Stellar B14 [9TailedJackal's Birthday Gift]

The radio clicked to life, filling the whole of the small room with a static-laced tune. It was an old song, dating back at least to the twenty-first century: the melody was calming and slow, yet simultaneously uplifting.

It was the perfect hymn to start the day.

Rolling onto his back Kane gave a long sigh, delaying his inevitable rise through a series of yawns and stretches. At length, however, he could deny his destiny no longer; and, with a grunt, slapped a hand towards his nightstand and switched his radio off.

He rose, quickly traversing the half a dozen steps to his closet. He donned a simple outfit – jeans and a collared t-shirt emblazoned with the Star Elevator logo – and slipped towards his cube of a bathroom. He quickly applied deodorant, shaved, and further freshened himself before slumping back into his bedroom.

He placed a hand against a panel of the wall and, with a woosh, it slid open to reveal a hallway beyond. He pushed his way into the corridor, the door sealing itself behind him as he trotted towards the distant cranking noise far down the hallway.

At length the confined passageway opened into a massive chamber: pumps and gears, some as small as his own body, others as massive as city blocks, pumped and whizzed all around him. The bio-dome above was so obscured by thick steam that it was impossible to distinguish; the concrete floor below so shrouded in mechanical devices that it existed only in the viewer’s imagination.

Here the path became a raised walkway, formed through a series of thin platforms. The raised road wove and branched all across the city of machines; yet, through countless weeks of traversing the same path, Kane never once had to second guess himself nor falter in his step.

All in all, the trip took nearly twenty minutes. But, at length, he reached a staircase that spiraled down through the whirling mixture of steam and metal, taking the final leg of the journey down to the solid earth that awaited him nearly ten stories below.

Here there was no defined road, no obvious path to take him to his destination. Nevertheless he wove through the pumps and grinding instruments effortlessly, eventually entering what seemed a clearing amid the forest of iron and steel.

Here, he was not alone. Three others had already arrived in the subterranean hub: one a relatively fit man who notably carried a gun, another a rather revered individual draped in a pale lab coat, and one a tall figure that seemed to have been taken directly from a nineteenth century ship’s deck.

The latter smiled as the newcomer approached, extending a hand to his long time friend. They shook and, for the first time that day, Kane managed a grin of his own.

“Good morning, commander.” The captain-like man said.

“Good morning yourself, Blade.” He returned, clapping his companion on the shoulder.

“Sleep well, I take it?” the soldier asked, not taking his eyes from the surrounding machinery as he spoke.

“Of course, Steven.” Kane returned. “You’re doing your job well: I think you’ve successfully kept even the nightmares out from under the dome.”

“All in a day’s work.” The gunman snickered, tapping his weapon as he stared down a particularly loud clockwork ring.

Turning to the final member of the group, the commander coughed loudly. The revered man didn’t register his queue – and even managed to miss the second emphatic cough Kane deemed necessary.

At length the commander was forced to circle the technician, peering through the cityscape of computers and wiring to try and catch his eye. He did so and realized he had only a second to act before he lost his friend’s attention; but, through a quick snapping of his fingers, he managed to temporarily divert the scientist’s focus.

“Good morning, Alex.” Kane said, his voice slightly tinged with impatience and incredulity.

“Alexander,” the technician corrected, his fingers still flying across one of the many keyboards sprawled before him.

“Well then Alexander, what has you so busy this morning?”

It was a simple question – but one that undoubtedly had a complicated answer. Kane had come to expect that over the two months he had been stationed on Stellar B14 – a small, icy world on the edge of the Milky Way, roughly five-hundred light-years from earth.

The planet, initially, had earned little to no credit as a prospective world. For nearly a century life was known to exist outside of humanity’s home world – some forms of bacteria found even within Earth’s own solar system, practically frozen in one of Jupiter’s moons – and, although several large bison-like creatures had been discovered in the planet’s frozen wastes, they were given little to no thought. Intelligent life, of course, had never been found; and certainly it was not expected that the cow-like beasts that roamed the ice flows possessed any more brainpower than a human infant.

