The Expansion Box Set by Devon C. Ford

Author:Devon C. Ford [Ford, Devon C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-07-30T06:00:00+00:00

Long seconds ticked by until she couldn’t bear the inactivity any longer. Nothing showed on her suit’s HUD. Whatever he had seen or heard was imperceptible to her. Commander Leslie Brandt was not a woman taken to flights of fancy or possessing a superstitious mentality, but she had an ominously bad feeling creeping up from the pit of her stomach.

“Specter,” she whispered into the helmet, knowing that her voice would be carried over their wireless connection to play in perfect clarity for him. “What’s the deal?”

Specter, the man who had once been the commander’s friend and fellow United Nations Peacekeeper but who was now cybernetically rebuilt, answered her. She had learned over the last few weeks not to call him by the name she had known him as, but that self-enforced distance didn’t stop his words from chilling her skin and making the tiny hairs stand up, His response prompted an involuntary shudder that she tried to control.

“There’s something here, Commander,” he said. “It isn’t registering on the HUD, but there is something nearby. Something alive.”

“How do you know?” came the sweet but steely voice of the other female on the team, Amare Eze.

“Because I think I’m looking at it,” Specter answered icily, “and I think it’s looking straight at me.”

“What can you see?” Brandt whispered as she fought to control her tensed muscles. She was painfully aware that the cover she was behind—a small tree with black, moist bark—was just cover from view. It wouldn’t protect her from any dangerous projectiles. Her mind flew off on a wild tangent, wondering if whatever alien was stalking them could camouflage itself and if it would have weaponry capable of carving through the wood and her armor behind it.

“Humanoid, tall,” Specter said softly, his body unmoving. “Large eyes.”

“Increase optical wavelength,” Eze’s voice said from behind and to her right. “Turn it right down to the end of the visible light spectrum.”

“It’s already dialed down to red light spectrum,” Brandt answered.

“I know, mine too. Just… just wiggle it around a little,” Eze told her.

Brandt did so, scrolling through the menu with her eyes and activating the controls she needed without moving her body to twitch the spectrum up and down. The slight change in the depth of the shadows gave away her adjustment, and in that bending light she saw the faint outline of what Specter had seen.

Thin limbs that seemed insufficient to support the weight of the large head that bore big, black elliptical eyes. She gasped, her brain registering the actual proof of the existence of alien life standing thirty paces from her.

It turned its head, looking directly at her.

No way it could have heard me, she thought. My suit is sealed.

The figure cocked its head, very slowly, as if regarding her before taking any action. Brandt’s fingers tightened involuntarily on the grip of her weapon. As if sensing the fear-induced threat of violence, the alien recoiled and moved backwards fast into shadow as a series of croaks and rattling clicks sounded in their ears.

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