The Earth is dying.
Overpopulation, natural disasters, illnesses, world wars, a breakdown of government and law, and as of late, global warming. All have been a deathly combination to my precious dying world over the past few centuries. The latter has been the worst of all to deal with. The Earth’s ozone layer has depleted so much, it’s practically non-existent, and it’s causing nothing but death and destruction in its wake. Crops aren’t growing, animals and people alike are dying at a rapid pace, oceans and rivers are drying up to form deserts, and it’s getting nearly impossible to be outside without the UV rays from the scorching sun causing severe burns.
Since the year 2005, my beloved planet and race have been fighting a losing battle for survival. Nine point nine billion people out of a ten billion population have perished in the past 110 years. Nine point nine billion. Roughly, 100,000 people scatter the Earth’s surface, and that’s it. After 200,000 years of procreation, that small and still dwindling number is all we have to show for it. That number now defines us.
For the first time in existence, human beings have been declared an endangered species.
We have joined many other species in reaching an extinction point, and because of that, we are more vulnerable than ever. Five days ago, the announcement was broadcasted to the cosmos on our species’ status, and the Maji touched down on our exhausted planet four days later. That worried me greatly. Either they were close to our planet when the announcement went out, or they had unrivalled space travel speed to reach us so quickly.
In the year 2002, it was discovered that humans were not the only intelligent lifeforms in the universe—far from it. Including humanity, 233 known extra-terrestrial species lived in the cosmos. Several of them were hostile, several of them were peaceful and wished to co-exist, and several of them wanted to be left alone.
The greatest discovery in mankind’s history would quickly break the foundation of human life as we knew it. Back in that period, religion to billions of people wasn’t just a concrete faith; it was a way of life. With the news of other life in the universe, it unravelled many people’s beliefs and, for the most part, wreaked havoc and destruction. Holy landmarks were attacked and destroyed, leaders of all religions were slaughtered, and that was only the beginning of the terror humans would unleash on the Earth.
Around the time of the extra-terrestrial discovery and breakdown of religion, an advancement in science and medicine caused a massive breakthrough that created its own point in history. Prosthetics and blood and organ donations quickly became a thing of the past. Scientists discovered ways to grow new organs, create new blood types, replenish others, and attach augmented limbs to living tissue and have every human host accept it as part of their anatomy.
Scientists took up the vacant role of creator and decided to play god. They wrote DNA codes as if programming a computer instead of a live person. ‘Build-a-Baby’ became an ‘it’ thing for people with enough credits. Once an egg from a female and sperm from a male were donated, a scientist could design the DNA structure of the newborn based on the specific requirements from the parents. You could decide what your child would look like at every age of their life. You could eliminate all natural flaws and choose enhanced limbs and organs if you wanted your child to excel at something like sports. They could even enhance the percentage of useable brain to literally make people smarter.
Soon after that advancement, robotics and technology made its grand mark on the world. Androids were the new cell phones, hover cars were the new bicycles, holograms were the new video calls, and retina scanners were the new thumbprints. The world rapidly changed into a truly presidential digital and robotic era.
Aliens were real. Robots were real. Augmented humans? Very real.
All of it became the norm, and after a while, something else caught everyone’s attention because nobody could miss it. The sun began to die, and with it, so did the Earth. Not even the smartest of humans could figure out a way to protect our planet, and that was when the chaos really imploded.
It was currently the year 2115, and sadly, things had only gotten worse. With the Earth’s current fragile state, an unexpected visit from a new species had everyone on edge. Well, more on edge than usual. The Maji’s intentions for humans and our planet were unknown. For me, a twenty-three-year-old woman with no family, friends, or protection other than my two bare original hands, the not knowing was terrifying.
The Maji were the only reason I was so close to Command Central, and why I was out past curfew. Being out past curfew didn’t exactly make me a rule breaker since law broke down forty-odd years ago, but a person was still likely to be shot on sight if they were caught sneaking around after dark, especially at my region’s Command Central.