It was only when a Deep Scan was run on the planet that Stellar B14 suddenly became more than an oversized snowball. Pings indicated high concentrations of rare earth metals – ingredients necessary in virtually all modern technology – were dotted just beneath the icy surface of the planet. Immediately mining rigs seized the opportunity and vied for copyrights: and, in the end, Star Elevator won the prize.

Mining rigs had become commonplace on asteroids, comets, and even other planets since their debut in the late twenty-first century. By far, the rig on Stellar B14 was the largest: nearly ten miles from corner to corner, the box-shaped establishment had been constructed off-world and flown across trillions of miles to reach the arctic world. Once fitted into the planet’s surface, its many gears, drills, and pumps began work to bore into the depths of B14 and extract the metals humanity so demanded.

Of course, the rig could not operate alone. Countless errors bombarded existing rigs: system malfunctions, unconventional attacks from indigenous animals, and the simple wear and tear of non-earth climates. Transport was expensive, however: speedy trips involved using miniscule crafts, large enough that they barely fit a full grown adult human inside, whisking their passengers at speeds far greater than that even of light. Thus, to keep the already tremendous costs of the operation to a minimum, only four were selected from the company’s staff to accomplish the six year mission.

The first had been Alex – or Alexander – himself. He had been on the squad that designed the specialized Stellar B14 rig, and was by far one of the greatest contributors to its manufacturing. Repairs and day-to-day mechanical procedure fell to him; and none, even among the staff back on Earth, challenged his judgment.

Steven had followed close behind. He was armed to the teeth, and thoroughly qualified to repel any would-be threat to the operation. In addition to his favored pistols, he also ran regular maintenance of a series of heat-seeking turrets that lined the bio-dome (a structure that radiated an earth-like environment inside the rig). Once or twice he had had the pleasure of blasting a rather inquisitive native bison; but, otherwise, his presence was more a moral utility than a physical one.

Blade – who typically outfitted himself in attire fitting of ancient captains – was by far the most outspoken of the group. He had piloted the four crafts to the planet: a feat that required an unparalleled amount of skill behind the wheel. He served little purpose on the rig itself: he, of course, assisted with maintenance and aided where he could, but the gist of the situation was that he was for transport. Without him, there was no reaching Stellar B14; and, without him, there was no getting home.

Kane found himself the leader of the mission – though that came, truly, as a shock. He had trained to manage affairs inside Sky Elevator for years – the whole of the management degree took nearly a decade to complete – and had hoped to be a district manager on Earth. Yet when he had been called into the chairman’s office, he knew that something different was in store for his future.

The room had smelled of fresh coffee as he entered. A pair of guards stood ready at either side of the door; though, throughout his stay, neither moved and neither seemed to pay him much attention. He did the same: instead, he focused completely on the man at the desk before him. Phillip wasn’t the stereotypically old monopoly leader: he was young, fit, and keen. Throughout his time in the office, his boss would peer at him over the rims of half-spectacles – all the while, his eyes gleaming with some unspoken promise that he understood the unspoken potential of his newest employee.

His instructions were laid slowly, allowing them to mature and sink in like the taste of a fine wine. Phillip was a likable sort of down-to-earth economic powerhouse; and, in the end, Kane felt as though he would have agreed to whatever proposition his boss had in store regardless of incentive or proposition, simply because of who made the offer. Yet when the mining expert passed Kane his files for the mission, all doubt flew from his mind instantly: after all, the first page depicted a seven figure income and nearly a full page of benefits, none of which – considering the current economic turmoil – caused him to turn his head.

Within the week he was on the two-month shuttle trip to the distant planet, his goodbyes said and his mind on the future.

And, while on Stellar B14, Kane to some degree did a little of everyone’s job. He assisted Alex behind his computer screens, he patrolled the walls with Steven, and he even acted as a copilot for stoic Blade – while simultaneously keeping communications with Earth online and regulating the individual activities of all those under his sphere of influence.

