*Warning: Inappropriate language and gruesome and violent descriptions are used in this chapter. Read at your discretion.*
This flashback continues the previous one, in which our team was on a special mission with Klaus upon the enemy ship (Refers to the second flashback in Chapter 4). I see myself shooting the three-eyed creature in the head right after we blow through the membrane door.
Klaus kills the last creature that was standing guard at the gate. This creature was the only one that reacted to our attack. Though it could not see us, it grabbed its own weapon from its stomach and shot at us based on where we were shooting. The green plasma bullet from its weapon passed right by my ear! *THEW!* The plasma made the whistle sound like a heavy object was passing by you quickly... Moments later, I felt it was a hot trace, making me think that I actually got hit. I touch my ear and sigh in relief upon discovering that my ear is still in one piece.
I also remember more details about this mission and why we were hijacking. Eight friendly four-man squads boarded this ship, including the one I am in. There were supposed to be 13 squads on board, but two entire squads lost their lives while trying to hijack the ship. The enemy starfighters destroyed the transport ship that was carrying them. To make things worse, three other squads were before us to make way for the rest of us, but we lost contact with two. There are three transport aircraft. Two of them were ours, and one was from the squads that had boarded earlier. So with the one surviving squad, we're still in contact with, nine squads remained. But that's not all the humans on board. We are the combat squad that is trained to fight on ships. We still needed pilots and spacecraft to get us here. Each transport ship has a pilot, a copilot, and three gunners. Luckily, the first transport ship's crew were relatively unharmed and guarding the hangar.
We have left two squads behind to guard the three crews, even though they could perfectly defend themselves. That's securing our retreating route. Three squads have gone to search and rescue the surviving squad. The other three squads, which include our squad, are on their way to the ship's generator room to destroy it, which is our primary goal. This ship was one of the commanding ships that the enemy had in their fleet, and this fleet has taken billions of lives. This war has been raging on for years, and the human side was not doing well. After countless lives were lost, our intelligence agency finally devised a plan to turn this war around. The enemy fleet seems to rely on one mother ship against our forces, and it's the ship we're hijacking. This ship was so massive that no human ships or human tech could face it head-on, so it had to be destroyed from the inside out. That was our mission.
"Hahaha! You alright, greeny two?" The sergeant remarked on my reaction with a smirk. "First time being shot at, ey?"
The near-miss encounter shocked me, but the sergeant's remark brought me back to focus.
"For crying out loud! These bloody bastards react quick!" Klaus yells out. "No wonder we're struggling against these fuck heads!"
I look at the creature, lifelessly lying on the floor on its side. Their head resembled human skulls on the upper front portion, with three vertically shaped eyes on their forehead and sharp carnivorous teeth with no lips,..or mouth. I could see the gums connected to the teeth, and a sharp two-headed tongue stuck out. The top of its head is full of short tentacles, no ears, an empty dark void in the place of its nose, and its skin is pinch oil black. On its body, it has a suit of some sort that matches its skin color. Its body mass is about the same size as a human's body. It has longer and larger tentacles on its back, with a sharp edge and sharp point at its tops. They are like flexible swords with spearheads on their tops. I count about eight of them. Three of the eight tentacles tops are oozing off neon green liquids! On its stomach area, it has an opening with the same neon green liquid leaking out of it. Around its stomach opening are short bug legs, 10 of which have five on each side. It has humanoid arms but no fingernails. Instead, all of its fingers have hard skin with a sharp point at the end of each finger. In one hand, it's holding the weapon that had shot the plasma at me. It is covered with the same neon green liquid from that thing's stomach and has hoes connected to the creature's stomach! The creature has only one leg. The leg did not look like a human's foot. Rather it looked more like a big four-toed lizard leg.
'Was the source of the plasma from the green liquids? Their own blood?' I thought.
Before the creature reached for its gun and died, it used its hand like a guerilla and its leg as support.
"Don't stand around. We have to move!" The captain ordered, "These guys are only foot soldiers. There may be far more dangerous creatures nearby! Especially since we are close to our objective! Stay sharp!"
This room was larger than the hallway, and there appeared to be another gate at the opposite end of where we came in. We quickly gathered and made a circular formation, and moved cautiously. The team that has gone to save the survivors breaks the radio silence.
"This is Lieutenant Morris to surviving scout team. I have a visual on you! Are you all ok?"
"Lieutenant! This is Scout One leader! Finally, you're here! I thought we were going to die here!"
"What happened?" The Lieutenant asks.