Over the past month, it had become the new World Base of Operations since the whole continent of Asia was wiped out in a terrifying set of quakes that, quite literally, shook the Earth. Once that incredible mass of land broke apart and became a huge crater on the Earth’s surface, those who were able scrambled together and reformed their military force.
The World Base of Operations had been set up six times since I was born, and like the other times, it was destined to fail, too. Though it was unreliable, it was desperately needed. Without the WBO, the Earth’s trading posts would be no more, and as of right now, the trading posts were the only way the people of Earth were being fed, hydrated, and getting medical care. Without the trading posts, we would all be dead in a few short weeks.
Or less if the Maji decides to gift us death sooner.
I shook my head at my defeated thoughts. My father would turn in his grave if he heard the cowardly words that ran through my mind. He raised me to be strong, to be a survivor, and never to quit when things got hard or give up when hope dwindled. He taught me that my life was a gift, and no one in the universe could take it from me without a fight. It was mine and mine alone.
‘Keep on keepin’ on, baby,’ he would say with that teasing crooked smile of his and a thriving glint in his ocean blue eyes.
My eyes, identical to my father’s, glazed with tears at the thought of him, and I quickly wiped them away before they had a chance to fall. I missed my father dearly. I missed my entire family dearly. My remaining family members had succumbed to the Great Illness seven years ago that wiped out ninety percent of the Earth’s population. I had been sixteen when my father and cousin died, and every day since had been a tremendous struggle.
I was born in an era when playing tag and going to school were things of the past. I wasn’t born in a hospital or even somewhere that could be called home. I was born on the roadside while my parents, uncle, and four cousins were making the tough journey to relocate somewhere that would provide us with a better chance at life. But that dream was not to be. My mother died during childbirth, and I almost didn’t make it either.
At the time I made an appearance, every mass of land on Earth was already deemed a war zone, and civilian casualties outnumbered the military’s. I only knew of the beauty that the Earth once beheld through the vivid tales from my father and uncle, as told to them by their father, and through the occasional picture I stumbled upon. My childhood was not all pretty pictures and captivating stories, though.
Instead of playing with my cousins or getting an education as I grew up, I was being taught to hunt, skin, and prepare game. How to filter dirty water to make it drinkable, and how to tell edible leaves and berries apart from the poisonous ones. How to clean and dress a wound to keep infection away, how to move without being seen, and how to fight as good as a grown man. How to store the meat for travel so it wouldn’t spoil, and how to use weapons. I was taught how to survive.
Even though I was grateful for my upbringing and thankful for the family I had, I knew without them that I was all alone on a dying planet with nothing but my thoughts for company.
Now and then, I’d come across other travellers, and I’d trade with them and even have an intelligent conversation here and there; but people, in general, were not to be trusted. Most of the men and women I met would either try to rob me, capture and sell me, enslave me, rape me, or kill me. ‘Try’ being the keyword. I had never killed another person—I came close more than a few times—but I had maimed quite a few. I had never felt an ounce of guilt for the things I’d done, though, because I was left with no choice. It was maimed or be maimed. Kill or be killed. Survival was all that mattered … no matter what you had to do to ensure it.
Humanity had died long before the Earth began to.
Focus, Nova.
I climbed the stairs of a long-abandoned building a few hundred metres away from the WBO and made sure to keep all noise to a minimum. Even though I did my best to go undetected, I knew my safety measures would prove futile if any augs were nearby. Augmented humans were the ultimate security system. The truly amplified augs had all their senses upgraded. If they detected me and wanted to find me and kill me, they would do so without breaking a sweat. There was no stopping an aug that wanted to kill. The Great World War that took place eleven years ago proved that.
I was twelve when it began.
