Exterminate!

by A Nomad Soul

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Their screams still echoed in her ears as she ran. She had to get as far away from them as she could. Her heart was pounding a frantic, desperate beat throughout her body as her lungs burned, crying out for more oxygen. She struggled to breathe through the sobs that racked her body. All she could see was the death that had surrounding her only moments ago; the faces of a hundred screaming, tortured souls being torn from their existence on this planet. Why? That was the only thing she could think. Why had they done this? Why had they chosen here? Why now? Why this? Her legs begged for rest, pleaded for her to stop running, but she couldn’t. She had to flee.

On any other night she would have thought this place beautiful; a fairy tale forest. The trees were colossal, dignified things, with leaves as large as a man stretching high above her head. She was not on the path, so the bushes and saplings grabbed at her, scratching and tearing her arms and legs and face as she ploughed through. It didn’t help that she was in her wedding dress, or at least it had been, before they arrived.

“LUCY WAIT!”

She recognised the adolescent voice calling out to her and looked back. The root of one of the monolithic trees collided with her still running feet and she found herself hurtling head first for the floor. She wasn’t sure if she had blacked out, but the boy to whom the voice belonged was immediately at her side, panic etched into his young face. Gabriel, his name was; he had been her ring-bearer.

“Lucy! Lucy! Are you okay?”

Her head was throbbing, she was cut and bleeding everywhere she looked, her ankle felt like it was being bludgeoned with something large and heavy and she had just witnessed a hundred or so people massacred in under a minute.

“I’m… I’m fine. I think I twisted my ankle though.”

She struggled to sit up, but managed with Gabriel’s help. Her heart was still beating furiously and her breath was still short and sharp. She tried to calm down.

“How did you get out, Gabe?”

“Hid under the altar until those… Things… Left. I saw you duck out through the wine cellar, so I followed you.”

He was whispering, and kept looking around, much like a wildcat. It scared her.

“Did they follow you?”

“I don’t know. I heard them shouting a little ways back. Those voices…”

A look passed over the thirteen year old boy’s face – terror. Sheer, unadulterated terror of the kind Lucy felt. She knew, in that moment, that he too could still see the faces of the dead, could still hear the screaming. It broke her. Until now, adrenaline had kept her grief at bay, but now – now it washed over her like a solar storm of the kind they got back home on Andrazi. She grabbed the boy and pulled him close, holding him tight and hoping he would understand that she was there with him. He cried, soft and almost silent, while his fingers dug into her shoulders with all the pain he could not bear. Her eyes remained dry; the screams wouldn’t let her weep for the lost.
Neither of them knew how long they sat there, huddled together, praying that this would all be a bad dream. Eventually, Gabriel spoke.

“I thought they were a gag at first. You know one of Uncle Lucian’s practical jokes… I mean, what monster makes itself look like a salt-shaker?”

The mention of her fiancé ripped through her, bringing with it flashes of his dying face. She never heard his last words to her.

“My dad… He says – used to say that the most dangerous predators in the Universe look harmless, even ridiculous. They kill you while you laugh at them.”

“Do you think he meant those things?”

“I don’t know…”

She didn’t want to think about Dad, or Lucian, or anyone who was in the cathedral. Right now, she just wanted a way out; off this planet and back to Andrazi. She looked around for the first time in a long while. Thankfully, they weren’t in a clearing. The trees, with their giant leaves, formed a canopy overhead that protected them from even the sky. She suddenly remembered why she had chosen this place for her wedding; the leaves trapped the light of Proximus during the day and radiated the excess energy at night. The forest glowed, a pale, magnificent orange – The Forest of Gold. She had even consented to have journos there, because she knew the pictures would be stunning; on every newsfeed throughout the galaxy. People could call her talentless for being a reality-stream star, but no one would deny that she had a talent for creating unforgettable experiences. She almost laughed at the irony, but suddenly her mind was overcome with the faces of the dead and dying once again.

“Lucy! Are you okay?”

She tried to shake it off. She was back in this unforgiving reality. Back in the place where all she had known and loved had been destroyed by demons in metal shells. She finally broke down.

“Why? WHY?! What did they want?”

Gabriel stayed silent. She tried to get a grip on herself. If there was to be any hope of surviving this nightmare, she had to get a grip. She looked up at her ring-bearer and found him deep in thought. When he finally spoke, it was slowly and deliberately, as if he was trying to solve a maths problem.

“I think… They were – are – looking for something. The black one said something about a key. And, um, a starlight bridge? Or stardust, I’m not sure.”

Well that made no sense. Couldn’t they just have asked? To Lucy, it seemed as if the monsters had been created for the express purpose of killing anything that wasn’t like them. It sickened her. And then, for what seemed to be no reason at all, Gabriel brightened up.

“I’ve still got your ring! Hang on.”