So great was the respect of his men that, despite Alex’s unparalleled dedication to the task at hand, he forced himself to look away from his computer – though it seemed to physically pain him – and directly answer Kane’s question.

“Well… a pump is Sector B overheated during the night. The machine corrected itself, but one of the cog’s was welded slightly in the process. Now? We’re looking at fifty-percent efficiency from nearly a quarter of the rig.”

“Blade and I can go out and fix it?” the commander offered, nodding to the captain.

“No need!” Alex returned quickly. “You see, I’ve recalibrated the heat tolerance of the area: with luck, I can adjust the core temperatures again and weld the cog back in place. We should be looking at a fully-functioning sector in less than half an hour… provided there are no other distractions?”

The last bit came not as a jibe or a threat, but as a hopeful squeak. Quickly Kane nodded and, whooping with delight, the technician tore back into his beloved typing.

The commander was prepared to turn away when a subtle flashing appeared at the corner of one of the many screens shrouding the scientist. He turned back and scrutinized the red symbol cautiously, his gaze shifting between Alex and the warning as though sizing up the threat.

“Is… that because of the cog?”

“What?”

The technician glanced towards the warning, back to his work, and finally up to Kane. His eyes flashed with concern and with a flustered “Oh shit!” he tore back into one keyboard, abandoning the welded gear and pulling a series of programs all marked with the same ominous red insignia.

“Alex I want to know what’s happening!” Kane barked, attempting to remain calm as sweat began to trickle down his face and neck.

“It’s the dome…” the technician mumbled “… there was a breach. Something welded clean through it!”

The commander rounded on Steven – who, he found, was hard at work behind his own computer. He, too, was flustered, the same panic that was beginning to rise in Kane evident behind the soldier’s outward buffer of confidence.

“You’ve got the camera feed.” Kane pressed. “What just got through the wall?”

“All the cameras are jammed… there’s just static!”

“What about the feeds from the heat-seekers? Did the turrets go off?”

“They’re all registering heat…”

“So they shot something? Did they blow through the sphere?”

“No… none of them have gone off, even though they’ve all been given the command to fire.”

It was utterly perplexing, but nevertheless real. Kane stumbled back, hoping to take a moment to digest the situation; but, when he felt as though he may vomit, he was somewhat soothed by a timid “Alright… better.”

He shifted his gaze towards Alex, who reclined in his chair with an exhausted expression.

“I initiated a backup protocol: it sealed the breach in the bio-dome. It’s a temporary fix, but we’ll need to assess the full scale of the damage before we can fully repair it.”

“So the facility is sealed… but did we seal something out, or something in with us?” Blade reasoned, approaching the array of computers to stand beside Kane.

Alex pounded a trio of keys, minimizing the windows to bring up a single image. A subtitle indicated it was one of the many cameras lining the hallways along the dome’s edge; yet all that appeared above the camera’s title was static.

Frowning, the technician clicked to the next camera. It, too was blank; and as he filtered through a dozen others, each getting steadily closer to the massive machine room, the others were similarly deactivated.

Finally, on the fifteen video feed, a clear image appeared. It was the camera on the ledge just above, where the confined passages of the tunnels met the ascended walkway.

As the trio watched a shadow seemed to manifest at the corner of the image, growing steadily longer and darker as it neared. Then, just before the creature casting it came into view, the feed clicked out; and, moments later, static filled the screen.

“What… was that?” Steven demanded, rising from his own chair to cautiously approach the blank feed.

“There is no way of knowing – but it sure as hell wasn’t a cow, I’ll tell you that.” Blade groaned, rubbing his hand across his face.

The walkway above trembled visibly and, immediately, all four men sprang to their feet. Timid crouches instantly followed; though, when the world around them stilled, they gradually found shaky footing again.

“Whatever that was… it could be massive.” Alex argued. “Those tunnels to the outside… they’re meant to transport part replacements. You could fix something a hundred feet tall through most of the main walkways.”

The path above shifted again and the quartet, as one jumped.

