Foundation of All

Sean remembered Mom’s strained smile as she went outside of town for the last time. He had never thought that it would be her last…

“Sean!" Intuli shouted over the speaker just above Sean's head, "Quit staring into space and get back to work, unless you want to end up like your parents!”

Sean suppressed his anger at the man as he refocused on the bulky scanner in his hands. He held it up to the perimeter defense turret silently. Intuli was the son of the Chief Elder and had received his position of Perimeter Warden through nepotism alone. You think being responsible for the safety of the village would lead to Intuli at least doing something useful. But no, all it did was let him to lord his cruelty over everyone else while he was doing it, so proud of his position he hadn't earned.

The scanner beeped and a hologram of the internals of the machine appeared in front of Sean with reddish and blue highlights to show the wear on the parts. He inspected it for a moment to make sure the whole thing was scanned properly, before switching to another setting and repeating the process. He was scanning all two hundred and forty-four turret emplacements around the village over the day, and was only halfway finished. He would go over the holograms later and see what parts he would need to switch out on his next trip.

Sean stared out over the green fields of crops between the defensive line and the village proper. All cultivated by automated drones, Sean was the only person who ever had to leave the village. Besides the hunters of course. But the meat they brought back was not necessary, only something to increase the variety to their diet.

Enguli was a harsh planet teeming to the brim with hostile wildlife and their turrets saw frequent use. If a larger group of the hostile wildlife assaulted him at the moment Sean could be overrun and killed before he could flee to the village perimeter and internal defenses. The hunters only went out if a hive or den settled nearby and began growing too large or aggressive, their purpose more as a defensive force against the beasts than true hunters for food.

It still burned at him that the elders had forced his mother to continue the dangerous patrols. Even after his father had been killed in an unlucky attack from a hive that had gone unnoticed by the hunters. They hadn’t wanted to risk one of the general engineers, instead making the undesirables do it instead. He seethed as he performed the rest of his scans for the day, Intuli occasionally popping in from the speakers to give a snide comment or insult him for being lazy. Like Intuli would ever risk his precious self for an instant in the service of the community. Sean finished the last scan and started his way back with a long sigh.

He couldn’t believe that he was the only one left. The only one that… that had first hand experience fixing the turrets. It was the role of their family for dozens of generations and now he was the only one who knew outside of a simulation or specifications manual out of a village of hundreds. Intuli and his idiotic father seemed to think that they should just force the general engineers to learn all the little quirks or intricacies of the machines, or install corporate insured turrets. They would do away with their hard earned independence from the rest of the galaxy.

Foolish... Sean’s parents had told him some of the horrors of the wider world and universe. He still had nightmares sometimes, waking up in a sweat after imagining a Plaguebringer had come to the village and left only empty buildings and bloated corpses in their wake. Breathing out pestilence and plague with every one of their rotted breaths. And on a more practical note they were out of the influence of galaxy wide entities that would crush them under their boots if the town became too dependent on them. Any one of them hunting through the galaxy looking to pounce on any sign of weakness to bend the village to their influence.

Sean waited patiently in front of the forcefield walling off the fields of crops. Intuli made him wait a long five minutes outside, before begrudgingly lowering Sean’s section of the shield so he could walk back inside. At least Intuli didn’t bother him as he made his way home. Sean unlocked the door with his keycard and entered the small apartment. What used to be his family's apartment. He stared longingly at the empty room that his mother used to occupy only months ago. Then he sighed and after cleaning himself off went to his room and collapsed into bed after a quick nutripaste meal. He was exhausted after the long day, and from having to bite his tongue as Intuli berated him out of what seemed to be boredom more than anything else. At least Sean could spend the next week or so going over the scans and creating a schedule for himself for his maintenance trips on the turrets. That was work where he wouldn't have to deal with other people for a while at least.

He drifted off to sleep, dreaming of spare parts and repair procedures. At least it distracted him from the loneliness and the void he felt in his chest. At least he was continuing his parents legacy even after their deaths. He wondered if they would be proud of him now...

Sean walked past the council building, only to frown as he saw an unfamiliar man inside with the elders. Intuli also stood there straight backed in a formal uniform. Sean slowed his pace and lingered at the threshold and Intuli turned and spotted him in the distance. Seeing his gaze, the stranger turned as well and Sean saw the logo plastered on the breast of the man’s sharp suit.

He clenched his jaw and had to restrain himself from marching over there. They were talking with someone from the Ruska State?! Sean’s parents had told him how that country treated towns that fell under their control; they would all be nothing more than slaves if they gained a foothold here. Ruled by soulless regulations of a government spanning hundreds of systems that would evict them and replace them with automated drones before considering humoring them from disagreeing with even their smallest regulation.

The man wasn’t even wearing a filtration mask. What if he was carrying a Plaguebringer disease from some other world? They didn’t have the medical technology here to cure something or create rapid vaccines if one of them caught something from the man. The elders were risking all their lives by bringing the man here. Sean nearly walked inside the building and lifted his leg before forcefully stopping himself. He schooled his face as the elders and Ruska corporation representative turned to stare at him. He lowered his leg and with some difficulty turned around and marched off in a much worse mood than before. The elders already hated him enough with the goading of Intuli’s father, no need to make it any worse for himself. They wouldn't listen to him anyway.

