The Void Calls by K.D. Karnik

Author:K.D. Karnik
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: F.W.P Publishing
Published: 2021-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

-13-

HOJAKA didn’t know when her bayonets and guns got deployed. The suit acted of its own accord, pumping her full with happiness chemicals and alien drugs. She roared, her neck seeming to tear apart. Aliens popped out of existence around her, aliens flew up towards the ceiling, humanoid or hideous or incomprehensible ghosts appeared and disintegrated like naughty quantum particles. Someone died. She didn’t know who, hoped it was just one of the privates she’d brought along on her mission all the way from Chamaka without bothering to even talk to. They still respected, followed me. I’m good enough.

I need to do extra effort to tread carefully here, to create a whole experienceable world for your sake just so I can send you on a relatively simple mission. Get those blue-skinned idotic fleshboxes, then get out of here, so the place is clear of abominations and pollutants.

Who the heck is speaking that to me? Get your—

“Captain!”

Someone was beating her up. Kicking her face because she'd lost her foothold and had almost flown off to her death before Gongh had caught her helmet. Her entire goddamn team was trying to pull her back down to the surface, swinging once, twice, as Rahat scanned her mag-boots for whatever glitches had almost taken her life, and she was neither scared nor ashamed. Because there were no glitches in this universe. The suit powered up again, and she started seeing her people below her and her surroundings once again, instead of the blue-white haze that had become ... One last swing, and her mag-boots locked on to the surface.

“The gate, Captain,” Rahat said. He sounded hoarse. Childish, too. Everyone was childish. She was old. “We reached it ... you okay, Cap?”

“I am,” Hojaka hissed back at them, blinking to steady her mind. The gate. Right. Behind her, the sprawling hordes continued to ignore them. There were no more aliens ahead. They’d crossed the final—no, they’d killed the whole twenty-thousand aliens who’d blocked the way out of the circle to the gate’s foot.

Her comm bleeped. Bhikaji. “I’m getting mauled, madam,” the milky corporal’s voice said. Several seconds of incomprehensible chatter and interference. “Do ... go ... I ... come. No worries. Haan—”

Overhead, the golden river poured out of a crevice at the foot of the gate, and descended upon the Marines like a waterfall out of heaven, disappearing right above the reach of Hojaka’s fingertip. Not a single drop of liquid wetted them. And the smoother-than-smoothness surface of the gate invited them to climb it. To touch it. To mingle, renounce. To die. If they weren’t already dead. It didn’t feel like a hatch the size of France now. It felt alien.

The Marines spotted a flashing hole in the wall on their HUDs—at the rim of the gate. A metallic cave a few meters above them and on the bank of the golden river. She lifted the bombs in her hands, which glued to her like they were her own organs, and the Marines jumped.

Three

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