Black Rain Ch. 04

BLACK RAIN

CHAPTER 04

EDITOR:

Miriam Belle

CREATIVE CONSULTANT:

Simply_Cyn

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

-"Originally, Chapters 3 and 4 were one long piece, but the length was prohibitive. I split it into two separate chapters for the sake a shorter read, as my chapters do tend to run a little long on the whole. As such, reader beware that this chapter does not have a single sex scene in it." –bluefox07

*

THE STORM

TERRAN EARTH DATE

01. 16. 2179

"This is the thickest bush I've ever seen," Chastity whistled.

The forest had grown impossibly thick as they trekked into the depths of the alien world. Trees grew thick and solid from the ground on up, the trunks still wide enough to encompass a small space ferry where they disappeared into the leafy canopy of foliage hundreds of feet above. The air was stagnant inside the realm of the woods, humid and far too warm for anyone's comfort. Lush overgrowth swatted and snapped at the search party as they followed the path cut by the wreckage.

"Seen a lot of thick bush, eh?" Jared snickered.

"Fuck you," she reflexively.

"These trees are enormous," Howe marveled, her eyes glued to the gargantuan plants. She ran her fingers across the surface of bark and frowned. Instead of a rough exterior she found only a slick coating of viscous slime. She rubbed the substance between two fingers, "The trees are secreting some kind of mucus."

Tishara looked back over her shoulder, her light flashing on the doctor, "Did I not say don't touch anything?"

The doctor blinked and then wiped the goo off her fingers, "I know. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Tishara sighed, "Just think. Is that shit poisonous? Do you know?"

'You're the biologist here,' she thought to herself.

Howe shrugged and put her fingers to her nose. She sniffed and cringed, "I doubt it. But it smells like that stuff we found at the edge of the tree line."

"Bile," Gordon said, "Shit smells like someone puked."

"You guys notice there's no sounds of wildlife?" Jared asked.

"Now that you mention it," Tishara said and then listened. It was true. Beyond the snapping of green branches and soil grinding underfoot, there weren't any of the sounds one might equate with life in the jungle. Only the rustling of leaves occasionally lighted through the alien woods like the maddening whisper of an enemy they could not see. Their searchlights flashed through the forest, revealing nothing but a closing wall of shadows and plant life all around them.

They pushed on into the thick, each member of the party feeling more and more uneasy. After twenty minutes of fruitless effort, they came across a debris trail. Large sections of the bow littered the path ahead. Some of the bigger chunks of debris had sliced into the surrounding trees and remained lodged, still burning and smoldering hotly. Some of the smaller trees and had been cut down in the catastrophe and lay at crazy angles.

"Hello?" Tishara shouted, maneuvering her way through the maze of fallen trees and wreckage, "Anybody?"

Her voice traveled into the dark and bounced around in the woods, creating an eerie chorus that slowly faded away. Jared and Chastity moved off to the side as Gordon and Howe followed in close behind Tishara, carefully navigating the narrow debris field. Gordon sniffed the air and said, "Fuel. I can smell the fumes."

"Everybody be careful," Tishara said, "And if we have to cut any metal, check for puddles of fuel. We don't need an explosion here."

"Hello?" Dr. Howe called out, "Hello? Is anyone alive out there?"

They came to a large section of the framework that had composed one of the support bulkheads. It was twisted and deformed, small areas of it sparking and burning as moisture seeped into the circuitry. Tishara stepped up onto it and braced herself, being careful not to slip. She grasped a hand onto a support beam and pulled up.

"Watch yourself," Gordon said.

"Always," Tishara grunted. She reached the top of the broken structure and found herself staring a dead body directly in the eye.

"Jesus Christ!" she shouted, almost losing her grip.

"What is it?" Gordon asked.

"A body," she breathed, unable to look away from the bloodshot eyes staring at her from dark sockets. A woman, maybe in her late thirties had come to rest here of all the crazy places. Her blonde hair was matted to her lacerated face and foul with blood, blue eyes fixed on whatever reality lay beyond this life. Her mouth was parted open, not precisely shocked in horror but more surprised. It was almost as though she had been mildly jarred by her own death, nothing more.

Tishara looked into those glossy eyes and felt the sudden sting of guilt in her heart. This woman had been her responsibility. She had been their responsibility. The crew of the Haven had promised to deliver her and her companions to the Delta Prime Colony safely. And they had failed her.

