Fan Fiction ❯ Titan ❯ The Half Orb ( Chapter 4 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Benjamin Bradford was a very important man. Even at 90 years of age he was fit enough to beat a much younger man in an arm-wrestling contest. He had been very active in his younger days and now in his old age tried to retain as much of it as possible. He was very picky about his company and tended to take a long time to befriend. A lot of people upon first meeting him assumed that he was merely some mad old coot that had nothing better to do than hang around the city streets. But Benjamin was definitely not mad. He had been born in England originally and was one of the first volunteers for the offworld program. He had been denied transport to Luna, there had been rather a rush to go, but as a previous volunteer he was first on the list for the Mars colonies. He started out his working life as a physicist. He advanced in the field very quickly and moved to Florida by the age of 26 where he eventually joined N.A.S.A working on rocket design. 10 years on, he gave up N.A.S.A after winning the lottery, and went on to become the president of America in 2030. After 8 years he became bored with life on Earth and that was his chance to leave. Now he was a councilor of Mars and a high status scientist for Geneta. He held a lot of sway with the people of Mars and would have been magistrate had he not turned the job down to work for the newly growing corporation. Only its founder and a few overseers were of a higher status in the company than Benjamin. His dream now was to see the Ceres project through, to be the man in charge of all contact and experimentation regarding extra-terrestrial life. When it was found, and Benjamin was sure it was out there, it would be one of the most important historical events in the whole of human history and he could be the man to determine how and when it happened. He would be remembered as the most important authority on interstellar lifeforms in the populated universe.
For now, however, he was wet. He marched along the corridor with Dan infront of him, trying to calm himself down. Arthur had his arm around Elizabeth and was trying to help get her dry. She was still shivering from the cold shower. The group splashed down the corridor where a few cleaners were trying to remove the water with a small monitoring robot which was sucking the corners of the room with a small vacuum. They reached the door to the council room and the slightly damp guard opened the door to allow them inside. Benjamin pushed Dan inside and stood back to allow his other companions in first. They nodded their thanks and went through. He looked back down the corridor, sighed and stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind him.
The room inside was a large, transparent dome. Directly opposite were three seats tucked under a table and facing away from the door. Facing these chairs was a long thin table, bent into a horseshoe shape. Several chairs were all the way around it, allowing the occupants to get a view of the small desk from all sides. One of the seats around the main table was filled by Benjamin, who motioned to the others to sit in the three seats at the desk. A number of people were also seated around the horseshoe, wearing the traditional councilors hats. Arthur, Dan and Elizabeth sat in their seats and waited to hear what the council had to say.
A distant land. Water frozen so cold that it is as hard as stone. Lighter fluid eats away the jagged surface for thousands of years. Nothing stirs under that green sky and orange clouds. Millennia pass here without change. The wind blows slowly, caressing the dusty landscape. A noise in the distance, gradually getting louder. Something moves. The probe bumps around a corner and out of the canyon. The gentle stream it had been following is now a raging torrent as it bursts out from between the cliff walls and flows on across the ice. Suddenly it has spread out and slowed into a wide, gentle river, glistening in the light of the setting sun. Small wavelets lap at the river bank. The machine hums and whirrs its way alongside the shimmering liquid as it travels off towards a magnificent rolling plain. The land stretches away before it, the river meandering into the distance. At one point it halts and watches an irregular gas turret, funneling an odd steam into the sky. The device admires the unusual feature before it for a while before trundling away once again. The turret stood erect, belching black smoke into the sky after the probe had moved away. Nothing much happened for a while, until the smoke stopped and a weird, guttural growl resonated through the hollow tube before resuming its gaseous production. It was a shame no one was around to hear it. Maybe it was just a blockage in the vent, quickly forced aside by mounting pressure from below. Maybe it was a gurgle of superheated liquid echoing up to the surface. But then again maybe not.
