Chapter #4A long time later by: Yote   It had been many years since the Battle of Earth, yet the motherworld was still an ugly inhospitable ruin cratered by nuclear explosions and scorched by the torrential acid rains that covered the planet. Layla Scrubber-1242 hovered her ship low to the ground, drifting between twisted steel girders and blackened chunks of concrete, the belly floodlights sweeping the oily mud below. The rain drummed off the hull.
She had been searching for nearly 20 hours. Her energy and that of her ship was almost depleted, but she was determined to only return to the institute with something of value, a relic from the days of Earth's shrouded past that could be studied and placed in the institute's museum perhaps, or at least a trinket that could be sold to a collector. Something of sufficient value that she might be granted the honour of choosing a new name, founding a new branch of the Layla line, and this time she'd choose something better than 'Scrubber'.
She would have to leave this area soon though. On the horizon, silhouetted against the clouds by bolts of lightning, were the earth-churners. The noise of them could already be heard over the storm. In a few hours they'd be here, ripping up and burying the contaminated, irradiated topsoil. Despite its mistreatment, Earth still had the deepest, most fertile soils of all the colonies and it had been decided that it must be converted into agri-world to support the off-world colonies with much needed food, even though tilling the earth meant destroying any hope of ever rediscovering the history of humanity. The practical needs of the war far outweighed the dusty, intellectual needs of the institute.
The severed limbs of Kill-Abduct Drones scattered like leaves beneath her engine exhaust. She grimaced. Too many bodies, both human and machine, lay here for her scanners to detect anything. She should check elsewhere.
As she gunned her engines, the sudden downdraft caused the gutted building below to collapse. She paused, peering through the cockpit window at the cavity the collapse had opened up. It was worth a look.
She quelled the engines to drop the ship, landing as close to the hole as she dared without risking further collapse. Leaping from the pilot seat, she doffed her clothes and squirmed into an environment suit. She dropped the hatch, slogged through the knee-deep mud to reach the edge of the opening and scrambled down the rubble into what must once have been a basement but which had been sealed away for hundreds of years.
Her heart leaped as her eyes fell upon the writing of Old Earth. There were artifacts down here - rusted devices, gas cylinders and barrels covered in ancient warnings. Jackpot!
The barrels had long since corroded through, spilling their contents, ambrite, which had congealed down the shelves in golden-coloured stalactites. She could hardly believe her luck as her torch illuminated the devices frozen and perfectly preserved within the goop.
There was something else stuck inside... a dark shape... humanoid. Her breath caught in her throat and she resisted the urge to dive behind a fallen slab of ceiling. It was a Kill-Abduct Drone or something very similar, possessing the same angular form and grossly oversized upper body of the vicious robots. Yet the face staring out from the ambrite in frozen surprise was definitely organic. A half-human/half-KAD... was such a thing possible?
The raindrops pitter-pattered off the ambrite, which had begun to smoke everywhere the acidic rain touched. Thin white cracks were forming all over the surface. The thing inside twitched. The thing inside was alive and hatching! She had to get it back to the institute fast!
Even with anti-gravs attached, heaving the thing out of the hole was almost more than she could manage. By the time she got it back to the ship, the cracks had spread and chunks of ambrite were falling away, exposing the hairy flesh within. Covered in mud and acid, but with no time for decontamination, she dropped into the pilot seal, sealed the hatch and fired up the engines, pointing the ship skyward. She gave the engines everything, almost shaking the ship apart with turbulence before breaking through the clouds. The thing in the rear of the cockpit shuddered, one gloved hand breaking free as it uttered a deep, inhuman groan. She found the bright moving star that was the Earth Science Institute and set course for it.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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