Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Barely Alive

A thick layer of atmospheric mist rose up around the boots of the first marine as he stepped from the shuttle ramp and onto the damp grass of a cool early morning. The mist swirled around him, rising into the air in thin spiraling columns reaching towards the heavens like gnarled, grasping fingers pulling their way from a sodden, and rotting, grave.

Condensation clung to the barrel of his weapon as he held it in a low ready against his right shoulder, scanning the mist through the tinted orange of his visor. His heads up display outlined trees and rocks through the mist identifying unknown objects to his, superior, but not perfect, human eyes.

The sky overhead was thick with clouds: a white ceiling that separated them from the vast void of space, and their waiting companions.

That was all except for the second shuttle, circling at the low ready in the sky above them weapons bristling as they offered potential cover fire for their companions on the ground. The scream of its engines was close and present, breaking the quiet of the early morning mist.

More boots thudded against wet earth as five more marines, two more Drev, and one pilot exited the craft.

Mist rose from their warm bodies and plumed in front of their faces with every breath fighting with the defogging agents on their visors as, they too, scanned the alien world around them. One marine took a step forward, nearly treading on a flower, which withdrew from his boot with a sharp pop, vanishing into the wet earth below.

The pilot stepped forward, his body whirring and clicking with the hungry hiss of the exo-skeleton on his back; a ravenous parasite trading prowess for peace of mind. The aperture of his glowing right eye clicked open and darted across the tree line of rising trunks, whose tops were concealed behind the thick curtain of fog.

He sensed no movement upon the meadow, or within the depths of the trees.

The first marine stepped forward, leaving behind the impression of his boot on the moist, malleable soil pulled down by the weight of his body armor, covering almost every inch of his bare skin; the only visible humanity being his sharp, amber eyes peering out from behind the orange tint of his visor.

"All clear." Ramirez said, dropping his weapon to a low ready as the other marines fanned out beside him.

In a way, they looked at home in the alien landscape, their technology augmented armor matching the strange an unearthly enviornment, glowing gently in the early morning illumination.

But none of them so much as the pilot, with his exo-skeleton, glowing green eye, and clearly cybernetic leg, which left its own distinctive footprint in the grass behind him. Admiral Vir adjusted his arm with a whirr, hauling the massive bulk of the belt fed light machine gun into an upward resting position.

He used only one hand.

They had waited three days after the incident to descend from above. The tracking beacons for the civilians the bodies of the missing mercenaries had not moved within that three day timespan; leaving it highly unlikely the subjects were still alive, though leaving the bodies would simply be out of the question.

When the clouds had cleared the day before, satellite images had been taken from above granting them a view of the abandoned and waiting shuttle, and a couple of unknown objects partially obscured by trees. Thermal imaging the following night had indicated no signs of life, at least not in the open, leaving only the shuttle.

It was possible that someone had managed to return to the waiting haven, though why they had not accessed the communications array was a question that didn't leave much hope in the way of survival for either the civilians or the mercenaries.