ࡱ> 7 objbjUU `7|7|kl4*Lz;$p 4 v 2v J0z$$ BURNING The dark sphere of the small planet receded behind them as they sped away in their ship. The nuclear drive glowed furiously as the remaining crew of the Star Cruiser blasted the craft away at maximum velocity in a desperate bid to escape. As the vessel turned towards an escape vector, its creased and buckled panels glinted in the harsh red light given out by the nearby sun that slowly rose over the black surface of the grim planetoid. A flash of light, and the vessel disappeared in a burst of pseudo-motion as it made the jump to Hyperspace... Far below on the forbidding planet, alien eyes watched a flickering monitor screen and observed the craft vanish into the deep void of space. The eyes stared at a screen that showed only the distant stars for a little while longer, and then the monitor died in a haze of static. The seed was sown. The system had seemed fairly quiet to the crew and officers of the Brilliant as it dropped from Hyperspace on that first fateful day. The enormous glowing bulk of the red giant star was an awesome sight to behold as the computers of the sleek black Imperial Battle-cruiser had calculated and set up the shallow orbit around the innermost of the five remaining planetoids. The heat threatened to overwhelm the ships systems as the orbit was refined and perfected. Eventually the craft refined and stabilised its position a mere ten miles above the surface of the revolving rock. The Brilliant was now permanently in shadow. Commander Acheson had given the briefing in number two mission room that morning. The descent team had assembled as always in a sense of hushed excitement as they awaited their instructions. Unusually, the Commander had arrived late for the briefing and when he did turn up, his face lacked the animation that normally greeted a new assignment. He showed a kind of grim acceptance as he ordered his team to be seated. The whispered voices of the assembled throng of forty or so men and women slowly dissipated as they sat in a semicircle around the centre of the room. The scientific part of the team sat ahead slightly to the right of the Commander as he faced the entire assembly at the other end of the small chamber. He shuffled through the information held on his computer pad and looked up when there was silence. He spoke slowly and determinedly as he let it be known that he was not in the least bit happy with the job they now had to perform. He nevertheless, fulfilled the briefing to the required standards, taking the team through the mission regulations and indicating the relevant points both on the planet, and in the system they now occupied on the holographic representation that appeared mid-air in the centre of the briefing room. Ten minutes later, the descent team left the room in a cloud of disappointment. They now knew their mission. As far as they were concerned, it was something an anticlimax. Six months in Hyperspace to the very edge of this galaxy to prepare the way for a bunch of miners. Most of them, especially the military contingent, were of the opinion that it was about time the Imperial Mining Agency took it upon themselves to do their own dirty work... *** The base, he decided, must have been here for millennia. What was more, it was highly advanced and obviously had the potential to cater for many more of the aliens than the relative few he had seen on his journey. He had been roughly pushed along endless corridors and shoved into a countless number of lifts. They had prodded him, shouted at him (strangely in a language that he could understand, but he wasn't quite sure how) and generally abused him to make him go where they wanted him to. His pressure suit had been ripped from him and his pulse rifle taken. Without his advanced equipment, he felt strangely naked, despite the fact that he still wore his standard combat suit that all troopers wore underneath their space suits. He realised, as he was taken into another lift by two of the obscene creatures, that he must be miles below the surface of the planet by now. The lift descended for five minutes at an incredible rate and then he was herded by yet another two of the monsters down a further corridor and into a dark cell. The door slid closed and was electronically locked as the two creatures departed. He was trapped and alone. But he was not left alone for long. *** The shuttle had disembarked unsteadily from hangar five of the Brilliant and sped down to the planet ten miles below like a small white dart. The descent team sat within the passenger area of the shuttle, checking the equipment on their pressure suits and preparing themselves for the extreme temperatures down on the surface of the planet. Much of the talk in the passenger area concerned the opinion of the mission and peoples attitudes towards it. Their comments were not favourable. At the rear of the shuttle sat the combat team. Including the squad Sergeant in charge of this descent, they numbered ten, and all of them sat with their pulse lasers resting in their arms. They were already sealed into their special combat pressure suits. They spoke over their own secure intercom channel to each other and the shuttle pilots, as the small transport settled slowly but surely onto the blasted surface of the planet. The combat team jumped to their feet as soon as the seat restraints were released and they headed to the front