“It’s getting closer.” Steven warned as he shouldered his rifle.

“I’m calling this in.” The technician growled, turning back to his computer. Yet, as his fingers positioned themselves along the keys, the whole of the screen filled with the same static that had overcome the camera – a haze that quickly spread, like a virus, to each and every screen in the headquarters.

“Everything’s… jammed…” the scientist said quietly, his voice shaking as though his entire world had been torn apart from the roots.

“This creature… it jams anything around it: our cameras, our turrets, even our operating systems.” Kane reasoned, piecing together the situation more accurately than any troubled mind should have been able to. “We need to get back to the southwest corner: there’s a backup computer there we can use to radio base.”

“Good idea.” Steven agreed, urging the others on with an emphatic wave of his hand.

An unsettled expression crossed Kane’s face as he made the same gesture.

“Come on, then,” he ordered “let’s go!”

“Go,” Steven returned, squaring his stance and fixing his weapon against his shoulder. “I’m responsible for the protection of this facility, and all those stationed here. I’ll hold the line and give you a chance.”

“I’ll respect your dying wish.” Alex piped up quickly, scampering around the rooted warrior and into the steamy darkness around him. Blade was slower to leave but, clapping his friend on the shoulder, he gave only an understanding nod before following the terrified technician.

Kane was the last to leave; and, in doing so, he felt as though a piece of his very soul was left behind. Yet, as much as it pained him, he was forced to accept the reality of the matter; and, with faltering steps, he slowly parted company with the gunman.

He was quick to catch up with the other two – he, of the three, was arguably in the best physical condition. They traveled in silence, weaving between cogs and gears for several minutes; but, when a scream pierced the mechanical hum around them, all stopped and reflexively turned back towards their abandoned friend.

There, above the hissing steam and whirling gears, a shadowed figure – humanoid, but quite possibly as much as eighty feet tall – rose above the surreal landscape. In her grip was a small figure – one that, in desperation, squeezed two shots into the monster’s face. Yet, before a third could be fired, his form dropped and disappeared down the behemoth’s gullet.

In stunned silence, the trio came to the unanimously horrific conclusion: Steven had been swallowed alive.

But sorrow and revulsion quickly turned to fear as the figure turned in their direction. They broke into a run, ripping through the cluttered fields of metal with the primordial fear of prey in their hearts. Yet at every turn the dark figure seemed to cut them off, blocking their path time and time again.

At length the trio hunkered down behind a massive boiler, panting as the great form loomed mere yards away, sifting through a series of pipelines in its search.

“We… we won’t make it.” Blade groaned, chancing a glance at the massive predator. “We need… another martyr. I’ll do it.”

He rose to move but, immediately, Alex caught his arm and sat him back down. Their eyes met and, slowly, the scientist shook his head.

“You’re the captain, Blade.” He said. “Without you we can’t escape this place. If you get eaten… we’re all doomed. And… and Kane is the only one who can contact headquarters. But… I guess I’ll tell Steven you said ‘hi’, alright?”

He rose, trembling visibly as he discarded the lab coat. He tensed his body to spring; but, just before the opportunity presented itself, fate caught up with the trio.

The monster spun around the side of the boiler, its own muzzle directly in their faces. The creature was strangely familiar: it had the frame of a woman, tall and riddled with subtle muscles. Yet there its similarities to humanity ended: its skin was shrouded in bluish-white fur, peppered with spots and groomed to silky perfection. Her mouth was lined with razor-sharp teeth, the pinnacle of which were undoubtedly fangs stretching almost as long as a human’s body. Her eyes shone with unholy ferocity, the pupils the slit-like black dots of some hellish cat.

Altogether, the creature came across to the men as something akin to a snow leopard on earth; and, to the creature, the humans seemed to come across as meals.

With a yelp Alex was seized, lifted above the ground and draped over the parting teeth. On impulse the other two ran, chilled to the core as a second scream filled the chamber – one that, untimely, was cut silent.

