Stephen LandryTHE RED FLOWER WAS A WAR FACTORYA short story in the world of Deep Darkness

There was blood on my hands. A dove or something like it flew through the air. Its wings struggled in the harsh wind. All the same I should have been running too but I watched it fly into the ash colored sky. I could barely breath. There was no one else around me, not anymore anyway.

Errikus was a colony for the Eeks, peaceful humanoid race and with the exception of their seven-foot tall stature and hideous face they were almost pleasant to look at. They were like abstract art. Multiple eyes ranging from four to eight sat on their large square foreheads. It was rumored that each Eek shared at least two brains. It was strange to imagine two beings sharing the same body the way they would. This was just one of hundreds of worlds they had at their disposal. Each world was governed independently. Errikus was so far out from most colonized worlds it welcomed everyone. They needed the trade. The world itself was an inhospitable jungle filled with alien beasts. The megacity of Errikus sat behind a giant wall. Behind the wall was a megacity, spaceport and all stretching into the sky. Fungus had been planted on and around the wall to help clean the air and veins of clean oxygen had been set up through every street. The veins stretched over buildings and looked like wires hanging from building to building. The city was dirty but the air was good. Outside the city you would need an oxygen mask or an amazing set of lungs. Chemicals and dust from plants and animals poisoned the air outside. The city was the only place you could breath in peace.

I along with a few thousand other humans had become temporary colonists here while our ships went to another world for some more exotic upgrades.

I was a part of an expedition. A drone had found a small set of Lethe ruins. The Lethe were an ancient alien race and the first to venture into the immer, the space our starships use to travel from point A to B. It should have been a simple excavation but it all went wrong. We thought we were prepared. We thought we had thought of everything. Oxygen masks, rifles, survival gear, rations we even had a drone watching us from the sky above.

Our drop ship looked like a giant metal bird. It set down nearly a hundred yards from the ruins. We were so close we could see every bit of the alien structure. Organic vines twisted around a bright red metal that spread out like flower pedals from the brown soil that surrounded it. It was about the size of a two story house. That was only the tip of the iceberg though. Our first impression was that this must have been a research center or a small outpost.

Errikus was the last planet before an empty area of space. Even in the immer gravity from stars, planets, orbitals it all pulled at each other inside the spiral of our galaxy. Going beyond Errikus meant going beyond the spiral. It meant entering a new area of space where the laws of physics changed. There was nothing out there anyway, nothing but false hopes and dreams as far as I was concerned. It would only make sense for the Lethe to put an outpost here. It would be the best way to warn lesser species that this was their last stop before darkness.

I came here as a scientist. My thirst for knowledge endless. Even the implants in my brain that let me access information at an accelerated rate and would feed me logic couldn�t comprehend the actions I had taken. From the moment we entered the ruins we crawled inside a trap. This was not an outpost nor was it a research center. The red flower was a war factory.

It took us twenty minutes to break through the red metal door.

There were eight of us that came. We were dressed in armor fearful of the wildlife. Each of us was wearing a breather. We all had basic training. A requirement when your race is always at war with another species. We each carried an M44, a long barreled pulse rifle that dispersed a blue light of radiation. The light would penetrate the target whether that be armor or an animal husk and depending how long you held down the trigger you could make someone sick enough they would be stunned or you could melt their insides and kill them within three seconds. The gun ran off it�s own mini reactor and in a worse case scenario could be used as an explosive. We considered opening the door using some of our M44�s rigged together but one of the younger crew warned against it not knowing what we would find inside. He could never have been more right.

We had entered a long hallway. It was slightly sloped down. The walls were solid gray. It was like we had entered through the mouth of a giant beast and were marching our way down through it�s throat. That analogy could never have been more right. Less than a mile through the walls were stained with streaks of acid. The hallway turned into smaller rooms. Each room was a prison cell holding an embryo. A crystalized egg sac the size of Eek. The scientist inside of me had never been so excited. This was the closest any species in our galaxy had ever come to seeing how the Lethe lived or waged war. I forgot to ask the question�� if they were waging a war who was it with?

This was a breakthrough. There was enough to research here to keep us in Errikus for years and possibly make us rich. Species all over the galaxy would want to see what we had found.

Within a few hours we had set up a mini research lab. We brought an oxygen bank with us so we could use it to pump fresh air into the facility. I already had one of the egg sacs on the table. I was cutting it open when I realized I wasn�t feeling quite right.

�Are you alright?� my assistant asked.

�Yes I�m fine,� I shouldn�t have said that. I should have acknowledged that something was off. The implants in my head were screaming at me.

�Get out� I could here a voice whisper.

�Enough!� I yelled.

My assistant looked at me strangely. �Sorry about the outburst�� I hesitated, �I�m just anxious to see what�s inside.�

As I began to move the scalpel down across the egg my assistant threw himself at me. His eyes had turned solid white. I couldn�t tell what was happening and I was afraid so I jabbed the scalpel into his neck.

�I�m sorry, I�m sorry,� I begged.

Then I saw it. A parasite that resembled a tick had attached itself to his back. I ripped it off. He laid there bleeding.

�I could see everything, I could see everything,� his last dying breath. This was the first time out of a simulation I had ever killed.