of the passenger compartment and through the sliding door. Once through, they activated the internal door seals and walked into the airlock. The internal door closed once they were all in the tiny compartment and after a few seconds, the external door opened to reveal the stark landscape beyond. *** He had resisted their questions -so far. The strange alien figures had threatened him, shouted at him, even hurt him with their stubby weapons but he had resisted them. They asked questions. Many questions. Who was he? Where had he come from? Why was he here? How many of his kind were there with him? What weapons did they possess? Who?..What?..Why?..Where?..How?.. Each and every question had been answered with the same stock answer. He had given them only his name, rank and serial number. He had not given in. Bleeding and hurting though he was, they would not break him. They could do what they liked to him. He would not break. *** The planet was burning. There was no atmosphere as such, that had long been burnt off, but there was still a tangible noise (or was it a rumble?) of frightening intensity. Even on the dark sunless side of the small world, the rock could be seen to form a hazy cloud of boiling vapour in the enormous heat. The surface of the planet was black -a result of the blasting sun and the effects of residual vapour from melted minerals slowly descending back to the ground in the low gravity. As the planetoid revolved, it heated to incredible temperatures on its sun-ward side. Its surface boiled away into space, gradually reducing the rock in size over the aeons. The sphere never got a chance to cool completely, Its proximity to the red giant that dominated the system meant that even on the far side of the globe, the rock was at such an extreme temperature that it liquidised and was slowly eased off of the planet and dragged through space towards the enormous gravitational field of its dying star. The descent team was assembled outside the shuttle door as the military group returned to the fold. Standard Imperial protocol demanded that even a scientific expedition such as this should be preceded and protected by a military presence at all times, without exception. The troopers in their grey combat suits stood in formation as the squad Sergeant turned clumsily to face them. The team struggled to hear the Sergeant over their intercoms as the roar of the hot planet and its gaseous refuse tried to penetrate their suits. Sweating in their restrictive pressure suits, each team member listened to the instructions that they were given and, once dismissed, set off to complete their assigned tasks. *** Where was he? He could not move. The pulsing lights of the strange machinery above him seemed almost hypnotic. He tried to twist his head to look about as the equipment that surrounded him clicked and whirred to itself but he could not. His cranium appeared to be strapped to something. Something soft but firm. There was the sickly smell of antiseptic and strange chemicals mixed in the otherwise breathable air. His arms were pinned to his sides and his legs were also bound. His clothes had gone. His rugged combat suit had vanished to be replaced by something that felt like a dressing gown. Where was he? He looked up and saw himself reflected in a stark metal plate. It appeared that he was tied to an operating table. He wore a white smock. How had this happened? His mind was fuzzy. He tried to think straight and with a sudden start he realised that he could not remember how he had gotten here. What had the aliens done to him? What had they made him say? The figures moved with a strange intensity around him. His eyes tried to follow their movements as they hurried along, resolute in their purpose. He tried to talk, but his mouth would not move. His eyes seemed to cloud over as the alien machinery above his prone, helpless form silently moved down and injected strange chemicals into his body. He tried to struggle but his body, like his mouth would not respond and he felt himself slip into unconsciousness. *** The Brilliant could be seen from the planet's burning surface as the first team departed the orbiting rock in the shuttle. The planet had undergone just over a third of its nine hour revolution and the sun was threatening to blast the ground on which they had been working for the six hours of daylight and semi-daylight during which it would be impossible to continue. The team had worked hard, building the test rigs that would take core samples from the planet. As the planet went through the cycle of immense heat followed by periods of relative coolness, exotic new chemicals and molecules were created, chemicals that the I.M.A. wanted so desperately to assist them in their various projects. . Hopefully, the rigs and shelters built today would survive the blasting radiation and heat of the massive star as the planet turned to face it. If they did, then the crew of the Brilliant would be in business. If the shelters could survive along with the delicate rigs, then conditions would be tolerable enough to enable a base to be constructed for I.M.A. miners to work in and this unique planet could be exploited to the full. As the shuttle docked once more with its mother ship and nestled amongst the fighters on the main launch deck of hangar five, the team half-hoped that their hard work had been in vain and that the equipment they had so hastily