Original Sci-Fi Short Story

To Kill a Titan

by Tom Laspisa

DISTRESS SIGNAL 083: COALITION RESEARCH VESSEL PRECURSOR OVERRUN BY MARAUDER FORCES IN ORBIT ABOVE PLANET DRAYZA—083 CLUSTER 16 SECTOR 39 QUADRANT 2. INVALUABLE DATA AND CARGO ABOARD VESSEL. REQUESTING IMMEDIATE MILITARY BACKUP.

The lights were dimmed and the room was chilled. Plates of metal clanked slightly with a sudden lean or cross of the legs. Mission briefing was underway for the small force of Galactic Coalition commandos. And the Captain’s voice was grim.

“Each of you is assigned to a Marauder research or harvesting facility on the surface of Drayza. As you know, the Marauders have stolen data from the Precursor and since then have begun invasions of nearby planets, including Terol, Retrin, and Seer.”

Seer was Titan Squad’s home planet.

“What you don’t know, is how they’ve been able to do it. No, their numbers have not increased, and their tactics are still the same. Their soldiers, however, are not. The research stolen from the Precursor included data concerning a new elemental compound recently found only on Drayza, which the research team had coined as ‘Drayzone’. When introduced to a bioform’s system, the compound acts as a type of extreme stimulant or steroid, causing the subject’s systems to run on constant overdrive. It acts like an intense adrenaline rush and allows the recipient’s strength, endurance, and speed to reach vast limits. However, the substance has been found to induce extreme physical pain, and the recipient’s lifespan is significantly lessened due to the bodily systems functioning at increased speeds. Marauders have set up stations for further research and mining of Drayzone.”

Cobal—Titan’s commander, 01—leaned forward in anticipation. The fifty other commandos in the room became just as intrigued.

“The Marauders have been using the chemical to create elite soldiers and continue their invasion campaigns with ease. Our previous military actions in Cluster 16 have been failures, including our attempt to retake the Precursor. However, before the attack we had been receiving all research data, as well as samples of the Drayzone compound. Executive orders have been made to request volunteers of our own elite soldiers to be infused with Drayzone. That’s where you come in. Your squads will infiltrate your assigned facility, extract any valuable data and destroy all operating systems of said facility. We want to stop the spread of this threat at the source. The Marauder forces guarding those stations are too strong for our standard military, and we can’t lose the element of surprise. But you commandos as Coalition super soldiers will be plenty. File into the medical bay for infusion, and after recovery specific mission objectives will be given. Godspeed, commandos.”

The med bay was even colder than the briefing room, and the clinical atmosphere always made Cobal uneasy. The chair braced his limbs in place and locked. Tanks filled with a thick, blue liquid were attached to the chair, as tubes and several injection ports followed after. The ports were lowered towards Cobal’s limbs. For Seer. I’m doing it for Seer. The ports plunged into his flesh and pumped the hued, heavy fluid into his veins. Sweat collected on his brow. It’s for Seer. Every muscle twitched and later convulsed. The sludge set his insides ablaze, and the stuff, like magma, crawled slowly, setting fire to every nerve. Screams and cut-off grunts reverberated off the walls… And then, blackness…

Cobal jolted awake in a medical bed next to Droll, Mondo, and Sly, the still out-cold other Titan members 02, 03, and 04. Still reeling from the molten burns, Cobal winced and gritted his teeth. It’s for Seer. He was alert and felt vigorous, though his muscles pulsed in both energy and agony, screaming like the countdown to his own destruction had begun. But is it worth it?

The engines of the drop ship, Isis hummed as the metal bird raced to the surface. The pilot clicked on the communications.

“Welcome to 083-Drayza, Titan Squad.” Glowing, bluish plants and tree-like organisms littered the planet’s surface. The ship descended below the canopy while red lightning and acidic rain layered the darkened sky. “We’re dropping you off just outside the Marauder’s sensor range so you’ll have to trek your way from here.” Titan heaved with anxiety and the pump of Drayzone. Visors illuminated in the dim of the ship, and weapons were locked and readied. Titan’s enhanced suits filtered Drayzone energy into the retractable gun barrels protruding from their suit’s arms, and their ordnance included extra compound stims. Each suit continued to emit steam as they pressurized with the descent. At last, they hovered above the muddied ground. Titan Squad rappelled to the ground and set out for the research station.

Droll sighed and the intercom buzzed with his voice, “Not a bad place, you know; I wouldn’t mind being stationed here.” They were all amazed that Droll could keep up with his own personality while the compound still scorched their innards and they were all on edge.

