Wanted to introduce myself right quick. My name is Matt, I am a musician trying out a new form of creative expression while also enjoying the best genre ever…. science fiction. Thanks to Simon for giving me the chance to share some of my stuff! This is a two part short story, sorry for any grammatical errors, Enjoy!
Part One
Everything Happened so fast, it was all so chaotic. At first things were calm, quiet, empty, but then the shaking began and he could hear the sound of something hitting them. Metal clanking metal. Suddenly it felt as though he were in a terrible storm raging out on the sea with no hope of escape. He felt one violent jolt after another, bright flashes blinding him. He could feel the sweat rolling down his forehead, his heart pounding as he heard the screams of others.
He tried to open his eyes and see what was happening, but those flashes just kept hitting him. He suddenly felt a jolt more violent than before. “Brace yourselves!” He heard a voice cry out. He finally received a small slit of sight and saw that he was covered in blood, but it wasn’t his. He felt himself falling upside down instead of gliding like before and that’s when he caught sight of it. It came before he could open his eyes enough to get a good look at it, and then there was only darkness. The last things he heard before slipping away into the blackness of what he assumed was death were the screams and the terrible sounds of metal screeching against metal.
Cpl Jake Johnson opened his eyes slowly at first not being able to see much until his eyes finally adapted. He let out a cough and felt around, that’s when he realized he was upside down. As things became clearer he looked to his sides finding only lifeless bodies next to him still strapped into their seats. He reached down near his waist, his mind starting to come back to him, and disconnected the belt that held him in place not realizing the distance of the drop and fell landing on his back. He let out a groan as he struggled to sit up. He looked up and saw the inside of what was left of his dropship. All around him he saw tangled metal, and crimson blood. Many of the seats still had bodies in them, some had been torn off and sat on the ground with whatever was left of their occupant. A few sparks shot out of a console nearby lighting up the image of destruction. “Hello!” He called out weakly still dazed from his forced nap. “Is anyone alive!” He cried out. There was no response, no sound. He caught sight of a massive hole near his left side where several seats had been. The sharp edges of the chewed metal were burned and scared. That must have been where they had been hit.
He got onto his feet, grabbing onto a bit of metal and held his head for a moment as the pain hit him. That’s when he realized that he heard nothing at all. No voices, no radios, and no battle. He stepped outside using the blasted open potion of the drop ship leaving the squad he had once been apart of behind to rest in their tomb. His suit still had oxygen, plenty to last for a while, and there did not seem to be any tears. He finished crawling up out of the crevice his dropship had crashed into and was met with a sight of horror.
All around him in this massive valley where he now stood were the mangled remains of the battle he had not even gotten to take part in. Mangled mechs, tanks, and bodies filled the valley all laying silently and still where they had fallen. The battle was over hours ago it appeared and he had survived. Looking at the gruesome scene, he could not tell who had won. Further in the distance, he could see the massive starships that once he had dropped from. Their back sides sat destroyed, rising up from the ground like the massive spiked mountains of the asteroid. Up above him, he saw a terrifying mess of spiked rock and more destroyed vessels, from fighters to the larger transport ships. He was still on the ground however, along with the fallen. The artificial gravity fields must have still been active, holding the terrible display of death in place.
Everything started to come back to him. He was A Cpl, his name was Jake and he had dropped with the first and second squads of the 402nd Dread Company. They were attempting to retake the Vega Asteroid Facility in an effort to stop something…. but he could not remember what. His mind was still fuzzy and that was all he could bring himself to remember.
He stepped out further into the chaotic battlefield. All around him men and women in the same suit that he had on lay dead, and something lay next to them. They were ghastly looking humanoid creatures in their own strange suits, grey skin with tendrils extending from their skulls. He sat down by one trying to remember more than he could, and that’s when a large hand reached up and seized his arm. He saw then a large pointed tip heading towards his helmet and before he knew what he was doing, instinct kicked in and he quickly caught his foes arm in his other hand stopping the knife from reaching his helmet. He felt the side of a foot hit his head and he crashed down, but quickly recovered with a drawn side arm. It was knocked away from his hand and he looked up to see the strange looking creature, one hand holding its side trying to keep air from leaking out of what must have been a tear in its suit. It swung the knife back at Jake, who quickly rolled out of the way and grabbed a plasma riffle laying nearby. He raised it and two shoots of bright blue cut clean through the creature. That hardly stopped it from charging at him again. He squeezed another bit of plasma that found its target directly in the creatures forehead. The knife dropped from its hand and its charge slowed and it tumbled onto Jake. He let out a groan as he quickly pushed the body off him and stood aiming the rifle at it. The creature was dead. His eyes quickly scanned the horizon around him. He saw nothing else moving. It seemed that he had just killed the only other survivor. He picked up his side arm and holstered it.
Why was he here? What were they doing? He asked himself as he continued making his way through the battlefield towards the only facility that seemed to still be standing. He through maybe he would find more survivors their, hopefully human, but something in his mind told him he would only find the same silence and death he found strewn across the bottom of the valley. He caught something out of the corner of his eye and looked up. He hadn’t noticed it before but the sight of it made him sit down on a bit of metal, eyes widened in horror. Above him past the floating field of debris, a massive tear in space, a swirling bit of stardust whirled around it. It was a wormhole, and through it hundreds of starships poured into the space above him, and they weren’t human.
Simon's Space 