Foundation of All

“Roger! Is this what you’ve been doing disappearing all the time?” Lira said scandalously as she saw him leaning close to one of the village women, their faces very close.

The two of them startled and glanced at the two of them, both looking rather annoyed as they straightened.

“What?” Roger replied in annoyance, “It’s our day off, isn’t it? You’re not my mother.”

“But… but… are you serious right now? That’s so unethical, she has no clue what you really are!”

“Why should I tell her? It’s not like we’re getting married or something,” Roger replied, “She’s just looking for a little fun and I’m happy to oblige. We’re travelers, in what galaxy would she think this is anything but a fling? I even asked her if keeping it casual was okay and she agreed if that’s what you’re worried about. I don’t see the problem here.”

“But… but… you’re a… you know. It’s not right!”

“Why?”

Lira looked stumped for a moment, “I… don’t know. We’re thousands and thousands of years old. Doesn’t that seem unfair to them?”

Roger raised an eyebrow and pointed at Sean. “What does that make you? Sean was barely fifty when you met him. You didn’t seem to mind then or now. If anything he acts like the older one between you two.”

“Well, that… that’s different.”

“Is it? Seems the same to me. Look, I get it. I remember how painful a real relationship is like with a mortal. Seeing them grow old and die… Not good. But this isn’t that, so it’s not the same. Now, Saritarini and I have other places to be. You just ruined the moment for the both of us. Thanks for that.”

Roger muttered something into the translator and Saritarini, the village woman, held it up to her ear. She had been glancing between Lira and Roger for the conversation looking rather confused on what was happening. After she listened to Roger’s words through the translator, she nodded and stood, grabbing Roger’s hand and shooting a rather nasty look at Lira before the two of them left together.

Sean and Lira walked through the market and bought the dark paint in silence, both carrying two big paint cans each, one in each hand, held to their sides.

“I’m not taking advantage of you, am I?” Lira asked suddenly as they were walking back to the ship. “I never thought about it that way, but Roger’s right. I am being a hypocrite.”

“I don’t think so,” Sean said thoughtfully, “But I don’t know. I haven’t experienced being with someone until they grow old and die with me staying the same. I see why there would be a taboo against it for Immortals. I remember what the Plaguebringer said when he was yelling at me back over my home planet. He said that Emily, the Immortal that found me, was too kind to associate with anyone but an Immortal. Despite being an insane maniac, he was probably right. It sounds horrible on both ends if you’re looking at something serious, safer to close yourself off instead. But it doesn’t seem what Roger’s doing is like that. That woman he was with shot you quite the glare as they left. We should let Roger deal with his own business.”

“Yeah, I suppose she did. And Roger was upfront about it with her from the beginning… I really did ruin the mood for no reason I guess,” Lira replied thoughtfully.

“I jumped to conclusions, I’ll have to apologize to Roger later,” she decided after another long moment, “Hit a sensitive spot I guess.”

They walked into the ship.

“Well, let’s paint Ash together,” Sean said to change the subject, “It will be like we’re painting together again like back on Immortus Station. We can just coat his whole surface so he’s nice and stealthy.”

“Hmmm. Yes, that makes sense,” Lira agreed, “Besides making sure we don’t spray her eyes, I think we can just coat everything else in one go.”

They were done checking the ship for trackers. They had ended up finding two more before the end. Whoever had owned this thing must have been really paranoid that it would be stolen. Rightly, it turned out.

They left the atmosphere after saying goodbye to all the villagers who had thrown them a big feast before they left. Their arrival was the event of the decade for the town, and Sean had finished paying for their hospitality with several of the translating devices.

Saritarini and Roger looked rather down as the feast went on, but only a little. After a quick hug goodbye after the feast the two went their separate ways. Sean didn’t see her for the last few hours before they finally started launching the ship and leaving the atmosphere. And finally, It was time for the four of them to explore universe.