Mondo’s gruff tone piped in, “Are you serious? Already the atmosphere is too heavy.”

“Well, at least it’s pretty. And I’m curious as to what these plants taste like. I’d imagine better than what we got back on the Colossus.”

“Judging by the way some of them move I’d say they’re thinking the same about you.”

“Cobal clicked in, “Keep the comm clear. 04, how far are we looking to the station?”

Sly’s cutting tone clicked on, “We’re looking at three miles until we hit a duct to lead us under and into the station.” Titan rummaged on, through the muck and flushed plants. “Although, this weather is quite beautiful.” The darkness of the air matched Sly’s voice, and Titan knew he wasn’t joking about the horrid place.

“Split up, Titan. We need to cover three separate consoles for corruption. Sly, you take the main terminal to the North and extract as much data as you can while the rest of us take down the rest of the system. Mondo, take the Western terminal while Droll and I take the Eastern one.” Cobal’s body was aching to be overworked at this point and nerves jumped.

The ducts occasionally dripped with the acidic rain as it seeped through the ground above them and their tactical lamps were the only light in the manufactured tunnels. Step by step, each member of Titan made their way through the ducts. Tink after tink, Cobal pressed onwards, with Droll following on his six, noticing an occasional iridescent flow of roots crawling down the duct walls.

Above them, they could hear deep, distant screams that sounded familiar in a way, though still totally foreign. The echo in the dark moved the thick air around them. The sound carried on and was the only audio besides their own footsteps. Endless echoing ensued in the tunnels yet no other noises were heard from the station. Dead silence sat behind the howling. And Titan walked on.

The comm-link crackled with the voice of Cobal. “Keep wary, Titan…”

Sly pitched in, “Titan 04 here, I’ve reached the circuit systems below the main console. Disabling security and moving in now…” Sly cut off the security systems to the room and entered quieter than even he anticipated. The control of his limbs was incredible, though they still sizzled in apprehension for a rush. Two Marauder patrols lay dead in the area, recently killed. Hunched yet still easily at a height of at least seven feet, the patrols would not have been killed so easily. Their jaws lay hung on their faces, rows of teeth bare and sleek alien bodies broken and mangled.

Sly cut in again, “Titan Squad be advised: I’ve got two scum dead on the ground in the main console room, though it doesn’t appear that there has been any other infiltration of the facility. The deaths were within the last day or so. I’m still extracting and transmitting the data to the Colossus now and I’ll be out soon.”

“Copy that, 04,” Mondo replied. “I’m nearing the Western end now.”

Mondo paced a bit harder and arrived at the Western terminal. He shut down security and moved in similarly as Sly had done. No one was in the Western terminal room as far as he could see. “Titan, I’m alone in the Western terminal room. There are no Marauders yet… Slicing terminal now.” Where are they? The quiet was heavy on his ears.

Then, out of the corner came a shift in the shadow of the room, and a repulsive growl filled Mondo’s audio. A hulking Marauder threw itself at him and Mondo returned fire. The bolts of searing energy only hit the shoulder of the beast and it charged him to the ground. Mondo rolled with the strength of the Drayzone and wrestled the head of the enemy. The fiend kicked and lashed out, amazingly crushing metal pylons above the duct entrance and sealing it with the fallen ceiling. Mondo fed blazing rounds into the beast’s mouth and it melted from the inside out, dead.

A few pants in silence as the terminal was finally corrupted. Then, the aftershock settled in as a rush of clanking feet began to grow louder towards the Western terminal room. “Titan Squad, we have enemy contact! Repeat: we have enemy contact!” And Titan 03—Mondo—was stuck.

Cobal immediately responded, “Copy that, 03! Are you on your way out?”

“No chance, 01; the duct entrance collapsed and I’m holed up in here!” The doors to the room shook.

“Copy! 04, can you make your way to 03’s position?”

Sly came through, “On my way now.” And Mondo’s body pulsed in anguish and rage as the compound slithered its way through his bloodstream, scalding with every pump.

Cobal and Droll raced through the remainder of the underground corridor and ended up into a hangar bay. The lights flickered in random spurts, revealing a hangar full of nothing but Marauder bodies, and a pool of blue around one of them. “They’re going mad from the stuff, or mad with power… They’re killing each other,” Cobal’s voice was coarse.

“Nasty stuff. Horrid business…” Droll’s mood had changed in an instant, and both commandos looked through to each other in dread. Will this be us?