"Well, Lieutenant, those nasty aliens ambushed us, as you can see. We're the only ones left and wouldn't have survived without our new technology. The orbs and our suit." The leader of scout one replies.
"Why didn't you retreat to the hangar?" The Lieutenant asked.
"They ambushed us from behind. What's more strange is that we had found no entrances when we were searching, so I don't know how they sneaked behind us." The squad leader answered.
"Why didn't these fucking wankers go for our ships in their hangar?" Klaus asks. "The more I think about it, the more suspicious this looks. This is obviously a trap!"
"Shut yer trap, greeny1! Obvious or not. We got a mission to complete!" The Sargent yells back.
"Stay quiet, you two! Stay sharp!" Our captain intervenes. "And let's hear the rest of the conversation. We could learn something."
We reached the opposite end of the room, and one of our squad mates prepared a bomb on the gate.
"So, how did you escape? And you had your invisible mode activated. How did you get attacked?" The lieutenant asked.
The moment he asked that question, the squad mate's orb, the one that was setting the bomb, made a strange noise and was making different colors from its light.
"John, what are you doing with your Orb?" Captain asked.
"I...it's not me, Captain! This thing is going nuts on its own!" The squadmate quickly replied.
"Well, fix that damn thing! Will ya!?" The Sargent yells.
Meanwhile, I look down and focus on listening to the conversation between the lieutenant and scout one leader as we prepare for the bomb's explosion.
"Well, lieutenant.... it all started with our Orbs going haywire somehow, and then all hell broke loose. This creature came out of nowhere and took most of us alone." The scout one leader answered.
"What?" Our captain shouts. "John, get rid of your orb! NOW!"
John's camouflage was deactivated as he tried to get rid of his orb, but the orb acted on its own, turned towards the bomb, and activated its signal.
"I can't control it, Captain!" John shouts. "It's activating the bomb on its own!"
"Shoot that thing down!" The Sargent shouts.
Klaus, me, and the Sargent tried to shoot the Orb down while John threw himself back for cover. The bomb, however, exploded, and the gate was open. We all had our weapons aimed at the door while covering John.
"Ok, squad one leader, we're closing in on your position." Lieutenant Morris replied through our communication devise, "Everything alright in your area, Captain?"
At that moment, I felt a heavy weight in my stomach as the hair of my entire body made a stand as if electricity had shocked them! I instinctively turned to warn John, only to find him standing with no head and his blood splashing everywhere. Seconds later, his head landed right before my feet, with his helmet's glass broken. His body soullessly collapsed on the floor. He didn't even see the attack coming, judging by his expression!
Soon afterward, all of our Orbs suddenly acted the same way, just as they did with John's. A creature steps forward from the gate. The creature is about four meters tall and has three bug-like legs, which are two meters tall each. Its width is twice wider than the average human leg. He has three times the muscle mass of the average human. It has two humanoid arms, with sharp spear-like tentacles swarming around on its back. It covered its face with a mask-like shell. The mask looked like an ancient knight's helmet covering its jaws.
"We got contact! Fire at well!" Captain shouted.
Everyone opened fire on the creature, but it vanished into thin air. Our camouflages were deactivated, but right before it was fully deactivated, another squad mate was lying on the floor surrounded by his own blood and flesh. It had ripped his heart out.
'Did that thing know where we were even with our camouflages active, and how did it get the both of them without us realizing immediately?' I thought at the moment.
From the gate, swarms of green plasma dart out. Hitting two of our comrades and melting them on the spot. There were only eight of us left in the area. To make matters worse, our equipment's function, including our night vision, became limited since our orbs are now being controlled, but luckily, our equipment wasn't designed to rely on Orbs. We return fire to the empty dark gate.
"Shit! Cap'en were sitting ducks here! We need to find cover!" The sergeant yells.
"Move to the walls!" the captain replies.
We move to the walls by the gate, and they put us out of the green plasma's way. Two of our men that were close on each side of the gate kept shooting, and plasma shots came at them in return, only to be a near miss on them. Everyone else was looking around for the creature. I was trying to alter my suit and regain control of my Orb.
"Lieutenant Morris! We're under heavy fire! We need backup!" The captain shouts into our communication.
"The Lieutenant is.....----- are pin down---- squad was a Trap!" This was the response we received from the other squad. They filled our communication devices with interventions and statics.
"Fucking Hell! I can't understand crap!" Klaus shouted.
"Charles, can you fix our equipment?" The captain shouts.
"He's dead, Captain!" I responded to him. "I'm working on it instead!"
Klaus grinned at me and said, "Your bloody magic fingers better do their magic quick!"