installed would not be there when the planet next turned away from the red giant. Then they could leave this hell-hole and return to their more usual activities. Even a mere colony patrol cycle, protecting the trading interests of the Empire was preferable to this assignment. The military part of the first team were particularly aggrieved. For once they felt redundant, regulations or no regulations. Who was there to pose a threat on this planet? Only Satan himself would survive such temperatures surely? As the team members from the first descent headed for debriefing, they consoled themselves with the fact that it would be another two planetary weeks before they would be sent back to the inferno below them. Assuming the equipment on the planet did stay intact, this particular descent team would not be on the next trip in six hours time. There were enough crewmembers on the Brilliant to enable a total of fourteen shifts of scientific and military personnel to go down to the planetoid. Fourteen planetary days would elapse before this team would be needed again. Two planetary weeks before they were supposed to go back there. *** Pain. Intense, agonising pain was all he felt now. A kind of burning sensation. He could hear the machines as they cut into him. What were they doing? It felt as if they were stripping apart his very frame. It felt as if the obscene machines were inside him, altering his structure and redesigning him from within. Burning. What were they doing? It felt like he was burning from the inside. He could not smell flame or smoke, but it most definitely felt like he was burning... The torment overwhelmed his sense of being as it swept through every cell of his body. His brain seemed to boil with the furious delivery of misery. He wanted to scream aloud, but the cry would not come. Instead, he screamed inside a long wail of anguish as the concentration of the torture increased and he felt his mind, and then his personality disintegrate *** The incident had not happened until the third descent team had landed on the planet. The excavation equipment had been unloaded and was being stowed under the large white raised dome that now covered approximately three acres of the black planets surface, when the first shots had been heard. The troopers had instantly switched their com-units to the reserved military channel and they had activated their pulse lasers. Crouched down low, two more shots were loosed off before they zeroed in on the target and furiously returned fire. The short battle with the unseen enemy had lasted a matter of seconds and less than twenty shots had been fired in total. Even so, at the end of it seven of the troopers lay dead. Their pressure suits had exploded with the first penetrative shot that had hit them and the internal organic component -the human inside- had simply boiled into space. As the remaining members of the team retreated to the shuttle, they failed to notice that one of their number was absent. The Commander in charge of the troop contingent was not noted as missing until the planet had revolved yet again and by then it was too late to look for him anyway. He was most certainly dead. Commander Acheson had undoubtedly been roasted alive. *** He no longer knew who he was. As he shuffled about the dingy cell, he could not recall the slightest detail about himself. Who was he? Where had he come from? Why was he here? Although, strangely, he could recall the fact that he had been asked those very same questions by others recently, he himself did not know the answers. He had known the answers when they had asked him, but not anymore. All he could remember was the vague sensation of pain and torture. He was certain he hadnt told them anything important. Or had he? It was so difficult to remember... *** The staff on the bridge of the Brilliant had watched nervously as their Captain had paced up and down on the upper balcony of the powerful Cruisers command centre. Eventually, the decision came. The Captain had worked it all out. As he had explained to his expectant crew, the advantages of the huge bonus they would get vie the I.M.A. far outweighed any risk from somebody or something on the planet they hung over. It soon became official news that the descent team had been attacked on the planets surface by members of an assault squad from one of the more disreputable rival mining conglomerates and the Captain was not prepared to let them to take the planet that the I.M.A. had declared their property as soon as it had been discovered some seven months ago. The mineral deposits here were unique. Secretly, in the Captains eyes, the bonus would be only the beginning If he, as Captain of the Brilliant could defend the planet he had been assigned to against industrial terrorists, he would probably get a share of the profits from a grateful I.M.A. and it certainly wouldn't do his share dividend any harm anyway. The fighter squadrons had been launched and had scoured the "habitable" area of the planet for one whole rotation. They found nothing. The Captain of the Brilliant made the fateful decision that, as the interlopers had apparently been frightened off by the troops guarding the descent teams, work should proceed apace and so on the next shift, the descent team assigned to that period would go down to the planet, with a double-contingent of guards. The Captain of the Brilliant had made his decision. It