“Valiant men and woman of the SMCAF Fleet! A grateful humanity sends you forth to fight in our greatest crusade. You and your fellow soldiers will soon take part in an overwhelming assault directed against our enemy on every front. The coming battle will be the culmination of the largest starship mobilization in history. Your victory today will turn the tide of this war, your sacrifices enshrined forever in the hearts of a grateful people. Humanity will persevere because of you!”

  -Admiral Aleksander Ramsey addressing SMCAF on the eve of the Final Offensive

  Altaire IV was a stark white sphere lost in the vast fringes of the known galaxy. It hung quietly in half forgotten anonymity bathed in the dim white light of its dying star. This unremarkable world spun on as it always had when a forlorn ship appeared high above its icy surface. In an instant it was there. Soundlessly slipping out of folded space the immense wedge-shaped metallic craft tumbled helplessly through a black sea of stars. Smoke and debris spewed from tears in its smooth gray hull as the crippled craft plummeted towards its inevitable destruction. Lights flickered behind blood smeared portholes.

  “What the hell was that?” Jakob yelled over the hissing crackle of plasma shot whizzing past him. The metal bones of the ship groaned as the sterile white overhead lights went out. The long curving corridor flexed and buckled as the dim red alarm lights flashed on.

  “I think we fell out of warp space,” exclaimed Liz as she reached him. Pressed against the opposite wall with a Mk. V plasma rifle in her gloved hands the fleet lieutenant had donned a standard full body survival suit. The grey and white garment they both wore allowed survival in even the most extreme circumstances. The look of concern on her face meant they were probably going to need them. “The reactor must have been damaged when engineering got overrun. We could be anywhere now.”

  “Shit”

  A hoarse cry echoed through the corridor as Jakob cursed their situation. The wet raspy howl of a dozen savage voices soon joined it. Dark shapes hissed and slithered from the far end of the smoke-filled hall. Liz quickly snapped another ammo clip into her rifle as Jakob lobbed a concussion grenade down the hallway. It detonated with a meaty screech as Liz unloaded another clip at the jagged forms still lurching through the blood and gore that painting the walls blue with vile smelling alien entrails.

  “Retreat!” Liz cried as a ragged form crumpled at her feet, a talon like hand twitching as it went still against the blue blood-soaked tile. Jakob lobbed another grenade and joined her. They sealed the hatch knowing it would only buy them a few moments time. The door shook on its hinges with each progressively loud thump on the other side. “Damn bastards don’t know when to give up,” Jakob complained. He caught the flash of black feathery down and a hawkish red eye behind the thick square glass before turning to run.

  “Jakob look out!”

  Something had turned the corner ahead of them. Standing nearly 6 feet tall on gangly digitigrade legs the hunched over creature looked like some twisted bipedal cross between a crow and a cockroach. It held its clawed hands up to its down draped torso like a mantis as it scrutinized them with big red almond shaped eyes. The black feathers covering its arms and body bristled as it stared at them with animalistic spite. Red blood dribbled from its open maw as the pointed four piece beaky plates of its flat oval face unfurled like a flower. The remains of its human meal lay scattered across the floor. It did not even have time to scream. Jakob sent round after round of sizzling energized plasma though its dull black carapace as the steaming hole riddled corpse crumpled to the floor. Liz had to stop him from burning a hole in the hull. “Jakob hold your fire!”

  “They’ve killed us all!” He screamed as he stomped the smoking corpse. The ship lurched violently as another distant explosion rippled through the hull.

  Jakob braced himself against the wall as Liz stared wide eyed at the flames beginning to lick at the portholes. The ship could not survive atmospheric reentry without shields, and they had lost them with the reactor.

  “Planet fall evacuation protocol now in effect,” an automated female voice repeated unnecessarily as Jakob and Liz began to chase after the arrows which had appeared in the white tiled floors. They didn’t stop running, frantically stumbling through rapidly spinning corridors strewn with bodies and smeared with blood. They kept pace with each other even as they felt and heard the ship come apart around them. There was enough human carnage for them to seal the escape pod hatch behind them without regrets. The muffled sounds of explosions tearing through the metallic flesh of the ship rang out with increasing ferocity as they strapped themselves into two of the many available seats.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Liz input her credential code and initiated premature launch override protocols. No one else was alive to join them. As Jakob closed his eyes in preparation for the sudden crushing G-lock, he caught a glimpse of clawed fists scratching and pounding at the hatch window. Even with the ship coming apart around them the bastards still wanted nothing else but to get inside and kill. The explosive bolts connecting the pod to the launch rail went off in an instant and the pod tore away. Detecting harsh light as it slid out of the launch tunnel, the windows automatically darkened as the pod spiraled through the black void of space. Jakob and Liz watched dumbfounded as they saw the once great form of their ship fall away like a leaf and fold in on itself in an incredible ball of blue fire. Jakob pounded at the wall as a tear rolled down Liz’s pale face. Below them stretched a seemingly endless white horizon as the flames licking at their pod dissipated. They tumbled for several long seconds through layers of blue-black sky before the onboard computer decided to deploy three glimmering foil parachutes. Their pod lurched then slowly descended through a clear blue sky streaked with fire and smoke.