Tishara closed her eyes. What if this woman had a husband? A family? The ring finger on her left hand was bare of any jewelry, but that didn't ease her soul any. Not one little bit.

"You okay?" Gordon asked quietly from below.

She looked back at the dead woman. She said, "No."

"I found another one!" Howe called.

Tishara hopped down from the bulkhead and joined the doctor, thankfully to be away from the company of the dead woman. This next person, whoever he or she had been, was burned horribly. Most of the sleepwear from the cryotube and flesh had been seared off, leaving behind a churned mass of angry red meat. Gordon looked down at the black sockets where eyes had once been and then at the scorched teeth grinning up from the corpse. It was like a sadistic effigy of a human being, looking eerily familiar and yet completely removed from the real thing.

"This one tried to crawl away," Howe commented, "See how the hands are clawed into the dirt?"

"God bless them all," Gordon shook his head.

"We may find others," Tishara whispered, "Keep hope, Gordon."

The big man nodded and made to turn around, stopping suddenly. He knelt down, his brow furrowed and lips parted slightly. He pulled a pair of thick gloves from his coveralls and put them on. Tishara knelt beside him as Dr. Howe watched, brushing a tangle of her hair out of her face.

"What is it?" Howe asked, "What do you see?"

Gordon touched the corpse, surprised by the rigidity of the cooked meat. With one slow motion he turned the body on its side. As the backside came up, thick ropes of slime hung off the body. They were greeted with a strong wave of the acidic smell of bile again. Tishara covered her mouth and nose as Howe fought off the rising urge to vomit. Gordon cringed, his nose burning from the concentrated stench. The thick substance sloughed off the body, taking large portions of the meat with it.

"The back half of this body has been liquefied," Howe said through her cupped hand, "My God, look at it."

"Just when you think you've seen it all," Tishara closed her eyes, her stomach threatening to heave her breakfast up.

"And look here," Gordon motioned to the bulkhead where Tishara had found the first body. At the base of the wreckage, the metal had turned a dull, dark color of mottled gray and brown. He said, "Something is eating the metal away too."

"This gooey stuff must be a bio-molecular acid of some kind," Howe told them, "It's not very potent, but given enough time it can break down duranium as easily as it does flesh."

"Acid under the ground?" Tishara stood up and looked at the doctor, "How is that possible? Wouldn't acid kill the plants?"

"We're on an alien world, Commander," Howe said, "The life here is undoubtedly far more removed from anything we've encountered than initially thought. For all we know, the ecosystem thrives on it. That might be why it's so abundant, just under the soil."

"My God," she breathed.

"Check this out!" Chastity called, "Look at this, Commander!"

They left the decomposing body and joined Chastity and Jared near a row of shattered cryotubes. Seven of the narrow tubes had been ripped away in the crash and landed here, their passengers trapped for the ride. The row of tubes was buried in the ground at an angle, the last four raised high in the air. The people inside these four were clearly dead, their bodies thrown against the cracked covering of their pods. Blood smeared the interior, faces brutally smashed to the glass and contorted.

But the remaining three pods...

Tishara looked at them, her eyes unable to blink and her hands suddenly cold. They were filled with more of the thick bile from the soil. Inside the mass of slime she could see white bone and thick discolored liquids churning about slowly, as though someone were cooking a stew. The first pod was partially buried and completely full of the substance. The second was also full and bubbling with the acid. The third was slowly filling up, the level rising and eating away the interior.

"The glass must be cracked underground," Howe pointed to the first tube, "It's filling up with that bile, and using the air vents to move from tube to tube."

"What the fuck kind of place is this?" Chastity whispered.

"And look," Gordon pointed at the bottom tube, "The stuff inside is turning black."

The liquid inside the compartments started to turn a nauseating brown color, as though something were dying it under ground. The darker colors swirled into the lighter fluid above, becoming black and opaque. Tishara took a cautious step closer to the tubes and then stopped as the plexi-glass began to smoke.

"Get back," Gordon said suddenly.

The glass splintered suddenly and then shattered. The acid flooded out of the tube and splashed down to the ground, carrying with it the remains of the poor souls inside. Tishara leapt back and scrambled up onto the safety of a bent support beam as it flooded around them. The others followed suit as the boiling liquid spread out into the underbrush. Tishara thought she might pass out, either from seeing the remains of the people inside float about obscenely just below her or the rancid smell.