was to be the worst decision of his command. *** He paced up and down as best he could in the cramped cell as he struggled to remember himself. He desperately searched his fragile memory in an attempt to find out his identity. He could not understand how he could forget such a simple thing. He could remember knowing who he was. He could remember giving his name to others on numerous occasions, he just couldnt recall the words. What was going on here? -Who was he? Who was he?? WHO WAS HE?!?! *** The alien watched him on the monitor. It watched him pace up and down. It watched him batter his hands fruitlessly against the walls. It watched him scream in anguish as he cried in fear and terror. The alien felt nothing for him. It considered the human behaviour and it calmly watched the torment that the creature was going through. The reactions and stimulations were monitored by banks of electronic equipment as the alien silently observed him. The results of the examination finally came through. The analysis of the human had shown some interesting results that could be exploited to the full. The rest of the humans would need to be captured and the necessary modifications made. The decision was taken. A strategy was prepared. *** Day seven of the Brilliant's orbit. The descent team set off as usual with their double-contingent of guards. They never got any work done that day. The ground had opened up and strange machines had abducted each of the team members before any of them had a chance to cry for help. Any cries would have been useless in any event as, for the vital period of abduction, the com-channels had been interrupted. The team had been returned after three hours underground to the surface in the same manner that they had been kidnapped and they had been sent back to the ship as normal. No-one on the Brilliant had noticed or even suspected the fate that had befallen the team. The rock vapour and the extreme heat had knocked out the ships sensors on the first day and in any case, the ship had problems of its own what with repair teams constantly battling to fix heat-buckled deflector panels and exterior weaponry. The Brilliant had been designed to withstand the most aggressive of attacks and the most advanced weapons. She had not been designed to take a constant battering from a red giant star and she was now looking slightly the worse for wear. Days eight and nine had been the same for each descent team that had followed. Abduction followed by return. Still no-one on the Brilliant had considered that there was anything odd in the team members behaviour on their return. Any strangeness in their attitudes or glazed expression was attributed to fatigue as suffered by all the planetary workers. Day ten had beheld a different series of events. There had been a mutiny. The aliens had given the instruction to their converted followers to take the ship. The converts obeyed blindly, killing any of the crewmembers who tried to stop them. The Brilliant had been swiftly taken over and the Captain deposed. After ten days of circling the burning planet, the Imperial Battle-cruiser had been torn from orbit and flown down to the miniature world below. *** The cell door had opened. He had cautiously peeked around the edge of the narrow opening to see nothing but the vast expanse of corridor beyond. Was he being set free? Was this the end of the nightmare? Perhaps they would give him back his identity? He had paused for the briefest of moments before leaving the small cell. He had a moments indecision as to which way to go and then, as if a guiding hand had shown him the way, he headed left. *** The crew had not resisted the aliens. The collective gun-wielding presence of their collaborating "friends" had deterred them. They had disembarked from the roughly grounded Brilliant and had marched through the airlock and into the strange mechanical umbilical that seemed to grow from within the planet on which they had landed. Then, the aliens had taken over. Many people reacted in horror at the sight of them. The horror of the aliens was as nothing compared to the horror that was to come. *** He saw them up ahead as he skirted along the corridor. There were hundreds of them in the vast chamber. The humans that he thought he recognised from some far off past, and the aliens that mercilessly harangued them as they had attacked him before. There were long horrendous screams from a distant part of the chamber and, as he crouched down to avoid being seen, he poked his head around the corner of the entrance to the huge room. What he saw made him physically sick. His comrades had good reason to cry out. Massive production lines dominated the far side of the chamber. Huge silver and chrome hydraulic powered contrivances moved smoothly with horrific precision. Pistons jerked up and down. Cranks turned and platforms bearing metal panels slid in both the horizontal and vertical planes. Compressed air hissed from massive valves and oil dripped onto the floor. The screams he heard emanated from the humans being fed into the obscene machines. They lay on metal slabs, processed one at a time -totally conscious with eyes staring in apprehension. They screeched terribly as their limbs were sliced off by huge whirring blades. Blood gushed along steel gutters, draining into grilles sat in the floor. Drills cut into bone and sinew, chemicals were injected into veins and boiling