— — — Five Hundred Years Later — — —

“I’m sure she’s following the trail right now,” Lira said encouragingly as they stood in a field of tall grass blowing in the wind. Ash and Roger were in the distance near the edge of the nearby forest. It appears that Roger was trying to teach Ash how to climb the trees. Something that was difficult in Ash’s large brown robes and massive weight.

“We’ve left a transmitter hidden somewhere on nearly every planet we’ve been to for centuries.” Lira continued, drawing Sean’s gaze away from the pair, “Even that planet that was completely covered in molten lava. Remember when Roger tripped and while we were all worried about him he was trying to see if he could do the backstroke through it like it was water? We even set one up there. Ash was focused on the mission and finished the job while the two of us rushed off to ‘save’ Roger. If this Emily told you to set them up, then she must have been sure that they would work from what you’ve told us of her. She might have just not been to a system with one of them in it yet.”

“I know,” Sean said with a sigh, “But I still worry. It’s been nearly five hundred years. What if she got captured by the Plaguebringers? She saved me from whatever horrible fate those beetles had in store for me, dealt with everyone’s hatred for her at Immortus Station to bring me all the way there personally. I looked it up, she could have just dropped me off at one of their outposts. But she personally took me the whole way instead. I have to tell her that I didn’t believe the damn Immortal Council about anything, let alone their propaganda against her.”

Lira put a hand on his shoulder, “Calm down, that’s all in the past now. The Council isn’t all bad. You’ve seen their enforcers out there doing good where they can as we travel. All we can do is keep traveling and wait. Ash still has hundreds, thousands of unique planets for us to see even after all of this time. I’m sure she’ll tell us about it after she finishes climbing that tree with Roger.”

“He.”

“She.”

“He.”

“She.”

“He.”

“Ash!” they shouted in unison and smiled afterwards. Ash didn’t care about being referred to either gender so long ago they had joked that he wasn’t a he or she, but Ash only at the end of another of their silly arguments. Now it was an in joke trying to predict each other and say Ash the same time as the other.

As the moment between them, Sean’s mind slowly turned back to worrying about why Emily was taking so long to find them. He was sure she would have found them by now. He knew Lira was right, but he couldn’t help thinking about it when he wasn’t preoccupied with other things.

The two of them watched on from near the parked ship where Roger finally managed to help Ash make it all the way up the tall pine by wrapping his arms around it and slowly shifting upwards.

Roger shouted something at Ash and started running over to a nearby tree to scramble up as well. But suddenly just as Roger was almost at the nearby tree’s trunk, the ground below him exploded upward in a spray of dirt. A massive pair of insect jaws closed on Roger’s leg and bit down as he tried to jump away. Roger’s leg was severed and he fell off balance on only one leg with a surprised shout.

The insect still emerging from the ground that Sean immediately recognized was a massive beetle with a green shiny emerald back. It loomed over Roger, but stiffened and seemed to focus on Roger’s quickly regenerating leg.

The massive beetle’s underside began vibrating rapidly and a massive buzzing sound boomed through the area as it immediately lunged for Roger.

A massive red laser shot down from Ash’s tree and sliced off the beast’s relatively tiny head in a pinpoint shot. The insect fell to the ground and slid forward under the momentum of its lunge, sliding forward through the dirt before stopping only a few feet from where Roger lay. The deafening buzzing stopped, leaving everything around them in eerie silence.

Ash’s tree swayed furiously as the robot remained there with one arm extended, scanning the area and looking for any more attackers.

Sean and Lira were already running forward, drawing the pistols hanging at their sides and glancing around warily. But as they were only half way there, they both stumbled as the ground shook below them violently.

Before any of them could react, the ground underneath the surprised Roger exploded, and dozens of the emerald beetles emerged from the ground on all sides. Ash fired a series of intense beams from his perch in the tree, but Roger was already being dragged into one of the holes in the ground the surviving beetles.

Ash fired more lasers downwards, in what Sean knew must be dangerously overclocking his antimatter reactor. Lira and Sean fired their pistols as well blindly as they stood to their feet and kept moving towards the commotion. Their weapons scorched the beetles armored backs, but didn’t seriously damage them.

