun 3rd, 2013 · · ·

This looks to be interesting, and I always love a reluctant protagonist.

Side thought: I just realized that you can pretty reliably make out a British writer by looking for words that, at least in my opionion, have an extra u like armour and colour