Elizabeth Kane was born on a vegetable and fruit farm on Mars. Her father, Anthony, had taught her everything about plants that he could, not just how to grow them, but how they respired and photosynthesised and reproduced aswell. To her fathers disappointment, she left the farm and joined Geneta as a secretary initially, but she went on as a low level employee. Her job had been to fetch and carry and prepare the occasional cell for experimentation. One day, however, her boss had gone to get a new microscope after breaking his, and Elizabeth had been left to slice open some orange cells. She had taken a look at the biologist's notes and had seen what he was trying to achieve, an immunity to certain diseases, and had spotted a flaw. So she carried out the experiment herself and placed the cell in a jar with chemicals to stimulate its division and carried on preparing another cell. The biologist returned and unsuccessfully carried out the same experiment and had placed it in a jar of growth stimulant. Two days later, Elizabeth checked her cell to find a small piece of orange flesh in the jar. She had taken it out and placed it in 'food jelly', a substance that the growing cell could use to feed itself. After a week she had produced a budding orange plant, which she clipped into several small pieces and placed into rooting powder. After a few months she had five orange trees which were beginning to bear fruit. Once she had tested the fruit with some injected diseases, she announced her success to the head biologist who immediately informed Geneta officials of this fascinating woman. They gave her some basic training in gene splicing procedures in order to allow her to form her own methods of genetically engineering lifeforms. After a few days she was teaching herself advanced techniques and splicing some of the most difficult genetic codes available to her at the time. She advanced in the ranks at some speed and Geneta officials soon assigned her to Ceres. She had an amiable character (except around Daniel who annoyed the hell out of her) and enjoyed life on Mars, the fantastic sunsets and the rising of the distant Earth in the sky.
The First City of Mars was the place where the colonists had landed and started life anew on a strange world. The domes at its centre ballooned high into the sky, surrounded by the towering skyscrapers stretching away into the distance. Geneta's most famous monument to the power of modern science was the Half Orb. One of the original domes, the Orb was a sealed building, containing an artificial ecosystem created by the corporation. Every Earth-origin species had been contained in that dome on the journey through space. After Mars had become self sufficient, the company converted the dome for primary specimen containment. Original testing was found to be inhumane, the first management was highly uncaring for the subjects, but the company was overthrown by the scientists who organised a revolt in 2049 and, even though they lost their jobs and the ringleaders were jailed, they freed most of the creatures inside the dome. Jane Harrington was there. However, she wasn't a scientist.
"Jenkins, picking up something REAL big in the low temp room. Take a couple of flamers and check it out. I'm guessing a swarm o' bugs in there. Cook 'em."
Jane crouched behind a crate in the darkness. The corridor beyond lead down to the top security room. It was lit only by a flashing, red security light, which didn't illuminate the darkness so much as highlight it. Jane listened in disgusted silence to the damp, crunching sound emanating from the blackness. She stuck her head around the corner cautiously and stared. The crunching stopped for a moment and something growled. Then she heard a wet thud and Jane's face was splashed with blood. She didn't scream, she didn't panic. She retracted her head and wiped her face on her sleeve as the crunching resumed.
"Henderson. You there?" she said into her radio. There was a crackle and a muffled reply.
"Good" she whispered, "Where are the damn lights? My torch is bust and there's something in here with me. And where the hell is Jeff?"
She heard a watery tearing and an arm skidded across the floor, dripping crimson blood. Jane could just make out the words 'effrey Davidson' on the name tag which hung from the shoulder.
"Nevermind Henderson. I just found his arm."
She turned off the radio, leaned back against the crate and waited. She made some final checks of the top and tail shotgun she carried and gathered up her nerves. Whatever waited around the corner was dangerous enough to kill Jeff and that meant it was fast. She was going to have to bring it down on the first shot if she had a chance to survive it. Damn company. What were they creating these things for, anyway? No wonder they had all these security guards, the creatures were monstrous. Heavens knew what they had been once, nothing from Earth resembled anything she had witnessed so far. Even the bloody plants were dangerous, one of them had gotten the sarge, the tropical environment was bursting at the seams. Soon they were going to have to pull out and try to stop these things leaving the building whilst they figured out what to do. There was a whirring and a light in the centre of the room was nudged into life. Jane burst around the corner and blew the leg off whatever was chewing on her comrade. Orange blood splashed across the floor as the monster screamed and tried to crawl up the wall, but she was ready for this and blasted a chunk out of its body. The thing fell slowly to the ground and lay there, oozing. The only sound was the tinkle of the spent shells as they bounced to a halt at her feet. Then she breathed again and ran on.
Jane dashed along the corridors. Now she had come to the high security zone but there had been no word from the security team since the beginning. She had never been here before and she didn't know what was being kept here but she was certain that the team were dead and that whatever was inside was going to try and get out. She would not let that happen, that security team had been carrying some powerful gear and it had seemingly gone through them without hassle so civilians were not going to be a problem for it. The scientists didn't know what they had unleashed, the devastation these 'laboratory animals' would cause if freed. But part of Jane was glad it had happened. Some of the company's top men had been in here when the scientists had revolted and that meant all this would stop. Geneta would be placed under new management and these monstrosities would be the last created by the company. The only survivor of the leading officials was an odd man, Bradford his name was, and Jane knew he had argued against the creation of dangerous creatures for a long time, he envisioned Geneta as a company that would create new and useful creatures, better tasting foods, healthier pets and life prolonging bacteria. He wanted the company to become a place where mankind could further it's understanding of life. Jane understood life as the company had portrayed it. The lives Geneta had created needed to come to an end.