Ash managed to kill ten more of the insects, but it wasn’t enough to stop them from dragging Roger into the tunnel, thrashing and pounding his fists on their shells.

Sean and Lira ran onto the scene of carnage a few seconds later and came up to the hole. There was a heavy thump behind them as Ash left the tree. Sean came up to the edge of what it was now apparent was a tunnel going deep into the ground.

He hesitated for a moment as he stood on the lip of the pit in the ground. Going in there would be going into the beetles home territory. Sean flashed back to fighting them with only his bare fists back when he was only twenty five years old. He couldn’t let that happen to Roger, whatever horrible fate Sean knew would await him if they finished carrying him to the center of their apparent nest.

“I will go first,” Ash announced from behind him, “I have the most significant weaponry. When I need to recharge or am overheating you two take the lead.”

Sean nodded and Ash came flying by and quickly dropped to the floor of the tunnel having a steep slope to ten feet down before it became horizontal again. Sean and Lira exchanged a glance before leaping down after Ash. There was no time to waste.

They made their way through the tunnels, only Ash’s eyes set to maximum brightness giving them light to see by. Every time a beetle appeared or lunged at them Ash would quickly blast it with the laser and kill it in a single blow. They could hear Roger’s shouts and the skittering of legs from farther down the tunnel. They went deeper and deeper for who know how long, the number of bugs only increasing as they went as the tunnels grew wider and wider as they went down. Tunnels that had left Ash’s head just barely brushing the ceiling were now at least five feet over their heads and the walls were quickly spreading apart as well.

Which was not a good thing, now more and more of the bugs were attacking them at the same time with more room to charge from.

But Roger’s cries were growing closer so they pressed onward, Sean and Lira firing with their pistols whenever a beetle managed to survive or even dodge one of Ash’s lasers.

Up ahead Roger’s shouts grew louder for a moment before becoming suddenly silenced, sending a chill down Sean’s spine. Ash increased the pace, quickly outpacing Lira and Sean who were quickly left behind. The red flashes of the lasers were their only source of light as they ran quickly to catch up as Ash turned a bend in the distance. Lira and Sean kept sprinting at full speed, their regeneration eliminating the exhaustion they should be feeling after running full tilt for what must be an hour chasing Roger.

Another beetle came out of a side tunnel and Sean blasted it. It stumbled to the side, but was clearly still moving. Lira shot it twice from where she stood slightly behind Sean, sending the bug slumping to the ground, dead.

Up ahead there was a loud electric crackle as Ash fired a particularly powerful laser blast from around the bend in the tunnel. An acrid smell of burnt flesh filled Sean’s nostrils a second later as Lira and him ran to the corner.

They were almost at the bend, and Sean glanced back only to see Lira tripping to the ground with a scream as the ground in front of her caved in as another beetle leapt out burrowing out of the floor to leap at her. She fired wildly into the beetle’s under carapace, and it shivered before going limp, its massive shadow completely covering her as it started collapsing on top of her.

She rolled out of the way, but one of its legs managed to hit her neck, which broke with a loud sickening crack. Her eyes glazed over as her head twisted unnaturally far and her gun fell from her limp hands. Sean immediately cursed and ran back to her. He grabbed one of her arms, gun held at the ready in the other towards the tunnel behind them.

He could hear their chittering and the pattering of insect limbs on dirt coming towards them from all sides. It seems that they had recovered from Ash’s sudden assault and were coming back in force now.

He tugged on Lira’s arm and dragged her limp body as quickly as he could towards the bend in the tunnel lighting up with red flashes of laser fire from Ash.

He only saw still frames of the tunnel, each red flash only lighting up the tunnel for an instant. Sean saw Lira’s neck half dissolved away, an empty skull where her head was regenerating. Darkness. A fleshy gurgle as Lira’s head attached to her broken neck was finally severed from her body and fell to the compressed dirt floor with a plop.

Sean kept dragging her body, they were nearly around the corner and Sean could see that there was a larger chamber beyond where Ash was fighting something around the corner at full tilt.

