Scarabs
By Medeve. Filed in Scarab |
Walking down the hall to the command deck, I can’t help but think of how much I’ve grown to hate Command. Feelings not suitable for a senior officer, I know. As a kid the only thing I wished for was to be able to fly in the Navy like my grandfather; be a Captain of my own ship and have a crew, fighting along side with them for the rest of my people. I joined the academy at the age of 12 and was on my first ship at 16. That’s when the Scarabs appeared.
They came after our outer colonies at first, past the normal patrols of the Navy. The first colony fell just hours after they sent their distress signal. I was stationed to a ship that was sent to patrol another nearby planet; by the time we arrived it had already been decimated. I got to see first hand what the Scarabs did.
The entire planet was bare of any kind of non-plant life. We couldn’t even find any remains. The only things we could find were the remains of the Scarabs, bugs that were a good two to three feet long, with what is the most vicious looking set of mandibles I’ve ever seen.
We soon found the foul honeycomb structure that transported the monsters there. It had landed in a field outside one of the colonial outposts. We slowly made our way up to the alien looking structure, unsure of what it contained. Once we were confident that it posed no immediate threat to us, we lowered our guard and took a closer look at it.
The structure was a rough sphere and its surface was covered in holes no bigger then half a foot that gave it a similar look to an over sized honeycomb. It towered over even the tallest men we had on our team; easily reaching ten feet tall. We would later learn that this was a small one.
As we came closer we became aware of the ooze. It had coated most of the ground around the nest egg. As we came closer, the thick gray ooze would stick to our shoes, making walking difficult. And the stench was overpowering.
We would later piece all the clues together as more reports came in. The object we found is what we’d start to call a nest egg, as the creatures appeared to launch them to planets in order to create a new hive out of it. They launch a group of eggs inside of the nest egg, and as they hatch, the eggs secrete the disgusting gray ooze. Once they hatch and crawl out of the nest egg they go on the hunt, eager to feed themselves. They leave no survivors or remains; devouring every part of a living creature, even its bones and teeth. Once their hunger has been satiated, or they run out of food, they burrow deep into the planet, forming a giant hive for them to live in.
Once completed a new form of the creature forms; an overly large and bloated version of its normal kin. Inside of it several different noxious chemicals form and react with explosive results when combined. Its lesser kin then creates new nest eggs to launch to new planets and back to other hives who can use some of the spare food that this new hive has found. How they know when and where to launch is a mystery, along with how such a creature would evolve into such a system.
Within weeks several colonies had fallen, without even a chance of fighting back. Then, as chance would have it a nest egg was launched to a planet where my ship had been docked for repairs and maintenance. It was here that our first real combat with the creatures would give us insight to use in the future.
There was no real warning. We got the distress call from the mining camp that was 30 miles out. We started to prep and within five minutes the creatures were here.
No one had ever survived one of their assaults, so none of us knew what to expect. They came at us in a huge horde, the individual Scarabs indistinguishable from the others. We fired into them as they came at us, our shots seemingly disappearing with no effect into the oncoming wave. Our excitement at being able to save this colony quickly disappeared as we realized we were vastly outmatched. Our minds quickly shifted gears from trying to save the colony to survival for us and the colonist.
We left the front line and fell back to where the escape ships were already being loaded. Upon hearing our weapons were useless against the advancing horde our commanders issued us to get the few flame throwers and try to hold them at bay with those. We reluctantly took our orders, fully aware of how close we would have to get to the beasts for the flame throwers to have any effect.
We spread out around the docking station where the ships were at. In my squad was Ian, a friend I had made back in my cadet days at the Academy. I could see the fear in his eyes, and without a doubt he saw the same fear in mine. We had yet to see the creatures attack anyone, but the horrific screams we could hear from those who hadn’t made it to the docking station in time could only signify a most gruesome death.
We held our positions. Every second we held out against the monsters was another civilian to get safely off this death trap of a planet. The creatures closed in on the docking station and came closer to us. I braced myself and prepared for the beasts. Ian on the other hand… Ian snapped and ran right into them, flamethrower blazing away. And surprisingly the creatures backed away for a moment; the fire repelled them away.
I froze. The idea of us actually being able to hold them at bay filled me with hope. I called for Ian to get back, but its was too late. Try as he might, Ian couldn’t hold them off from all directions and they crawled upon him and started to devour him alive. Within in 10 seconds I understood why we didn’t find remains; I saw my friend’s entire corpse devoured, bones and all. I froze in fear until I realized they were in range of the flamethrower.
I released a jet of flame out towards the creatures, keeping them at bay. I could hear the smaller shuttles behind me taking off. I could only hope that there was still a way off the planet for the rest of my squad and myself. The creatures were kept at a distance from me, but they started to surround us, we had to back up slowly towards the docking station to keep myself from being trapped. Before I knew it I was being pulled back inside of the station by my comrades.
There was only our ship left, and the entire complex was sealed. The Scarabs were already crawling over the top of the sealed space port, We were going to make one last attempt to fly out. We quickly got the remaining civilians onto the ship and made preperations to launch. Just a minute before launch the lights in the space port went out; the power had been severed. We could hear the backup generators start to whirl to life, and then just as quickly started to sputter back to death. God only knows what happened to them.
We sat in the darkness for several minutes, no one sure of what to do. Then the crackle of the ship wide intercom broke the silence; it was our Captain. She informed everyone that she only had one option to get us out of here, so to brace for impact. I felt the ship’s engines coming online and it hit me what the she intended to do. I grasped the seat I was sitting in and closed my eyes as the ship lifted from the ground and tore through the ceiling of the docking station. I quickly felt the odd sensation of zero gravity for a second before the artificial gravity kicked in.
We had made it out alive. With first hand combat experience now. This is when things changed.