liquids burnt off skin and useless muscle as the figures became hideously deformed. Forced into strange metal shapes, the remains of the humans were unrecognisable. Altered by radiation, acids and powerful industrial lasers, the torsos became part of the machines that altered them until they were indistinguishable from the metal and plastic that surrounded them. The humans were the machines now, forever linked to their new metallic bodies and, as each new cybernetic creature rolled off the line at the end, the screams died in number as the group of surviving humans was gradually reduced. As he watched, he felt the revulsion rise once more in his gut. He had to do something- but what? *** Strangely enough, he could not remember the battle. Sure, he had the gun in his hand and he felt his lungs were fit to burst as he ran along the curving corridor and, of course, he knew the aliens were pursuing him but... The battle itself was a big blank in his mind. How had it happened? He did not know. All that really mattered was that he was being pursued by the enemy along with several of his companions. Orwere they his companions? He thought he recognised them but he could not place names to faces. The thought slipped from him as he turned another corner and herded his fellow humans into the lift. The aliens came into view just before the doors slid shut and he punched the button to take them up yet again. As the lift rose with the twenty or so occupants, his memory came strangely flooding back to him. He was Commander Acheson, first Officer of the Imperial Battle-Cruiser Brilliant. He looked around him and instantly recognised the people with him. How had he ever forgotten who he was? It all seemed so stupid now. He thought back over his recent ordeal and shivered in horror as he realised that one of the men he had seen "die" in that terrible contraption had been his Captain. With a start, he suddenly noticed that there was one gap still left in his memory. He could still not remember the battle during which he apparently managed to free his comrades. How had they had all escaped so easily from the aliens? A strange sensation overcame him and he realised that it was not important how, just that they had. It sounded like voices talking to him...but that was ridiculous of course. Wasn't it? The lift continued to rise and soon the remaining crewmembers of the Brilliant were reunited with their craft. *** The dark hemisphere of the small planet receded behind them as they sped away in their ship. The nuclear drive glowed furiously as the remaining crew of the Imperial Star Cruiser Brilliant blasted the craft away at maximum velocity in a desperate bid to escape... Far below on the forbidding planet, alien eyes watched a flickering monitor screen and observed the craft as it made its getaway into the deep void of space. The plan had worked faultlessly as the aliens knew it would. A chance meeting that had been exploited. The humans believed that they had fought the aliens and that they had barely escaped with their lives, whereas the aliens knew of course that they had been let go quite deliberately. The genetic material had been inserted and the DNA configuration of each "escapee" altered. This time the plan would succeed and human society would collapse from within. The alien agents would make their presence felt at the pre-determined time and meanwhile, as they reproduced, they would spread the alien tissue and corrupt human DNA to the extent that the humans would effectively become alien themselves within a few hundred generations. Furthermore, the million to one encounter had resulted in a new batch of troops for the aliens well-hidden army. The new ranks of cybernetic warriors filed into their storage bays one by one by one The seed was sown. It would take a little longer to reap the rewards of the crop. On the bridge of the Brilliant, Commander Acheson felt a strange sensation temporarily overwhelm him and then pass. It had felt like voices in his head. Now, now there was nothing. No, there was something. A strange feeling like, like burning in his mind. His brain felt like it was burning. He shook his head and the feeling faded away. Perhaps he was sickening for something. He concentrated on the job in hand and made a mental note to get the medics to check him over when he got back to the nearest Imperial base. No. No he wouldn't. That was not a good idea. It must be avoided at all costs. The voice of common sense convinced him that he was fit and healthy. The conflicting thoughts drifted from his mind as he hit the Hyperdrive button and looked at the view screen to see the stars blur and coalesce into a tunnel of light. The indication they were in maximum speed flight reassured him. The intelligence had been wrong, he thought to himself as he saw in his mind's eye the Captain and his troops being converted into those, those things. He shuddered at the thought of the alien machines inside him, taking him apart in their gruesome experiments. He wondered why he had not been converted and as he did so, he felt a calming influence sweep over him. All thoughts and memories of the treatment he had undergone were excised from his mind. His report would now be made with a few omissions... He and his crew had had a lucky escape. END Andrew John Summersgill December 1993, v2.0 revised 28/11/95.  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