Flash. Beetles at the far end of the tunnel charging the two as Sean continued dragging Lira’s body around the bend.

Sean fired his gun wildly into the dark tunnel, each shot lighting it up with light as the superheated round shot from his weapon. He started rounding the corner as the lead insect fell, blocking the tunnel for only an instant before the one behind scrambled over its emerald shell and continued charging at them, clicking its jaws as it did so.

Lira’s head was covered in reddish muscle with the tiniest patches of skin spreading over them now.

Sean kept dragging her, knowing the insects would be on them in seconds. He glanced behind at the chamber lit up by the headlights of Ash’s blazing blue eyes.

The creature in the center of the chamber was the largest beast that Sean had ever seen. It towered forty feet into the air, looking nothing like the swarms of beetles pouring out of the walls from every direction to defend it. It appeared like a massive grub, Ash’s occasional blasts easily carving out large chunks of its flesh. Its body was white, while its heads and set of legs near the front of its body a reddish brown. The whitish back of its body dragged on the ground, creating a massive furrow in the dirt as it squirmed.

Each time it screeched loudly and, as Ash was pressured harder by the swarm, consumed the fallen chunks and fallen beetle bodies on the ground with its large jaws. Its body was visibly swelling in size as it went, its wounds slowly sealing over with even the largest wounds stopped bleeding within seconds.

Ash was firing laser blasts with both arms, his limbs jerkily twitching so each shot landed on the swarming beetles skulls. His only advantage was the beetles bodies blocked their fellows and were dragged away to be fed to the massive grub before more attackers charged at Ash again. The whole room echoed with the swarm’s chitters and clicks, more and more coming as time passed, burrowing out from the walls now that the tunnels had become clogged with their onrushing bodies. Roger was nowhere to be seen.

Lira twitched beneath Sean and looking down he saw her open her eyes and look around in confusion, her hair having grown back to a dark fuzz after her head’s regeneration.

One of the insects managed to close in on Ash and bit on his metal arm, denting the plate on his forearm slightly. He briefly stopped firing his laser beams with his other arm to slap his palm down on its skull, splattering it into a spray of gore. But the brief interruption allowed more to pile on, all of them scraping and denting Ash's structure under their jaws. Ash's robes were already in tatters, only tiny blood splattered pieces of cloth clinging to his metal form.

Under the onslaught of insects, Ash began being pulled to the ground, but gave up on using his lasers at short range, instead swatting at the beetles that lunged at him with his arms as soon as he managed to dislodge one.

Sean lifted Lira and she unsteadily managed to stand, glancing around still seeming confused at what had happened.

Ash looked at Sean and pointed towards the tunnel they had just come from.

“Get down!” Ash shouted loudly through his speakers, “I’m ejecting all my antimatter!”

Another beetle grabbed Ash’s outstretched hand, managing to sever one of the fingers. Ash brought his hand to the ground, driving the beetle into the floor while fending the others off briefly with his other.

Sean’s eyes widened and he grabbed Lira and dived on top of her as Ash’s chestplate swung open.

Ash reached inside with one of his battered arms his chest and extracted a large metallic cylinder. He drew it back and then threw it full force to the far side of the room behind from where the large grub continued to grow, now over fifty feet tall as it continued furiously consuming the bodies of the dead members of the swarm in the distance.

The cylinder impacted the far wall, and suddenly everything burst into brilliant white light and deafened Sean as the world rumbled around him. Sean felt a wave of radiation wash over him and his vision cut out for an instant.

When his vision returned, he saw an extremely battered and scorched Ash rushing towards them, limping slightly as he moved. One of his eyes was dim and flickering, and the ceiling was raining dust as the far side of the chamber began to collapse onto the massive wailing grub that was thrashing wildly, with the back half of its body scorched and bubbling. Its flesh sloughing off from the massive blast of radiation from the explosion that it had taken the brunt of.