The two rounded several bends, winding and weaving their way towards the backup computers. They came close enough to see the winding array of monitors; but, then, the thundering footfalls of the cat started again.

“Go, send the warning!” Blade ordered, breaking away from Kane. “I’ll distract her and rendezvous with you as the ships!”

The two parted, leaving Kane alone. He reached the tower of various computers and punched his credentials into the first, urging it to power on. The startup began, flashing the Sky Elevator logo as the machine hummed to life.

Then, however, all the life seemed to drain from Kane. In the distance there was a scream; then, there was silence.

Blade had been captured; he alone was left, stranded and helpless on the alien world with no hope of rescue or escape.

As a last, valiant effort, the commander urged the device onward, pulling up the messaging system and verifying his clearance. His warning was brief but effective:

Reinforcements are needed. Facility under attack. Predatorial creature, 80 stories tall, able to disable devices. Casualties: four.

He jammed his finger down on the send button and retreated, clamping his teeth down on his fingernails anxiously. But… nothing happened. The screen remained unmoving; then, to the commander’s horror, it blinked out and was replaced by static.

Behind him a pair of crashes sounded. He didn’t have to turn: he felt the creature’s hot breath on his neck, sensed her overwhelming presence as she knelt over him. Having failed utterly he went limp as she brought him above the ground, holding him immobile above her parted jaws.

Then, with a rush of air, he was falling down… down… down…

His world began a tight, wet wedge as he entered her throat. He felt powerful muscles urge him further, pushing him from the realm of light and sound to one of unbearable warmth and surreal quiet – the latter broken only by the quaking beats of the monster’s heart, and the steady rush of her blood.

At length his venture ended, his body deposited in a small organic chamber – one very much akin to the miniscule ships that had taken his crew to Stellar B14. Immediately the size of the monster’s stomach sent a surge of confusion through the commander; but, quickly, that was replaced by the ominous fact it was empty. No bones, no flesh, and no humans were left in the wretched place – though at least three others had been consumed moments before. They were gone, dissolved and forgotten; and he was next in line.

Yet, as he leaned against one fleshy wall and awaited the end, he found a distinct lack of pain. What he had expected to be a burn or a throb instead came as a tingle: a peculiar sensation that seemed to spread up his spine and into his head, as though the creature around him were prying into his very intellect.

“Damn it!”

Kane winced at the outburst; but, gradually, realized it had not come from his own mouth. He turned to his right to see the living surface undulate, bulging as though an elbow had been planted roughly into it. Slowly the anomaly retreated – but not before another angry “Damn it!” rung through the organic realm.

“Blade…?” Kane asked, utterly perplexed as he studied the wall.

“And Steven!” a voice called from somewhere below him.

“And Alexander!” came the technician’s call, somewhere to his left.

The commander whistled, shaking his head. It seemed as though the monster, whatever she was, had not one stomach but four; and, from what he could tell, none of them were overly effective.

“What’s happening…” he mused quietly, patting the floor of the fleshy chamber thoughtfully.

“What are you doing to us…”

He hadn’t expected an answer; but, with a sudden shift, the leopard’s attention seemed to shift itself inwards. A voice rang down from the throat above: not a clear human voice – though it radiated with the same tones of a human woman, certainly – but a choppy, broken speech. English was clearly not the cat’s first language – and reasonably so – but, nevertheless, she made a tentative stab at it.

“No… harm…” She explained. “I… study…”

With that she fell silent; and, a moment later, seemed to settle comfortably. None of those within her were left with any definitive answers; yet, simultaneously, they were somehow comforted. Her presence did not seem hostile, yet rang profoundly of the natural curiosity of a feline; and, in doing so, seemed almost nostalgic of home – of Earth, through some distant metaphor.

Slowly, each of the men grew somewhat comfortable in their living cages – and Kane, most of all, felt the tug of acceptance at his heart. And, as he gradually awaited the release he knew would come – and, therein, the answers to just what had come across his crew – the commander realized something quite profound: that it was probably a good thing for everyone that his message, his warning and call for help, had never been sent.