"This black stuff is even more concentrated that the surface ooze," Howe shouted from the tree branch she had climbed up on.

"What does that mean?!" Jared shouted as he, Gordon and Chastity stood atop one of the thick hull plates of the Haven's ruined bow.

"I think it's some kind of natural function of the planet," Howe shrugged, "The deeper into the soil you go, the more potent it becomes."

"Some natural function," Gordon waved his hand in front of his face.

Tishara activated her radio and spoke into her headset, "Ashton, this is Tishara come in."

Static filtered through in a eerie reply.

"Ashton? This is Tishara, over?"

She looked at the others as the acid bubbled endlessly from the broken cryo-tubes, now acting as an open spout for the substance to flow through. Gordon looked down at the base of the wreckage they stood on and shouted, "We gotta go!"

Tishara didn't need to ask why. This new black acid was eating the metal away in a hurry, far more quickly than the stuff they had found on the surface. They began jumping from heap of debris to heap of debris, hop scotching like kids over a creek who didn't want to get wet. As they went, Tishara tried to raise the Haven. Only static replied. Once they reached a safe spot and were on dry ground, such as it was, she turned and said, "Anyone else getting static?"

Everyone tried their radios and found the same interference. Jared listened intently for a moment and then said, "We're being jammed."

"How can you tell?" Chastity asked.

"Listen to the static," he told them, "You can hear the wavelength they're using."

"The pirates," she whispered.

Tishara turned to draw her blaster and then stopped. She found herself looking down the barrel of a huge plasma rifle. The creature holding the mammoth weapon was at least seven feet tall, adorned with dark leather clothing and netting. A flat, wolf-like mask covered its face, copper hued and scarred with nicks and cuts from previous encounters. She could see a mane of thick, bronzed hair flowing from behind the edges of the mask, decorated with tribal braids and the occasional dreadlock. It looked at her through the hollow, black eyes of the mask and waited patiently.

"Oh shit," Jared moaned.

"Tishara!" Howe made to move towards her.

"Don't move," she hissed, her eyes locked on the giant alien.

The alien simply watched her, waiting.

Tishara dropped the gun. She was in no position to do anything else. The blaster rifle could have taken her head off in an instant, leaving a cauterized stump of hard, red meat in its wake. The creature didn't give the small hand blaster a second thought as it kicked the gun away into the brush. Tishara looked back at her shipmates and held her hands up, "Nobody move."

Gordon, who had already brought his rifle to bear, remained steadfast as the others stood back. This new creature dwarfed the big man, and he knew from looking at it that it was genuinely Jah-Haran. He scanned the woods for signs of others, as the pirates never moved in alone. Their salvage and boarding parties always consisted of five at the very least. He could see nothing but thick tangles of alien plant life and towering trees.

The alien nudged Tishara with the nose of his gun, and then glared at Gordon.

"Do it Gordon," she said.

"Son of a bitch," Gordon breathed. Slowly, the engineer placed his rifle down to the ground and stood back, joining the others.

Tishara nodded to them and then turned to face the alien, "What ship are you from?"

The Jah-Haran said nothing.

"Are you a pirate?" she asked.

The Jah-Haran only looked at her, it's head cocked to one side.

Tishara slowly began to realize this Jah-Haran wasn't a pirate. As Gordon had already noticed, this one was alone. In her mind, she made the transition from thinking of the alien as an "it" to thinking of him as a "he." The large alien bore no symbols of a pirate. He also wore none of the traditional garb. Certainly, he was dressed in Jah-Haran attire, but upon a closer inspection she found that his clothes were handmade, laced together with leather strips, but also beautifully decorated with subtle symbols and designs. His netting was more of a camouflage, not the thick metal mesh the pirates wore as protection against the cold and projectile weapons.

"You're not are you?" Tishara began lowering her hands.

Overhead, more thunder rolled and an odd fishy smell began to breeze through the woods and around them. Chastity leaned forward and whispered, "I don't think he speaks English."

"Of course he doesn't," Tishara said, "But he can hear the tone of my voice."

"Maybe he's got a translator in the mask?" Howe offered, her eyes the size of dinner plates.

"Big mother fucker," Jared breathed, his heart pounding in his throat.