The beetles in the room had fallen to the ground and were twitching weakly as the blast of radiation killed them all instantly. Even now, Sean felt flakes of his skin falling off as the radiation destroyed his skin before it healed again. He had the urge to vomit as he helped Lira to her feet as Ash was nearly on top of them.

Ash leaned down and scooped up the two of them into his arms, each of them pressed to either side of Ash’s pitted metal chest. Sean dropped his gun at Ash’s sudden movement.

The room continued collapsing behind them, the grub now half buried and wailing so loudly that Sean’s eardrums kept popping before healing again.

Ash stumbled up through the tunnels back the way they came, and after a few minutes they encountered more of the emerald beetles swarming towards them.

Ash huddled in and brought his shoulder down as they rushed forward into the charging group from farther down the tunnel.

But then the beetles passed around them, ignoring them as the grub’s wails behind them shook the tunnel walls around them again.

Sean looked over Ash’s shoulder and saw the beetles slump over and die the instant they rounded the corner into the main chamber. But that did not deter the rest, continually crawling over their fallen comrades until the tunnel was plugged. They started furiously digging around the piles of their dead fellows, whipped even further into frenzy as the grub screamed again, sending dirt trickling down from the ceiling. Ash rounded the corner and they disappeared.

Ash stumbled, his knee twitching as he ran.

“Running… out of power,” Ash said with a distinct electronic crackle from damage to his speakers.

“Just make it to the ship, Ash!” Lira said desperately, “You can make it!”

“I… will… try.”

As they were three quarters the way to the surface, the faint wails of the grub behind them suddenly stopped.

There was silence for a few minutes, only Ash’s heavy footfalls on dirt and groaning of metal as Ash’s dented and malformed metal plates restricted his movement.

They were only five minutes away from the entrance, and suddenly Ash stumbled and his eyes started going dim.

“Power… low. Won’t…. Make it. Battery, lowwwwwwww.”

Ash stopped and his arms spasmed, practically throwing Sean and Lira to the floor.

“Takkkkkeee. My head… Use for-or-or. Repair. Save Roger,” Ash said, his voice cutting in and out as he brought his arms to either side of his head. He pulled upwards and in a scream of metal his head was removed from his body and his eyes winked out into darkness.

His body collapsed to the ground, and Ash’s head rolled towards them. They both stared in shock as the faint light from the exit in the distance filtered into the tunnel.

The sound of chittering and pounding of feet sounded faintly in the distance, echoing through the tunnels and shocking them into motion. Lira bent down and scooped up Ash’s head held tightly to her stomach and the two of them started running towards the exit.

Sean quickly scrambled up the slope with Lira close behind him, shifting her weight as she carried Ash’s severed head with her.

The first insect became visible down the tunnel as Sean almost reached the top. He turned around and reached out a hand to Lira… only for the ground just behind her to explode outwards as a beetle emerged. It latched onto her leg and bit down, severing her leg. As it saw the skeletal copy of her limb slowly forming, its underside began vibrating again, letting out a deafening buzz.

Lira fell to the floor with a scream of surprise, twisting to the side and curling protectively around Ash’s head as she hit the ground.

Sean saw her skeletal leg kick the vibrating beetle, and it slumped to the floor dead as her foot ate away at its brain.

The world slowed down as Lira met Sean’s eyes from the ground. The swarm was coming, and with her leg still regenerating there was no way for her to scramble up the steep dirt slope to the surface in time.

“Sean!” Lira screamed as she leveraged herself up to a sitting position, “Save Ash! Get out of here!”

She grunted as she twisted and hurled Ash’s head full force up to him. Sean leapt to the side to catch it as it almost flew past him.

He caught it and hurriedly threw it behind him onto the forest floor as carefully as he could and then turned back around.

The beetles were nearly on her, only feet away now, their jaws open as they lunged.

Sean went to leap in after her into the hole, but she shook her head.

“Go!” she said again, “Save Ash—”

The first beetle clamped their jaws around her torso and lifted her into the air. She screamed and thrashed and Sean nearly leapt in for her, but as she saw his movement she shouted again.

