File 1.5 - Portrait of a Nightmare

Partially dug into the earth following a rough emergency landing was a small ship. The ship was long and rounded on its corners painted an off white. There were scorch marks and shielding plates missing from parts of the hull. A little smoke and heat dripped out the rear of the ship along its thrusters. Inside the crew worked on getting their supplies together, thrown apart from the ship’s entry.

Callein marched through the entry to the cockpit where Rinn ran diagnostics on the ship. They crashed nearly two hours ago leaving them wide open to detection. Their mission risked compromise if they couldn’t get the ship moving soon. “What’s the status of repairs?”

“This would be a lot easier if we had an engineer. Half of the systems on this bucket were thrown together haphazardly. They didn’t know what they were doing.”

“Well no one’s done atmospheric entry in a long time and the records were all lost from that time.”

“It wasn’t the atmosphere that’s the problem, Commander. Even without records it’s pretty straightforward. It’s the shield that they didn’t understand. It’s not entirely physical or energy, but it acts in a manner across both and any electronics or machinery interacting with the shield was affected.”

“Alright, but how long? You’ve been going for two hours.”

“As I was saying, most of the ship touched the shield at some point and so systems throughout are possibly fried or malfunctioning. If the ship wasn’t so hastily prepared and worked like a normal transport I’d be able to find the problems. However, I’ve been just trying to learn what they did to this thing.”

“Well we can’t do anything right now. So if you need assistance we’re available.”

“Once I know what needs to be fixed,” Rinn returned hopeful before going back to the computer interface.

Callein marched back into the cargo hold of the ship, which accounted for the bulk of the room. The seats for his team were empty as they were about the hold. Most of the supplies were finally back in order. In the back near the rear loading dock were the six Second Skins, humanoid appearing machines operated by a human pilot, outfitted specifically for combat within the Earth. They were all test Skins leaving the Commander slightly uneasy about their efficiency in combat, but that was one of their objectives. There was always one pilot in a Skin running in low power consumption to be ready in case they needed to engage whatever the devils of the Earth sent at them.

The Skins locked secure to the ship in a seated position. Callein approached the lone Skin that quietly hummed the electronics and hardware of the cockpit. He climbed up the leg of the humanoid shaped machine to the shoulder. The entry hatch remained open as the faint glow of the two-hundred seventy degree hemi-spherical display screen crept out. Callein leaned over the shoulder near the head camera of the machine looking down into the tunnel towards the pilot seat. “Pol! I’m relieving you!”

“Understood, Commander!” The commander stepped back and jumped down the machine as Polsen Wells began to climb up out of the shaft by the rails. His machine’s electronic whirring slowly came to a stop as systems shut down while the core recharged the energy cell. Wells jumped down his Skin as the Commander had with the same experienced reflexes of a veteran pilot.

The team’s newbie staring off from the small circular window caught his attention. “Enjoying the view?”

“Oh, Ensign Wells, sir! I’m sorry, sir!” flustered the newbie feeling a little nervous for having been caught distracted rather than working. She turned around and stiffened her position coming to attention for him, being that he was an officer and higher rank than her. Like everyone, she wore her pilot suit, however not being an officer the color scheme was black as a base with purple.

Wells took a step back not being too fond of the formality shown. He liked it when it was important, but it wasn’t now. His arms waved with his words to stop the conditioned reaction. “Hey! At ease. No need to be so formal right now. Just call me Wells or you can call me Dual Shot…um…Warrant Officer.” When he was getting to the end of his words started to lay it on pretty thick.

New she was, an idiot she was not. She gave him a cold, hopefully refreshing, look with her words. “It’s Warrant Officer Schir Mille, sir!”

The ensign coughed a couple times realizing that he was being cut off. He knew when to stop and changed the subject quickly. “Uh…right… So what were you looking at?”

“Oh nothing specific. It’s just amazing. All of the stories that have been told about the Earth.” Schir stepped back, turning her head towards the small window pointing out to Wells the scenery. Where they parked gave an expansive view of green fields with some farms nearby and low mountains in the distance.

Wells took a quick look, though he had already, and while noting it found it to be uninteresting. The rest of the team held thoughts similar with Schir finding it to be an almost shocking contrast to what everyone took for granted. Most children heard ghost stories and things that would give them nightmares about horrific imagery to depict the Earth. For them to finally be able to actually see it gave a strange pause. “Were you expecting it to be all covered in fire like the priests say?”

“Well no…I don’t know maybe… It’s just not like I imagined. It looks so peaceful, sort of like Equuleus.”

“It’s not all peaceful… Some of it still looks like Hell.” He pointed to the opposite side of the ship to the window that was the portal to Hell, but not in the traditional depiction. An eerie purple fog that sat as a meter layer strangled the other side of the land within sight. Adding to the landscape was the dark clouds tainted by the environment and storming further away. All the land was rough and barren as an endless wasteland utterly devoid of anything. The further away the darker and more menacing it appeared, almost having a life of its own that compelled one to stare on until nothing was left but a husk of a person.

“I wonder what happened?” There were many stories told depending on who was talking. The religious claimed that God descended upon Earth and wiped it clean of sin that had so heavily burdened the planet. Scientists fell more divided in their theories since the records for before the disaster no longer existed. The most common theory was that it was a massive natural disaster either of cosmic origin, such as an asteroid or comet, or planetary disaster. The less considered theory was that it was man’s own fault through some explosion or virus. The average citizen believed the Earth used up to a point everyone had to leave and it was simply a wasteland of old cities and people creating a literal graveyard over the entire surface. No one was certain of anything, but one fact. There was someone still living on the planet or else there never would have been Eridanus Day.