For the sake of Duty!
Feb 8, 2023 16:12:38 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Feb 8, 2023 16:12:38 GMT -5
For the sake of Duty!
It is unusually cold tonight on this planet as I cautiously emerge from my fortified conical abode in response to an urgent distress signal from a nearby domed village on the other side of the canyon. It is also rather dark since the planet is also very distant from its red-dwarf star and its small double moons offer faint illumination. So I must depend on my spacesuit's exterior helmet-lights, my motion detectors, and on my own vision. My Rover soon has me at the canyon entrance is approx. a mile from my abode, and after a twenty minute's journey, its mile-high granite canyon-walls are towering above me on both sides, while a few dim stars are peeking through the dense green-tinged fog that usually enshrouds it.
It is a silent journey until halfway through, I detect creatures stirring, instinctively and fearfully, receding deep into their recessed canyon wall grottos in reaction to the echoing sounds of my steps.
No concern. The only indigenous creatures are small inoffensive. But today, for the first time, I detect a different kind of sound, and slower one that gradually-approaches then recedes. It is much heavier and multi-limbed, scurrying sound emerging from the deep canyon shadows as if attempting to avoid being seen. True, I am familiar with the tales of a monster that lurks here, but have always considered them legends or else stories told by the intoxicated miners in order to impress. But now, now I am not so sure.
Cautiously, I stop my rover and reposition my sonic blaster from shoulder to chest-level, pointing it in the movement's direction. My helmet's motion scanners confirm what my hearing is telling me, that there movement at forty-five yards. Yet, no visual confirmation-too dark too misty the spacesuit's visor-computer-readout tells me in its casual, uncaring sort of way. I take a few more steps and I hear it approaching. Once more I stop my rover to scan my surroundings,
There is a dead lasting silence.
I hear myself breathing heavily. I feel as if being hunted. I am certain of it. I frantically scan in all directions, but to no avail. Then as I turn to continue on, I catch a fleeting glimpse of a hulking mass partially shrouded in the green mist, looming closer behind me from the northeast.
Fear makes me consider turning back to my fortified abode. But I have no choice. Either way I am far too deep into the canyon to avoid whatever it is that is stalking me and my rover's top speed is a mere 40 mph. But most importantly, duty demands that I deliver the medicine or else many will die.
My heart pounds like a stallion kicking in my chest. I am still carefully keeping to the sides of the canyon wall in order to secure my right flank, although danger can come even from above, and I would only have micro seconds to react.
Cautiously and slowly, I continue towards the canyon’s narrow v-shaped exit which is now looming ahead. I am only a few hundred feet from it and I breathe a sigh of relief and start berating myself for my overactive imagination.
Then, as I begin to accelerate toward he exit, something heavy slam into my back hurling me face-first to the ground and sending my rover careening against the canyon walls. A thick muscular tentacle wraps itself around my torso, and its barbed toothed protrusions are penetrating my spacesuit. Desperately, I struggle to free myself but cannot.
Then I see large, oval, oblique crimson eyes as big as dinner plates viciously glaring in the darkness staring deeply into my own as if it they are deliriously savoring my helplessness and intense fear.
Once more I desperately struggle to twist free, kicking with my legs, but I cannot budge form its viselike grip. Its grip tights and I hear the sickening sound of my ribs cracking under the relentless pressure. As it tightens its grip even more, I open my mouth to scream, but it muffles it with a resounding roar. Then an intense searing pain tears into into my abdomen as it spills acid through the wound burn my abdomen's skin.
For a brief moment, brilliant multicolored lights begin to coalesce, floating and flashing sporadically before my eyes. Is this what dying is like? They are comforting yet terrifying. They assuage, yet they mock the failure of my mission. They beckon me to accept the unacceptable. To negate my duty to deliver the life-saving contents within the flask to the villagers. But before I can succumb, I recall the intense sufferings of the pale-green humanoids pleading faces, of the villagers on the screen begging for my assistance. Begging me to abandon the safety of my abode in the name of merciful compassion for their plight, and that strengthens my resolve. .
Now as the creature slowly raises me aloft, preparing to drop me into its gaping gullet, where I will be slowly digested alive, I flail about desperately, and plunge my gloved fingers deep into one its eyes. It releases me staggering back while yelping in pain. I slam into the hard canyon ground, regain my feet and stumble and run, stumble and run, and never stop until I reach the canyon’s end. I am badly wounded, but I can make it. I can make it! I stagger through the narrow canyon entrance and onto the sand-dunes that stretch from horizon to horizon.
Then I see them. The ill humanoids male female the aged and children wearing blue spacesuits. There on a nearby lofty dune! They see me from distance, and I hear them cheering and see them waving! We are walking towards one another, stumbling, to reach the contents of the life-saving flask
I am holding out in my outstretched hand.. Finally, we meet each other half way, and with a my wounded outstretched hand. I offer them the medicine smiling. An old white bearded emaciated figure snatches it from my hand then rapidly rejoins the others.
Then, the warm blood from my abdominal wounds gurgle up my throat and spill upon the emerald dunes as I try to speak. The ground and the sky swirl and spin and I topple to the ground face-first. I hear the creature emerging from the canyon’s entry, as if instinctively drawn to the sound of my agony. It approaches quickly. The villagers are shouting in fear, a few feet away. Then they begin to run back to the safety of their domed village abandoning me to the creature's mercy.
Now, once more, a tentacle envelops my torso. I am being slowly lifted and held aloft as if I were a trophy. Then, with a deafening resonating triumphant roar, it rams me head-first into its anxiously-pulsating purple gullet as the sound of the villagers' joyful celebrations fade in the far distance, as so do I.