The two moved into the Eastern terminal chamber, slicing the console as quickly as possible. They moved back out into the open hangar and passed a medical bay with a single light illuminating a disturbed infusion chair, above where their previous position had been in the tunnel. Before they could react, four Drayzone Marauders circled and closed in, firing weapons similar to their own fused rifles upon their suits. The commandos leapt out of the circle, previously-untapped energy radiating in their bodies. With speed and agility unknown to them until this moment, the two literally leaped off of walls and climbed up levels of the hangar to escape as the Marauders chased them down. Cobal was able to hold one off long enough while two jumped onto Droll and the three all plummeted to the hangar floor. With a massive kick, Cobal broke the face of the alien under him and rushed to the aid of Titan 02. Droll managed to break the arm of one of the Marauders and fire shots into its chest, but another ran up and the two remaining Marauders twisted Droll’s body into a spiral and his torso was bent and turned around. Droll lay limp as the beasts drank the Drayzone that spilled out of his body as blood. As the aliens were distracted with the feast, Cobal delivered ending shots to the remaining Marauders. He gave a last glance to his fallen comrade thinking to himself, Nasty stuff… Horrid business… He then got onto the intercom while speeding back down the ducts saying, “Titan 02 is down! Droll is dead!” The comm peaked with a shout from Mondo.

The doors to the Western room broke, and Mondo sent rains of bolts down on the horde of mad aliens now upon him. Back to the wall, Titan commando 03 exhausted his Drayzone through his rifle and dropped to a knee. Still holding his ground and spilling Drayzone-fused blood across the dimmed room, Sly came up from behind the horde and dismembered several of them. Now facing a two-front skirmish, the horde was slaughtered. But as the last beast was killed, claws raked into Sly’s body from behind by a gargantuan Drayzone Marauder, and Titan 04 dropped. The alien recently pumped itself further with the compound and was now bleeding some of the stuff as excess. Mondo was physically spent and his body screamed at the use of Drayzone. He injected the extra stims into his body as his last resort and rushed with pain and malice. Drayzone seeped out of his veins like the Marauder before him and into his suit. He pumped the brute with bolts and the creature eventually collapsed. And all Cobal could hear was the peaking of Mondo’s voice as his body gave in to the overload of Drayzone. Cobal cried, “03! Titan 03, Mondo, do you copy!? Mondo!? Titan 04, do you read!? Titan Squad, come in!” And the buzz of the unused communications line answered him.

He called the drop ship. “Drop ship, Isis, come in! Requesting immediate evac at extraction coordinates 652!”

The comm clicked in, “Roger that, titan. Heading in now for extraction.” And the bird raced in again to planetside.

Cobal sprinted through the ducts at speeds unknown to any of his kind. Flashes of light were emitted behind him as Marauders hungry for his infused flesh and blood fired bolt after bolt. With each flash came a glint from a row of teeth, or the hollowness of their eyes. Flashes. Darkness. Scrambling of feet and roars grew even louder. Then another flash. And one would appear with teeth bare in front of him. Or to the side. Or another behind him. He pushed through some and unloaded rounds into the many behind him. His flesh was tearing. His blood spilling and burning him inside and out. The Drayzone was taking its toll. He emerged from the tunnels above ground and the acid rain poured down in heaps upon the surface, and the reddened storm above collected in mounds of charged atmospheric clouds. Out of the lightning came the Isis. And out from everywhere came the beasts. The drop ship lowered through the canopy of blue and opened fire, canons decimating beast after beast. Cobal fired his last rounds in torment. For Seer. For Titan. For home. Blackness took him and his body, and as his flesh tore apart, he collapsed at the extraction point. Or for this chemical weapon?

Cobal awoke back in the medical bay on the Coalition frigate, Colossus. The medical reports came through. His body had miraculously accepted and survived on the Drayzone compound before his body gave out. His new strength remained, and his lifespan was still shortened, but the pain from the compound had lessened to an aching. He heard the Captain speak. “We’re amazed at what went on down there. The other squads had similar encounters and full-fledged war is now with the planet over the Drayzone. We’re glad to have you back, Titan 01, and it’s a good thing that the extra data was received. You are now one of our most valuable commandos. Welcome back, Cobal.”

 He had become the Coalition’s first full super soldier. But his squad was dead because of the want of this substance. Was it worth it? He was now a weapon. But will I end up like the beasts? With time, will I turn? Despite his questions, he only knew his job in war. At least until then, he would avenge Seer and Titan. And his squad will live if he can live. He will avenge them. Those damned beasts will know that it will take more than a bullet now to kill a Titan.