“Shadow damn it, Sean! Save— Fuck! Ash first! Before they get you too. We’re all she has!”

She continued thrashing and wildly punching the beetles around her as they started dragging her away into the darkness.

“GO!” Lira screamed in frustration as she saw him still standing there, wavering. That shocked him into motion and he picked up Ash’s head from the ground and ran off towards the ship. He swore to himself that he would save her.

As he was closing the ship ramp, he saw the first emerald backs emerging from the ground in the distance.

He quickly threw Ash’s head in a bin where it wouldn’t roll around and get damaged before running to the command deck. He furiously typed in some commands and the ship began to rumble and slowly began to lift in the air. The beetles below were emerging from the ground in greater and greater numbers, but were milling as if confused now that they could no longer see him.

Sean heard the hum as the weapons system on the shuttle warmed up as they gained altitude. He fixed them on Lira’s last known location and mashed the fire button.

The AI gunner paused and a pop up appeared on the screen below Sean, “Warning. Weapons not meant for atmospheric combat. Using them on an inhabited planet violates conventions and local laws including Article…”

“FIRE!” Sean roared and swiped it away, frustrated. Every second he was delayed was another second that Lira was being carried further underground by the swarm.

“Firing,” the AI gunner said flatly before it began raining fire and destruction downwards into the ground.

The lasers and artillery carved out large chunks of the ground and collapsed several of the tunnels, but Sean started growing impatient. Several beetles milling about the surface died, but the ship's scanners didn’t pick up even the slightest glimpse of Lira. The bombardment was too slow. She would almost be out of range, should he, yes. He had to, no matter the consequences. He had built it himself, but he was sure that it would work.

“Ship, Ascend upwards full speed and drop our antimatter bomb as soon as we reach the edge of the blast zone.”

The ship's thrusters roared to maximum and Sean staggered as the ground below them suddenly started lurching away at dizzying speed.

“Warning. Use of antimatter weaponry on a inhabited planet is highly illegal and violates Article II of the galactic…”

“Ignore warnings,” Sean commanded, “Drop the bomb.”

“Orders confirmed. Dropping.”

The deceptively small bomb was released a second later, and Sean quickly sat and strapped in as it sedately began to fall to the ground. He clicked the buckle and the straps tightened themselves around him as the antimatter bomb fell into one of the large pits created by the shuttle's heavy weaponry.

There was a moment's pause when Sean wondered if it hadn’t worked before the shuttle shuddered and bucked as the ground below them exploded into a ball of white light. Sean was thrown to the side violently as the AI pilot struggled to stabilize the ship as they rapidly were shoved violently upwards by the blastwave.

Sean blinked hard as his eyes bathed with radiation went fuzzy and blurry. He was lucky the ship's electronics were hardened so even this much radiation wouldn’t destroy them. The ship kept moving upwards and gradually, Sean’s vision cleared as his regeneration outpaced the damage. Fires raged all over the nearby forest, the shock wave from the blast having leveled the trees for miles around.

Where the bomb had hit was a massive crater carved into the ground, still smoldering and shifting as the tunnels underneath continued to collapse.

“Ship, search for any images matching the human form from the site of the blast.”

“Orders confirmed. We are being hailed by the planetary government. Accept call?”

“No. Any signs?”

“No images matching human profiles visible in the wreckage.”

“Keep scanning. Return to the ground so we have a closer look,” Sean said.

“Scanning… Refusing hails from the planetary government is illegal and can…”

“I can talk to them later,” Sean barked, “After we find Lira.”

“Weapons of multiple incoming ships are fixed on our shuttle,” the ship replied, “If their hails are not answered then they have the legal justification to shoot this vessel down.”

“Fine…” Sean said reluctantly, “Put them through. But the second you have a hit on your scan, you inform me no matter what happens. Is that understood?”

“Understood. Accepting comms hails.”

Sean looked at the screen in front of him as a severe voice on the other side of the line started speaking. He really hoped he hadn’t dropped that antimatter bomb for nothing in his panic to save her…