"Can you speak English?" Tishara asked the hulking alien. It tilted its head again at her, listening. She wondered if he could understand her. English was ultimately the language adopted by the Terran Space Administration, and most of the translators used with other cultures worked off the basics of simple English. Many alien cultures had leaned to speak it over the years, though never having met a Jah-Haran until now, Tishara couldn't be sure they had ever taken the time to attend ESL classes.

"Tish, this guy aint fuckin' around," Gordon said quietly as thunder boomed above and the wind picked up. The alien looked to the small breaks in the foliage hundreds of feet above. The sky was getting dark quick, the shadows of the forest creeping in like ghostly hands hiding the dying light. Were it not for the small fires still burning in the wreckage around them and their flashlights, they would have been in total darkness by now. The Jah-Haran looked up to the sky, his posturing faltering slightly.

"He's nervous," Tishara said.

"*We must go*," came a mechanized voice from the metal visage. The alien had a translator in his mask, and though the voice was filled with distortions and the translation not very good, no one mistook the urgency in his voice, "*Must go NOW*."

"I think we must go now," Jared nodded in complete agreement.

Tishara knelt down and felt for her blaster, her eyes never leaving the dark holes in the stylized Jah-Haran mask. She found the weapon and stood up, moving to holster it against her hip when the alien stopped her with a gentle motion of his large hand. "*No*," he said, "*You need it now*."

"What does that mean?" Jared whispered.

"Exactly what you think it means," Chastity replied.

A branch snapped in the dark.

Everyone froze.

And then something streaked out of the darkness and sailed past Tishara's face, missing her by a mere inch. She stumbled backwards and lost her bearings, the world going topsy-turvy. There was a high-pitched scream to her left. She spun on her knees to face the sound, her weapon in hand and her eyes wide. In the wildly flashing light of the panic, she could see a large, muscular mass of fish-belly pale flesh. Three powerful legs, two in the front and one in the back were working up and down as whatever it was slammed Jared Cole to the ground.

"Jared!" Tishara screamed and opened fire on the alien intruder. Several blasts of energy seared into its backside, a volley that would have fallen even a large man like Gordon within seconds of the impacts. The creature turned and regarded her with its sleek, fleshy head. She could see no eyes, but she could see a wide, tooth-filled maw at the end of its face. Fleshy, thick lips pulled back from the razor sharp teeth and almost seemed to grin at her.

"Get off him!" Chastity cried out and fired her weapon.

The white alien roared and then slammed Jared to the ground again. The welder was kicking and screaming, his hands batting at the side of the monsters skull. His wire-framed glasses fell off and into the underbrush, broken and twisted. Powerful arms tipped with large, humanoid hands and wicked black claws punched into his chest hard. Tishara heard his ribs break and knew he would be dead in minutes. The eyeless white alien squealed and bit into Jared's face. A gout of blood spattered the night as he wailed in agony, the creature shaking him back and forth like an overzealous dog with a chew toy.

"Blasters ain't working!" Gordon bellowed as he shot at the creature with rifle. The powerful blasts from the heavy gun sounded off with deafening booms, but despite the singed meat and blackened skin the alien seemed indifferent.

Dr. Howe made to run and pull the alien away, but the Jah-Haran loner pushed her aside quickly and brought his own weapon to bear. Three bolts of pulsing green energy blinded them all and stuck the alien square in the backside. It screeched and fell to its side, smoke and black blood pouring from the wounds. It writhed on the ground, kicking and flailing about.

"Shoot the fucker again!" Tishara screamed, "Do it!"

The Jah-Haran walked right up to the white alien and slammed his boot down on its head. He tilted his big gun, aimed and fire. The skull exploded in a rain of gore and cauterized alien meat. A silence rushed in to fill the void left by the attack as they looked at the albino alien in a state of group shock. Howe was on her feet and then beside Jared, her hands already dark and wet with his blood.

"Is he?" Tishara asked, already knowing damn good and well that he was.

Howe felt around Jared's ruined neck for a pulse and then to his wrist. She could not bear to look at his ruined countenance. She had seen many atrocities in her time as a medic on rescue ships and as a physician at the frontier gateway stations, but the horror of what the alien had done to him in just a few seconds was too much all at once. She pressed her fingers to his wrist and then shook her head, "No. I'm sorry."