He fished it out of his pocket and handed it to Lucy, chuffed with himself for having done his duty. It was a simple, but elegant band, made from original Earth platinum; incredibly rare these days. Even rarer was the diamond, set perfectly into the top. It refracted the light from the trees in a way no other diamond ever could. Legend had it that the diamond had fallen from the heavens to Earth in the 21st century where it was found by a man with many faces. He had called it the White Point Star, and he used it to call across the stars to another world. Later it was cut into six smaller diamonds, the only diamonds of their kind in all the universe. This one had been in Lucian’s family for generations. Lucian had said to her that no matter where she was in the Universe, if she had the ring, he would find her. She kissed the ring and wished he could find her now.

“Lucy, did you hear that?”

Silence had fallen over the forest; not even the wind made a sound. Lucy looked around. Even the light from the trees seemed dimmer. All around them, darkness seemed to be approaching. Gabriel stood up. Lucy tried, but her leg shot sharp tendrils of sheer agony through her body and she fell once again. Gabriel lifted her up and she supported herself on his shoulder. The only things she could hear were her heartbeat and Gabriel’s quickened intake of air.

Something moved behind them, almost – but not quite – dragging on the floor. The two of them turned to face it, whatever it was. She stared through the trees, hoping to find some sign of movement, of humanity. She only found darkness. And then that terrible, screaming voice echoed through the forest.

“The human female has the Fragment.”

It clicked. The diamond; they wanted the diamond for this bridge key thing. She held it up, and called out to the black, hoping that they were reasonable.

“Here! If you want it, you can have it. Just let us go! Please!”

The silence was absolute. Nothing moved or made a sound for what seemed like ages; she even held her breath. In her mind, she prayed. She wasn’t even religious, but she prayed.

The monster emerged from the shadows. She could see why Gabriel had thought they were a practical joke. It had no legs, just a skirt of half spheres; no torso or thorax, just an extension of its armour that ended with a domed head, decked with two white lights that looked like ears and an eye-stalk that glowed blue. Instead of arms it had what looked like a plunger and a whisk; she remembered those names from a field trip to the Ancient Earth Museum on Andrazi when she was little. It looked harmless, but she was more afraid now than she had ever been in her life. It glided closer, and then stopped. When it spoke, it screamed.

“EXTERMINATE!”

Instinctively, she ducked, pulling Gabriel down with her. Two bursts of fiery hot blue light crackled through the air over their heads. It would fire again, she knew it. Gabriel grabbed a rock and hurled it at the creature. Had it landed anywhere else, the action would only have served to anger it. Instead, the rock collided miraculously with the monster’s eye-stalk.

“My vision is impaired! My vision is impaired!”

Lucy turned to Gabriel.

“We need somewhere to hide!”

“Well, the Energy Mill is at the bottom of the hill by the river.”

“Then let’s GO!”

Gabriel helped her up and they ran. Every step was agony, but she couldn’t give a damn at the moment. She just wanted as much space between her and that thing as she could get. They stumbled through the forest as fast as they could. She could hear them closing in around them and willed herself to go on.

They broke through the treeline and into the blue light of the twin moons. The Energy Mill loomed over them, a behemoth of human ingenuity and engineering. Lucian’s father had designed the technology that had made this place possible. The water on this planet was imbued with the energy that the trees radiated. Lucy didn’t know how it all worked, but she knew that the Mill extracted the energy from the water, making it safe to drink and at the same time providing power for the colony.

“EXTERMINATE!”

Three of the things burst through the trees in pursuit. Without a second thought, she and Gabriel headed for the door. Once inside, they didn’t stop for breath until they were in the depths of the labyrinthine Battery Factory, one of the Mill’s more profitable sectors. The working lights had switched on when they entered. Lucy had no idea where the switch was, so she was grateful not to be in the dark.

It looked like they had ended up in one of the storage facilities; the walls were packed from floor to ceiling with battery packs of every sort. One particular kind of battery caught Lucy’s eye. It was small and cylindrical, with a big red cap on one end. Fusion-S the label said. They used these as charge packs for weapons, due to the fact that that these little things were essentially a bolt of lightning in a jar. The label put the power output at 1.21 gigawatts over three seconds. Enough to power an average photon rifle for around five hundred shots. Lucy suddenly had an idea. The label said that under no circumstances should the red cap be removed; Lucy decided to ignore it.

“Gabe, I need you to look around for an energy coupling. Make sure it’s got a ton of insulation.”

Gabriel looked from her to the battery and understood. He let her go and ran off, around the corner. She could hear him searching for almost five minutes, making a terrific racket. He came back victorious though, and handed her the three foot long coupling. It was a black bar, about as thick as a bottle of wine, and on either end was an intricate device that resembled a wine glass, albeit one with a large spike in the centre. She had seen a docu-stream, one of those survival-in-space ones, where a man had used one of these batteries and a coupling to jump start a space ship. Her plan was similar, she guessed, and if it worked then she would be able to fight these monsters off. There were literally thousands of these little Fusion-S batteries here.

She remembered the ring. Lucian would be proud of her. She turned to Gabriel.

“If you see one of those things, point the coupling straight at it, okay? I’ll ram the battery into the other end and we’ll blast that thing all the way back to hell.”