I was in the woods with my four male older cousins—Jarek, who was twenty, Tala, who was eighteen, Zee, who was sixteen, and Sammy, who was twelve like me (only, he was a few months older). His mother—like mine and like a lot of women who birthed children without medical care during the war—had died in childbirth, too.
We were hunting deer and brought down a hundred-pound buck that had us grinning from ear to ear. Most days, we’d catch rabbits, badgers, and whatever else we could snag in our traps, but a buck as big as the one we brought down was a rare thing indeed. To make matters even better, it was my arrow that pierced the creature’s left eye and ensured our family would be eating well for the next two weeks. It also gave me bragging rights that I was definitely going to cash in on. In a family primarily of males, bragging rights were a big deal.
Not long after we brought down the buck, we heard screaming.
With all thoughts of our prized buck instantly forgotten, we readied our weapons, and together, the five of us ran from the woods. Ten minutes later, after the heart-wrenching screaming had stopped, we entered the clearing where we were staying. It was a survivalist camp and just one of many we’d come across over the years. But instead of children playing, women cleaning cloth on washing boards and preparing meals, or the men patrolling the camp’s border and weapon training in the practice ring, they were all lying dead amongst pools of blood and dismembered limbs.
I spotted my uncle first. I saw his trademark brown cap that he loved clutched in his bloodied hand, and when I scanned my eyes up to his face, I couldn’t stop the scream that tore free from my throat. His eyes had been gouged from their sockets, and his mouth was wide open as if he was silently screaming, even in death. My cousins tried desperately to shield both Sammy and me from the massacre before us, but they stopped when I told them what I saw. Sammy was the first one to break from our group, ignoring our protesting as he ran towards his father.
We all screamed in horror when a motionless blood-covered body on the ground suddenly stood, and like an android, it turned and grabbed Sammy by the throat and lifted him from the ground like he weighed nothing. With shaking hands, I scrambled for my bow that I had let fall when we entered the camp. I drew an arrow from my quiver and aimed it at the woman who was strangling my cousin.
I sucked in a breath, and a scream died in my throat when she twisted her hand, the hand that was around Sammy’s throat, and a loud crunching sound echoed throughout the deathly silent clearing as she broke my cousin’s neck. I promptly dropped my bow and arrow and puked all over the ground. I turned back in time to watch her release Sammy and to see his lifeless body drop to the ground with a thud. My screams became audible and rose even louder when Jerek and Tala both rushed forward, armed with their daggers, and speared the woman to the ground.
At first, they tried to restrain her, but she was hell-bent on trying to kill them, so with no choice, they began to stab her in her chest and her stomach … but she acted like she couldn’t feel it. Only then did I notice the skin of her right arm hanging off, and I saw the mechanics underneath it. I screamed at my cousins that she was augmented. It was hard to tell an augmented person from a human, and we had never had any reason to fear them … until that day.
Zee and I were wrapped in each other’s embrace, and we roared when arms came around us. We struggled and fought against the hold until we heard the voice of the owner. It was my father. I was so relieved he wasn’t amongst the bodies that I was almost sick again. Through our sobbing, we had rapidly told him what happened. How we heard the screams, how we found the camp, how an aug had killed everyone, including Uncle Joe and Sammy. Without needing more information, my father cocked his aged gun and aided Jerek and Tala in killing the crazed woman.
Augs were a hell of a lot stronger than us humans, but they could die.
I thought it was the end of it, that the nightmare was over, but it had only just started. All the commotion had attracted two more people to the clearing, and I knew they were augs straight away. It wasn’t how they looked on the outside; the dead look in their eyes gave them away. My cousins and father fought them off, but Jerek and Tala were injured during the fight, and though I tried my best to stop the bleeding, they were injured so badly that they both died. Tala had winked at me before he died, and Jerek told me to take care of Zee and my father. I promised him I would. Both Zee and I were like robots following their deaths; we heeded my father’s orders without speaking, and we were numb whilst doing so.