Something small leapt towards her through the air, but she shot it without a second thought and pushed on. As she ran along the corridor, it grew quiet and all Jane could hear was the sound of her own breathing. The middle aged woman turned cautiously into the main holding facility and stared in awe at the destruction ahead. The room was large and circular, computer screens had lined the walls but most were either damaged or missing completely. An enormous, transparent tank had stood in the center but it was now shattered. Glass and debris littered the floor which was wet with liquids that were still leaking from what remained of the hibernation tank. The lights were out, but the room was lit by burning rubble away to her left, but the light didn't extend to the high ceiling which was shrouded in darkness. Here and there, a mangled corpse lay amidst the wreckage, crushed by rubble or killed by something unknown, but had been unspeakably violent. A gloved hand appeared from behind an overturned table and motioned to her to get under cover. She jumped into a disemboweled computer console just as the spined tentacle jabbed at the ground. Jane fired a shot at it but the thing had whipped back up towards the blackness above them as fast as it had struck. She sat under the hollowed out computer with her back against the wall and the weapon pointed out from between her knees for what seemed like an eternity. Several times the tendril lashed down to the floor, impaling a corpse and hoisting it high into the air. Red blood splashed gently to the ground, mingling with the greenish water of the tank. When she had got up the nerve, Jane's arm shot out and snatched up a clear plate which had once imprisoned the demon in the sky above them. It could not have broken the tank on its own, the luckless scientists must have released it, so it would serve as a shield against the creatures assaults. She was in luck. This was transparent plasteel, as flexible as plastic but hard as steel. She reeled out a length of rope and tied the plasteel sheet to her back. Then she ran. As she left the cover of the console, a pain lashed through her back and she stumbled. Jane heard a weapon firing and a screech of rage as a bullet hit home. She got to her feet and ran to the cover of the overturned table whilst the tendril lanced down at her. Halfway there, it struck her again and she fell with a gasp. She rolled as it pounded into the floor where she had been and she launched another round at it. The thing whirled away and stabbed at her again as she leapt to her feet and dashed away. Someone behind the table was blasting the ceiling with bullets, trying to protect her as monster attacked again and again. A final blow pounded into her makeshift shield as she jumped for the table and she rolled into cover, gasping for breath and nursing her back. A hot pain was radiating from her chest where the creature had assaulted her. A man crouching by her stopped firing at the sky and ducked back to safety. He helped her into a sitting position next to another injured man and pulled a bandage from inside his pocket. He took off her shirt and bra, slightly embarrassed and apologising in a muffled voice whilst staring fixedly at the floor, then he wrapped the bandage around her and replaced her clothes.
"Who...... who are you?" she said, wincing as he pulled the shirt back over her head.
"I'm just a lance corporal ma'am." he said, noticing her corporal stripes "We'd better get out of here soon. That thing will want out when it finishes with the others."
He gestured to the corpses on the opposite side of the table and looked down sadly.
"They never had a chance. That thing out there is devastating. Nothing can stand against it."
Jane shifted uncomfortably and began reloading her shotgun. She flipped the twin barrels down and fished around for some cartridges.
"What kind of gear do we have?" she asked "I heard you boys pack a punch with some of the stuff you carry."
The young man turned to a large armour box behind him and pushed open the lid. He started pulling out weaponry.
"We got a couple of grenades, rifles spare ammo, a sniper rifle and a few pistols." he said, laying them out on the floor.
Jane stared at them in surprise.
"I thought you had tougher stuff?"
"We do. There's a flamethrower, a grenade launcher and a twin homing rocket launcher. But we can't use it. The reason the roof is so high is because that...... thing smashed up into the floor above. It's the generator. We shoot that and you can kiss the whole city goodbye. I mean, it'll take bullets and probably a grenade or two but a missile will blow this place sky high."
"Well then why the hell do you have it?" she demanded angrily "Why did they give you tactical nukes if you can't fire them?"
"Why did they grow this thing in the first place? I'm just as confused as you...... ma'am." he said, remembering himself in time.
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the grunting and growling of the monster that waited above them.
"Sorry." she told him apologetically "It's not your fault we're here."
"What are we going to do ma'am?" he said, peering around the corner cautiously.
"I've got something...."
They peered around at the injured man who had hefted one of the flamethrowers in his good hand.