The teenager smiled nervously. Lucy hugged him. Finally, there was hope.

“Thank you Gabe.”

He didn’t respond, but when she let him go he seemed almost cocky, like he thought he could do anything. She clutched her wedding ring and thought one simple thought. If you want it, I dare you to come and get it.

“The humans have been located! Exterminate!”

The voice had rent through the air suddenly and violently, knocking any and all kinds of arrogance from her mind in an instant. That inhuman, soulless scream terrified her once more, bringing with it all the images, all the faces and all of the pain.
She started to tremble as she stood there with a teenage boy, looking down the corridor of power sources and waiting for the inevitable. The inevitable arrived. It glided toward them, almost gracefully, entirely without fear. But it did not fire.

“EXTERMINATE!”

She didn’t know how, or why, but she was suddenly calm. It would end, one way or another she reasoned.

“Gabriel! The coupling!”

Gabriel did nothing. The monster was drawing nearer.

“GABE!”

He snapped out of it and finally pointed the soon-to-be-business-end of the black bar at the creature. Lucy looked right into the monster’s glowing blue eye-stalk and smiled.

“Exterminate this.”

She plunged the battery, red-cap first, into the back of the coupling.

A thunderous, white hot bolt of beautiful lightning burst forth from the coupling and connected with the monster. Lucy couldn’t see or hear anything for several seconds after the instant that her makeshift weapon had fired. It was all whiteness and noise.
She closed her eyes and tried to shake off the ringing in her ears and the black spots that were popping in her eyes. All was quiet. She looked up and found the monster. It was still.
Gabriel, on the other hand, was shaking. He looked shell-shocked, and was staring at the coupling with utter disbelief.

“That… Was… Awesome.”

He burst out laughing; the kind of laugh that is unique to those who have just been through hell and come out of the other side, shaken but okay. Lucy hugged him once more, and suddenly found herself laughing and crying at the same time. They were safe. They would survive. She could go home.

“Human technology is useless! We are supreme!”

Every good, hopeful thought was wiped from her mind. She didn’t need to see it, to know that they were as good as dead. Her arms were still around Gabriel’s neck. She gripped him tighter. This was the end, but she could not give up hope. She closed her eyes and gripped the ring tighter than ever. She knew that Lucian wouldn’t find her, but she begged the Universe for someone, anyone who could help them.

The sound was faint, but it grew louder; a slow, steady oscillation of immense, timeless power. The monster advanced.

“EXTERMIN – ”

It was silenced by the resounding BOOM that filled the air. It sounded like something very large had just fallen from thin air. Lucy opened her eyes and looked over. The monster had disappeared. In its place stood a box. A blue box, with windows, doors and a little light on top. Lucy couldn’t help but stare.

One of the box’s doors opened and a man stepped out. He didn’t acknowledge Lucy or Gabriel immediately. They didn’t protest though; they were still in shock. He was regarding his box with a sort of mild curiosity.

“That’s strange. She doesn’t usually get the height of the floor wrong.”

Somehow Lucy understood that “she” was the box. The man patted the door, as if consoling “her”. He looked down and saw the plunger-like arm that was sticking out from under the box.

“Oh look, it’s the Wicked Witch of the East. Well done, Sexy! Although you could have told me.”

He was positively bouncing with excitement, and had yet to notice the two terrified souls who were still staring at him.
“Wait a minute! That makes me Dorothy! I liked Dorothy. She had spunk. Oooh that’s a good word. Spunk.”
He suddenly turned and pointed straight at Lucy.

“Tell me, is your name Glinda?”

“Uh… no. It’s Lucy.”

He strode up to her and Gabriel like he owned the place.

“Good name, Lucy. I like Lucy. Just stay out of cupboards, you could get lost.”

He was mad, Lucy decided, and Gabriel seemed to agree. But still, there was something about him that put her at ease. In the back of her mind, she remembered what her dad used to say. The most dangerous things in the Universe look harmless, even ridiculous. But something could be both dangerous and good, right? She didn’t know why, but this man seemed like a good man. Mad, but good.

He stopped in front of them and smiled, like a naughty child.

“Now, Lucy. Toto. Did anyone here call for help?”

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This one is particularly for fans of Doctor Who. For reasons of not-getting-in-trouble-with-the-BBC, I tried to disguise without disguising the references. If you want to know which Doctor's timeline this particular story is intended to be a part of drop a guess in the comments :p

And the picture this week is dedicated to @crimsonclad for her epic Thursday night radio show which every self-respecting metal head should listen to. Crimsongiggles for the WIN!

And lastly, I'm gonna be trying out some different daily content during the week, and will be keeping my fiction to the weekends from now on. If you're new to my madness, take a look around my page and if you like what you see, do the clicky clicky doodad dance and make me happy on the inside (I wear a mask, so the inside is all that matters).

After lastly, if you missed it yesterday, this is what you can expect from me on Saturdays.

Aaaaand I'm done.

Have beautiful adventures, you beautiful people.

Peace, Love and a Little Madness

Nomad