My father managed to find a working handheld radio on a dead body of a patrolling member of the camp, and together, we held our breaths and listened to a broadcast from the watchmen who informed us that augmented humans were to be shot and killed on sight by civilians and military personnel alike. The collective chip embedded in every augmented human’s brain—a chip required to deliver updates to an augmented person’s upgrades—had been targeted by a terrorist group. The code for every augmented human had somehow been rewritten, and it had turned the augmented humans into an army.
The beginning of the Great World War was officially announced at the end of the broadcast. The war had only started, and already, my uncle was dead and so were Jerek, Tala, and Sammy. That left only me, Zee, and my father. We weren’t allowed time to grieve our loss before my father had us pack our bags to the brim of what could be carried, and we evacuated the area. We weren’t allowed to bury our loved ones, and we barely even got to say goodbye.
Our already hard lives were about to get a lot harder.
Flashes of my dead cousins and uncle covered in blood entered my mind, and then images of my sickly pale and unmoving father and cousin took centre stage. It made me sick to think I broke my promise to Jerek when my father and Zee died in my arms from the Great Illness. I failed them; I failed my entire family, and I always believed that my walking the Earth alone was my punishment from the Almighty.
I closed my eyes, forcing the images of the war from my mind. The war had only lasted a few weeks—just until the virus uploaded to the augmented’s collective chips could be rewritten—but within those few weeks, hundreds of millions had been slaughtered. Within those few weeks, families had been torn apart, and a divide in mankind had been created.
Originals—the nickname for humans without augmentations—were on one side and the augmented were on the other, and to this day, that divide still stood tall, waiting for the other to step out of line.
I focused on my task and thought calming thoughts to bring down my elevated heart rate. I didn’t want to make it easy for any augs who took up work as watchmen. My current heartbeat would act as a dinner bell to them. I focused on the building that could just as easily kill me as quickly as any aug. The roof, most of the walls, and parts of the floor were missing from the structure, so I needed to watch my step and look out for animals, and people, who could sneak up on me and attack.
With an arrow in one hand and my trusty self-made bow in the other, I crouched down and moved towards an open space in the wall and looked through it. Bright white spotlights lit up the WBO; it gave away many of the positions of the patrolling watchmen on the forty-foot wall of the building. I curled my lip in disgust at the sight of them.
Watchmen were worse than any mindless man, woman, or rabid animal. They were the humans with great power and could decide your fate with the snap of their fingers. There used to be a thing called the ‘Court of Law’ where those accused of crimes could go and fight their accusations for their freedom, but not anymore. If a watchman decided you were guilty of something, then you were guilty. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. They were supposed to be protectors of the innocents and a beacon for a new law and order, but many of them were monsters in uniform. To me and many others, they were the root of all evil.
I’d take my chances with a pack of feral mutts before I’d ever trust a watchman.
My head was low as I scanned the perimeter. I glanced at my surroundings every few seconds to keep an eye on things before I’d return my attention back to the WBO. My eyes searched the dark night sky for drones in the air, and when I saw none of the flashing red lights, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Drones were a nightmare to deal with in general, but at night-time, they were always going to cause the death of someone. They scanned everywhere for the heat signature of a living being. It gave up people’s positions to the watchmen even if they were hiding in the most unlikely of places. A traveller I met hours before told me that the power link for the drones and all operating weapons of the WBO had been shut off when the Maji arrived. No one knew why, and if someone did know, they weren’t letting the information slip.
Normally, I wouldn’t care. Normally, I wouldn’t break away from the rules that have kept me alive all these years, but I had a gut feeling I had to come to the WBO and see for myself what was happening.
So far, my gamble was turning out to be a complete waste of time … until something happened. I startled when a patch of dark a thousand or so metres to the left of the WBO compound lit up suddenly. I sucked in a choked breath. A few smaller spacecrafts came to life and lifted from the Earth’s surface, ascending to the starlit heavens, but that’s not what amazed me.