We called it a day and buried the body. �It�s what he would have wanted. To be buried with this great discovery,� I spoke to no one after that. No one spoke to me except to say they understood. Errikus is a hostile world and we knew that from the beginning. Beyond the city walls there is nothing but death and danger. We knew the risks when we came out here.

I spent the night in meditation.

Running through a white meadow. I ran to the center and spread my arms wide in the air. A flock of white doves came down from the sky and one landed in my hand. I ran my fingers down the back of its head feeling its soft feathers rub against my skin. It felt soft and warm.

Waving my hand in the air the dove took off with incredible speed. Then I was falling. Falling through the world. I watched white clouds surround me. When I landed I was inside a pool of warm bath water. I began to melt becoming a part of the water. I was becoming one with the world around me.

For a few moments I felt like I was a God.

That was when I saw his face. Someone had interrupted my meditation. From the corner of my room I heard a scratching against the wall.

�Hello?� I said. We each had separate rooms. I should have been alone in there. That was when I remembered. The door was locked from inside.

I began to search for my rifle. Maybe it was an animal that snuck in through some hole in the wall. Even though most wildlife on Errikus was hostile there were still a few smaller rodents, nothing more then scavengers feeding off the leftover kills of hell beasts and gorins.

The screeching sound came from behind me now. I turned around and swear I saw my assistant crawling on the ground. I saw his hand against the wall and his head twisted backwards. His eyes were a solid white. Then he was gone.

I had my rifle in my hand now. I was ready to shoot. There was no way what I had seen was real. My meditation had become unsettled. My mind was playing games with me. My implants immediately guided me to the most likely conclusion. I was feeling guilty. I was burdened by the death of a teammate, the death of a friend. Never in my life had I felt such pain. My stomach turned and I lowered my rifle.

�I�m going to be sick.�

The morning came.

I woke up on my side. When I opened my eyes I saw a dove appear in front of my eyes. It slowly faded into the air.

Every inch of the room had turned red. It was covered in blood. Every one of my team lay dead on the ground torn limb from limb. My hands were covered in blood but it wasn�t my blood.

I screamed.

Everyone had been killed in the night.

�HELP!�

I screamed into my headpiece.

I began to wander room to room looking for any survivors. There was no one left. No one but me.

�Did I do this?� I was talking to myself, �I couldn�t, and there is no way I could do this.� Why was this the first thing my mind jumped to? How could I even imagine myself being capable of something like this? My implants were making me think this way. They were driving me to find a killer, a murderer and the only suspect was myself. I am only human after all.

�What about a hellbeast? A gorin? Maybe some psycho followed us from the city.�

I was pleading with my implants now. I was crying.

�It had to be a hellbeast, what else could rip these men limb from limb.� I could feel my implants feeding me logic.

The door was vaulted shut.

There was no one here alive but us.

This place has been abandoned for thousands of years.

�The skrav, it must have been a skrav, they are always finding new ways to kill us,�

Then my implants stopped.

The screaming in my head became an abrupt silence.

I began to look around.

I know I was walking back towards the exit but the embryos. The egg sacs had all disappeared.

I was still carrying my M44 rifle so I unstrapped it from my back and began to hold it in front of me.

�They were alive.� I said. My implants didn�t seem to feed me any other ideas. I had finally found the answer.

Where were they now?

It didn�t make sense. Why they didn�t attack me?

The hallways twisted and turned. What was once the throat had turned into a giant endless maze. Was someone controlling the bunker twisting the world around me? This was more then a trap. This was hell.

The path before me splintered and I saw one of the creatures. It was no longer a baby. It had an elongated head with a nose that bent upward and looked like an adolescent hellbeast. It stood on two hind legs and had four smaller arms in front of it. Its skin was pure black except it had small orange and red tumors covering it�s lower body. It looked like it was molting. It�s teeth were pure white and seemed to glow. It let out a cry as if it was dying. For a moment I began to feel bad for it. Then I remembered the bodies. I remembered my friends. I shot it. Over and Over. I never let go off the trigger. If it had been a hellbeast I would have melted it�s skin, bone, and organs into thin air. It stood there as if nothing was happening at all. It almost seemed to feed off the energy.

The only animals that could feed off radiation were the monsters rumored to live inside the immer. I had heard the trinity; the Tritan, Aelita, Erebus had seen them once or twice. The stories said they were massive whale like creatures that could grow to the size of a planet and swim through stars.

My implants began feeding me ideas. I could run but this thing was more then likely going to be faster. I could keep firing but it would soon attack me. My mind began to imagine the Lethe thousands of years ago experimenting with hellbeasts manipulating their genetic code and the code of some captured leviathan from the immer.

Then the underground fortress began to shake.

�It feels like bombs,� I said aloud. I began to panic even more. They were bombing this place. Something must have happened on the outside. Something must be happening. I began to scream again in rage, in panic, in fear. I ran. I ran so far and fast the creature didn�t bother to follow.

My anxieties made me throw up several times. The walls were closing in.

I began to hear a high pitch sound tearing at my eardrum. I felt like I was being tortured.

�This could be a simulation.� I said to myself.

My implants began to flood my mind with ideas on how that would work. We had the technology. Simulated realities have been used by many different species. Perhaps I had been kidnapped. Perhaps this was some kind of experiment and I had given myself freely to it.

�If I kill myself I�ll just wake up.� I said.