"Finally, being useful, ey greenie two?" The sergeant remarked.
Meanwhile, all our Orbs were flying around dramatically, except for mine. Mine was struggling to move because I was trying all the anti-hack gadgets I had at my disposal to take back control. However, none of them was working. It's as if it wasn't being hacked, but it was being forcibly controlled from outside. A squad mate asks what to do about the orb.
The sergeant responds, "I say we shoot 'em all down! Everyone get-"
"No! stand down!" The Captain interrupts, "They don't pose an immediate threat! It would do us more harm to destroy them!"
"But Cap! We are setting duck! We'll die if this keeps goin!"
"We'll be dead without those Orbs anyway, Sargent! Stand down!"
"I thought these little shits were brand new and supposed to help us turn the war! How in the bloody hell did they hack this?" Klaus remarks.
"It's not that they're being hacked." I calmly answered.
"What?" Klaus asks with a dumbfounded face.
"The hell you mean they ain't hacking? Are you blind, greeny two?" The sergeant asked with a confused face.
Since I tried everything at my disposal didn't work, I thought there were only two possibilities. They could have hacked our system with advanced technology, which has a decent possibility, given that were facing an alien race. Then again, they comparatively have slowed in conquering and exterminating us during the past year despite the advanced benefits and tech they have over us. That's because of this; The Orb. The Orb does tap into and draw out energy from another dimension. Energy is powerful enough to give us a slight boost in our technology. It is possible, however, that they, too, use that energy. To regain my control over my orb, I need to do it through that energy. So I clicked a button on the touch screen on my forearm. My orb came to a complete halt, and its lens turned to me.
"Ah! I get it now! Good thinking there," our captain said with an impressed face. "So your plan is to take back control through Dimension O!"
Right after the Captain's comment, the flashback is disturbed, and I feel nauseous and dizzy. Then I remembered another scene. In this flashback, I was lying on the ground, dragging myself toward a small device. It connected this device to the nuclear bomb that was implemented on board the ship, our sole mission. I was feeling weak, and my body was in pain as if something had squeezed my bones, and I could feel stab and burn wounds all over my body. There was blood everywhere... and that was my blood! I could hear my heart pounding to its limit.
"Damn it!" *Gasp* "Mate...This is..." *STAB*.
I finally grab the device, but a shadow looms over me. When I turn around and look behind me, it's the dark creature staring down at me with its sleek black eyes. He also had three eyes, although one of the eyes seemed wounded. They all were vertical, like the lesser creature's eyes. I see a body shaking behind him, stabbed by one of his tentacles. That body belonged to Klaus.
"GRRAAHH!... I'm sorry, mate..... This is as far as I can go..." *Cough Cough, gasp* "It hurts!" Klaus had a painful expression on his face. Tears ran down his cheeks, and simultaneously, he gasped for air. He was coughing up blood, lots of them. "I don't want to..... die."
Klaus was fighting the creature in close quarters, and judging by some scars on the creature's body and several missing tentacles. Klaus had landed a few strikes, but none were fatal...except for that bullet wound in his left eye.
As I saw my best friend's body dangling behind the creature. I felt rage and despair boiling inside of me. The creature garbed me by the neck with one hand, but his grip wasn't tight enough to choke me. Klaus saw me holding the device. Then he grinned.
"Do it! Blow this bloody bastard up!"....*Gasp* "FINISH HIM!"
At that moment, the remaining tentacles stabbed him all over his body. I saw Klaus's life fading away from his eyes as he struggled to survive and breathe.
"do it....for her sake....." Klaus whispered his last words.
The creature had picked me up, held me close to its face, and showed his blinded eye to me. Then, with his free hand, he grazed over my left eye with his sharp thumbnail. From top to down, I could feel my skin cut open. Then he held his thumb just over my eye and stared at me. Then it slowly pushed his thumb into my eye.
"Geh! AAAHHHH" I screamed from the fresh pain in my eye. How much pain do I need to endure before this kills me? This pain! Although it's a flashback, I can feel it happening as if I am awake!
"HehehehehehahahahaHAHA!" the creature laughed.
Meanwhile, I found the button on the device with my thumb as the creature squeezed its thumb into my eye. I squeezed the button in my hand as hard as I could. Then suddenly, the creature's face, Klaus's body, and everything else in my vision was covered in a bright flash of light. At this moment, I hear Baba's voice.
"Son...no matter what you do at this point on.... no matter what the future holds...I will always be proud of you. Remember...I'll always love you...my son, Leon!"
Then I wake up screaming!