The mother of all spacecrafts was sitting in the newly lit up area, and it was huge. I had never seen an alien spacecraft up close before. When I was younger, I saw a few of them from a great distance as they descended from space and docked at one of the many trading posts stationed across the planet. This spacecraft, however, was the largest I had ever seen. I could not believe the sheer size of it, and when white lights began to flash across the hull, I found myself staring at it, my mouth agape with awe.
I was, by no means, an expert in vessels not of this world, but I had listened to my father discuss them from the moment I could understand him until the moment he died. Growing up, manmade craft engine halls were like a second home to me. I knew the ins and outs of your typical spacecraft and its engines. I wholeheartedly knew the functions of a destroyer vessel and what made up the interior and exterior of one, and this craft was most certainly a destroyer.
Being an engineer had been my father’s trade since he was twenty. After years of hard work, he had been promoted to chief engineer for many different crafts from the Earth’s military fleet when they were docked. He was so good at what he did; he even assisted the aliens with their mechanical problems when they docked at one of the trading posts. Because of my father, I understood spacecrafts, and I appreciated them, which was why this very one blew me away.
It was easily five thousand metres long, and from what I could see, the only colour anywhere on it was the blue glow of the reactor core—the heart of the spacecraft. That very reactor powered sixteen massive drive assemblies that would propel the ship at what must be an unmatched speed. Ten dorsal turrets mounted particle projection cannons in pairs, lending what I knew would be excellent firepower. Eight monster plasma blasters were on either side of the nose of the craft and a heavier alpha plasma down its centreline most certainly permitted the ship to deliver blistering damage to anything unlucky enough to be caught within firing distance … and those were just the weapons I could see.
If only you could see this, Papa.
Again, my eyes watered, but I rubbed them until the stinging threat of tears subsided. Apart from being in love with the crafts, my father was a space fanatic or ‘space freak’, as I liked to tease him in my younger years. He loved the other species and was fascinated with them. Their differences, their similarities, their history, their culture—everything. He loved it all. He was part of a small faction of humans who believed the other species had a right to exist just as we did. He always said, “No planet or race lays claim to the universe; it lays claim to us.”
My father was a wise man, and if he were with me, experiencing a spacecraft of this magnitude up close and personal, he’d be beside himself with happiness. The emotion I felt at that moment distracted me, and that distraction was about to cost me dearly.
When I heard softly creaked movements come from close by, I jerked away from the crack in the wall, reached back, withdrew an arrow from my quiver, and readied my bow. I heard a gruff curse then the sound of heavy footsteps began to pound up the stairs of the building I was in. It caused my heart to slam into my ribs as it thrummed in my chest.
Watchmen.
“Civilian female at HQ,” a muffled voice said. “Armed and dangerous. Alert the Maji of a possible attack.”
Alert the Maji? My brow creased with confusion. Not alert the watchmen patrol?
I took aim, steadied my breathing, and like a reflex, I released an arrow when I saw the head of a watchman breach the hole in the floor beneath the stairway. Not a second later, the arrow penetrated his exposed eye socket, and he dropped onto the stairway with a thud. It was only as my arrow pierced his skull that I realised he hadn’t worn a helmet, and he had no protection against my weapon. A yelp was heard after the watchman dropped then vile cursing followed.
“She kill’t him!” a deep voice bellowed. “That fuckin’ whore kill’t Kiker!”
The reality I had just killed a person did not sink in. Instead, stomach-churning fear did. If they weren’t going to kill me before, the watchmen surely would now that I had killed one of their own. I sucked in a breath, and with rapid speed, I released another arrow in warning. I didn’t wait around for the second watchman to call for backup or to come after me. I turned, and without thinking, I jumped from the first floor of the building. I turned midair and landed on my left side, almost instantly falling into a roll as I tumbled down the side of a ditch.