  Scorched black by reentry and covering in white steam as it settled into a hill of soft snow a pod rolled over as its parachutes fell limply to the ground. The air was still and quiet, the flat tundra peppered with jagged red cones of hard root like material. When the cylindrical pod rolled to a stop the door was ejected into the ice with a dull thump. This pods lone occupant timidly climbed out into the open. A large vaporous cloud formed with each of his ragged breathes as he surveyed the bleak landscape around him. He shivered, arms clutching his chest. His survival suit could warm him but just barely. His young face was red and filled with fear. The name printed above the barcode on his breast pocket read ‘Taylor’. The blue chevrons on his sleeves marked him as a member of the bridge crew, a helmsman third class. He looked up at the pieces of his ship burning up high above him with a special despair. Falling to his knees in the waist deep snow he began to cry. White frozen streaks coated his face by the time he managed to get back up and return to the pod. It was now frigid cold inside, but what he was after was the survival gear. He threw open the storage compartment anticipating the pop-up tent and blankets but instead found a gaping hole filled with snow. Debris had gouged a hole in his pod and scattered the supplies to the wind. Calming himself Taylor rushed to the other side of the pod where he found cabinets filled with rations and the radio.

  “Hello anybody?” he gasped with vaporous breathes. He heard nothing but static. He had no hope of contacting anybody off world with this kind of equipment but hopefully someone else had survived the destruction of his ship. He crushed the mic in his gloved hands as the long seconds went on and despair filled his heart. What if he was the only survivor? The ship had been over run, not to mention the casualties in battle. He had seen the bodies. He had wasted precious moments waiting for somebody to join him in the pod. Nobody had come. “Hello? Anybody out there?” He let the mic dangle from its cord and hung his face in his hands. As he sobbed a voice responded. She seemed just as glad to hear him as he did her.

  “Yes, Hello I read you over!” he quickly responded. “You can’t imagine how glad I am to hear you. I came down alone.” He waited.

  “Have you managed to reach anybody?” she asked abruptly. There was obvious concern in her voice.

  “No, you’re the only one. How many got onto your pod?”

  “Just one other.” she replied sadly. Taylor frowned. At least he was not alone he thought. For now, though it meant the rest of the crew of the SMCAF Orion was lost. Humanity had lost more good men and woman that it could no longer afford to lose.

  “Can you hear me?” the voice on the radio called out. Abject sadness had paralyzed him. It was an affliction now shared by most of the Human race.

  Humanity had once proliferated amongst the stars. That had been long before his birth, before the outlying colonies had encountered the Syncline. Vicious and without mercy they had swept across the colonial frontier like a raging fire claiming system after system with their evil symbol, a curious stylized chevron. A panicked colonial geologic survey team had described it as a syncline during the first known attack and the name had stuck. Nobody even knew what the Syncline called themselves. They had no known language, had never attempted contact, and showed no mercy. Within a decade humanity was pushed back from its colonial holdings, fighting to exist. The major powers, the Western Sphere alliance, the Czarist Union and the Eurasian Mining Guild set aside their differences to form the Supreme Military Combined Allied Force. Unified under the banner of SMCAF, humanity fought as one. Tens of billions had been slaughtered since then.

  Taylor had been just a child when Humanity had lost its final catastrophic battle on Earth. Routed, an orphaned humanity had fled into space with the Syncline in rabid pursuit. Now less than a hundred million humans existed spread amongst the scattered remnants of their war ravaged fleet hidden in the nebula which had become humanities redoubt. Taylor still felt the stinging loss of his parents and the pain of losing his friends was just too much to bear. Janice, Samuel, Marcus, and Jakob were all gone. As he broke down sobbing Taylor heard another voice crackle over the radio.

  “Who is that? Quit your crying and man up. Damn it! We need to stick together if we have any chance of making it out of this alive,” growled Jakob’s familiar voice over the background static. Taylor jolted with renewed life grasping for the microphone.

  “Jakob is that you?” he cried.

  “Taylor?” Jakob asked in surprise. Taylor heard the female voice ask, “You know him?”

  “You remember Liz from the science division? We are coming for you just hang tight,” Jakob said.

  "No!" Taylor sniffled. “I’ll come for you.”

  “What? No stay put!” Jakob demanded. Taylor had made up his mind though. He was going to find his friend he thought as he jumped back out into the frigid snowfield.