Sean took the replacement part from his bag and set it onto the ground next to him. Many would think that they would be standard, but no, that would be too simple. All of the internals on the turrets were slightly different so they would be harder to repair by small groups like them, forcing them to buy new machines more often. It was only due to Sean’s experience and the notes his parents had left behind that he knew exactly what part he should order to service each of them, and how to weed out the scammers that would send scrap metal on the next shipment instead of the parts he ordered.

Sean opened up the panel to the turret and powered it off and started fiddling with the internals. He had spent weeks going over the scans and planning these trips so he would only have to be out here for repairs for a limited amount of time. He started disassembling the thing carefully in order to get at the ion converter in the center that needed replacing. He took the old and slightly rusted part out after ten minutes and picked up the replacement with his other hand. He placed it back inside and after a moment began reconnecting the tubes and electrical to hook it back to the defense turret.

Sean finished and then paused as he spotted movement out of the corner of his vision. He turned and squinted into the forest and froze as he saw the trees swaying in the distance. Shit… Sean shot to his feet and started running back to the shield while cursing Intuli’s laziness. Wasn’t he supposed to be warned if a swarm was incoming? Now one of their turrets was down and it would probably be destroyed as the beasts stomped it into the ground and ruined it…

Sean reached the barrier of the shield panting just as the first of the beasts emerged from the treeline. These appeared to be a swarm of large emerald backed beetles, each as big as Sean in size and covered in a shiny carapace reinforced by the distinctive shininess of metals.

Sean waited and looked up to the cameras he knew were there as the shield remained closed. “Intuli! Let me in!” he shouted, glancing back as the swarm continued to charge towards him, sweat on his brow.

There was no response.

“LET ME IN INTULI OR BY THE SHADOW I SWEAR I’LL…!”

The speaker above Sean’s head clicked and there was only static over it for a moment as Sean cut himself off and waited impatiently for Intuli’s response.

“Goodbye, Sean,” Intuli said with a nasty lilt in his voice, “Say hello to your parents for me.”

Then the speaker clicked off and Sean turned around and stared in horror at the clicking jaws of the swarm of beetles barely two hundred meters away. Intuli… He was doing it on purpose. He was leaving him here to die!

Sean could only watch in resignation as the swarm kept charging forward towards him, moving right past the disassembled turret he had been working on. There was no hope for escape as the creatures charged at him faster than some of the vehicles Sean had driven.

He closed his eyes and threw himself to the ground in the hope they would pass above him. But the horrors never passed up fresh meat and Sean felt their jaws begin to tear into him. He coughed and opened his eyes again to find his whole view filled with black chitin jaws and emerald green shells.

Sean’s vision began fading rapidly as the insects began to devour him. One of them shifted and Sean got one last look into the sky. And the shadowy figure peering down at him with bright orange eyes watching with intense interest as Sean was torn to pieces. The Shadow itself watching and judging him, weighing his worthiness from a hundred feet away floating unmoving in the air. Then the beetles shifted again and Sean could only briefly scream as a pair of mandibles gripped his head on either side.

The Shadow above him raised its pitch black arm, palm held towards him with its fingers splayed outwards in the distance. The sounds of the world around him suddenly changed in pitch, warbling and shifting as if Sean was suddenly underwater. Everything around him slowed down until the mandibles gripping his skull shifted inwards at a snail’s pace before freezing in place. The leaves on the trees in the distance, the spray of blood bursting from his wounds, it was all frozen in time around him.

But even with everything frozen, the distorted warbles and screeches grew even louder as suddenly the Shadow appeared directly in front of him, palm now less than a foot from his face.

Sean could only sit there frozen in time as the Shadow's open palm approached his head, its orange glowing eyes remaining fixed unerringly on him. He could hear whispers and voices in the sounds now, just barely incomprehensible and out of reach.

The pitch black hand was inches from Sean’s face, and he thought he was just on the cusp of understanding them, the voices. The Shadow’s hand covered Sean’s vision, and suddenly he realized all the voices were repeating the same thing over and over again. They started speaking softly, thousands of voices of all types and pitches saying a single word. Men and women young and old, every tone and timber of voice one could imagine represented.

“Immortal, Immortal, Immortal.”

The voices grew louder and more intense,

“Immortal, Immortal, Immortal, Immortal.”

The thousands of voices were screaming at the tops of their lungs now, their voices blending together that assaulted Sean in a wall of noise as he lay there unable to even move his eyes from the Shadow's orange orbs.

“IMMORTAL, IMMORTAL, IMMORTAL!”

And then just as fast as it started, the voices suddenly went silent and the Shadow drew back its hand. It straightened upwards and stared at Sean for a long moment in their frozen time, before it flickered and was far away again.

It still stared at him with its orange eyes, floating exactly where it had first appeared in the beginning.

“Immortal,” It said and the world shook and twisted in his vision, rumbling and bucking at the word. The chaos grew and grew until in one large crack like shattering glass the Shadow disappeared, and time resumed.

And suddenly Sean remembered the beetle’s mandibles clenched around his head. Their grip suddenly became punishing as they clenched inwards and Sean’s head was crushed into paste before he could react.