Searing hot pain vibrated through my body, but I couldn’t pause to soothe away the aches because I had to get on my feet and get moving. I pushed myself to my feet with my right arm when I realised my left one was burning with pain and wouldn’t move. I looked down at it and saw the joint was clearly dislocated and the bone was possibly broken at the elbow. White dots splashed across the back of my eyes, and I had to close them to get control.
Don’t think about it.
I opened my eyes, reached for my bow and quiver, but then abandoned them when I saw they were in pieces and scattered around the ditch. I used my right hand to hold my left arm against my body as I scrambled up the mud bank and ran like the devil himself was on my heels. I bit down on my lip when each step caused excruciating aches to tear through my arm. Twice more, my vision was spotted with white dots, but I forced myself to continue running as the area I was in began to come to life with light that was betraying my position. Sheer determination to get away was the only thing that kept me moving, but it wasn’t enough.
Less than a minute after I jumped out of the building and began running, I was tackled to the ground from behind.
A scream of agony tore from my throat as fresh pain surged through my body, mainly from my left arm. I was flipped onto my back, and a quick glance downwards gave me a revolting picture. The bone of my forearm was snapped in two, and a prodding piece stuck out of my skin for all to see. All doubt was wiped from my mind—it was definitely broken. I turned my head to the side and promptly puked up my stomach contents. Not a second later, I was pulled up to my feet by my hair and forcefully shoved. I stumbled backwards away from the watchman who tackled me. I looked up at him and saw he was pointing an old-fashioned handheld gun at me.
“This is for Kiker!”
I closed my eyes and awaited my release from this prison sentence many called life.
I’m coming home, Papa.
A bang rippled through the air, but surprisingly, it was the gurgled male scream that startled me and caused my eyes to open. The watchman who was about to take my life was on his knees before me with a large gaping hole in the centre of his chest. It smelled like his flesh was burning, and from the slight puff of smoke that rose from his wound, I’d say a plasma blaster made the hole. I switched my gaze to his face and felt the blood drain from my own. His dark, panicked eyes were focused on me, but his mouth was agape, and blood was spewing from it like a river.
“Help,” he choked out around the thick liquid before he fell forward.
I jumped backwards as his face smacked off the ground with a sickening crack. His body twitched once, twice, then his movements ceased. I thought he was still breathing but quickly realised the hyperventilating rasps weren’t coming from him; they were coming from me. I lifted a shaking hand to my mouth and covered it as I stared down at the now dead watchman.
I swayed from side to side as my pain and shock became too much for me. I focused my blurring vision dead ahead and made out six dark figures walking toward me. Six huge figures. When they stopped a few metres from me, they stared at me, and me at them. They were fully clothed in a black armour of some kind, and it only made them look that much more intimidating.
The man in the front said something in a language that didn’t sound of this planet, and without thinking, I stammered, “Wh-what?”
The man grunted and turned to his right and spoke to the person behind him in that same strange language.
“No,” the man behind replied in strained English. “We’ve practiced for weeks; you have not. You need to learn how to speak the human languages to make this mission easier, just until we fit them with translators of their own. Do what I told you to do. Repeat what your translator says through your comm, and the female will understand you like you can understand me right now. I’m not responding to you anymore unless you use this particular human language.”
With a defeated sigh, the large man turned back in my direction.
“I sa-said,” he rumbled in a bizarre accent as he switched to an extremely choppy version of English, pausing every couple of words as if he was trying to form them as he spoke. “What ‘re … you ‘oing … out … ‘ere?”
After he had spoken, he removed the mask that covered his face. The now well-lit area shone brightly on his face and revealed all I needed to know about him to be terrified. He had vibrant grey skin, dazzling violet eyes, and menacing sharp teeth with gold caps on them. That was the moment I dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes and began tumbling into darkness.
“Why do fe-females … ‘eep ‘oing … dat ‘round me?” the Maji asked with a tired sigh.
Without missing a beat, the other voice said, “I told you that you were ugly. How many human females must faint before you until you realise that?”