Haven

By Vincent E. Sweeney

In the future, the deadliest place in the universe is the only place we can call 'home'. After crash-landing on a lush alien world, refugees from the long-forgotten planet Earth find themselves confronted with horror and treachery as they are pitted against a 'faceless enemy' which haunts the darkness of the forests - killing all who dare trespass into the unknown. Young Stephen Carlisse faces a terrible dilemma when his best friend, Mandel (the son of the exalted Governor Hedrick) is taken by the phantoms. With the aid of the iron-willed Commander Lee (whose mysterious daughter Stephen has become enamored with) a search party is organized to venture into the shadowy world and rescue the heir of the human race. Harrowing action, tragic romance, mortal terror and genocidal warfare all await you if you will dare to explore the pristine and savage world of HAVEN...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257264711

Book preview

(2003)

PROLOGUE

Bright moonlight shone down through the waving leaves, casting shadows that danced across the ground with ardent fervor. Innumerable insects and nocturnal fowl serenaded the twilight waltz with chirps and soft calls. The cool wind picked up a bit and carried a rustling through the valleys of the delicately slumbering world. When the moon peaked through the dense green foliage long enough, it displayed its gargantuan size in full glory. Small craters, interconnected by the remnant valleys of ancient waterways, dotted the blindingly white surface. Faint stars paled all around the magnificent orb, blotted out by its halo sheen.

The wind settled for a moment. The rustle traveled to the distance and dwindled into the oblivion from which it came. As the air grew continuously more still, the sweet melody of the insects and birds became soft and then abruptly ceased altogether. Through a lush green valley, a flash of red appeared and vanished in an instant. Soon after, another flash appeared and was gone. Another came and went, this time leaving a small orange glow where its burst disappeared. A distant scream echoed across the valley floor, and was suddenly silenced. After another burst of red shot out through the trees and into the eternal night sky, cries of protest mixed with terror resounded ever louder.

The sporadic red lights, as well as the increasingly numerous screams grew more and more intense as the band of refugees reached the top of the hill. Men and women, some carrying children in their arms, raced frantically between the groping tree limbs and clawing leaves. Occasionally, a stout young man carrying an energy pack on his back would turn from the flight path and fire a streak of red energy into the forest from which he had just emerged. The energy bolts seared perfect circles through any leaves they encountered and diminished with a brief but sizeable explosion when impacting a thicker tree or the cool ground.

One such young man fired repeatedly, screaming with all his might at a pursuing enemy, only to discover that he was shooting a contorted tree trunk. As the trunk burst into flames, the young man looked frantically around the clearing he was standing in. Seeing nothing, he sensed that he had paused too long. He quickly turned and ran toward the cries of his comrades. The moment he reentered the forest, he was lifted off his feet with a piercing pain and set dangling in mid-air. He screamed in agony from the introduction of a jagged, foreign object through opposite sides of his torso, which ground deeper with each involuntary twitch of his slowly dying body. He could not escape the unflinching claws that had seized his soft flesh and would never let it go. As he began to lose consciousness from the fathomless pain he was sensing, his last thought was that he too would soon be a monumental testament to the relentless cruelty of the faceless enemy.

Further ahead, the leader of the refugees, a tall man wearing a cap, slowed his pace and turned into the onrushing mass of people. The Commander searched for anyone wearing a uniform similar to his own.

Seeing one briefly, he shouted, Where’s Crick? Where’s Crick’s team?

The frightened man wearing the uniform said nothing as he continued running past the leader, caring naught but for his own survival.

A uniformed youth soon followed, and ran up to the commander. I saw them get separated from us earlier, he gasped. They went toward the shoreline.

The Commander showed dismay in his face only for an instant before reengaging his run. They’re cut off now… nothing we can do about it.

Right, sir the youth replied.

Did you see anyone else behind you? the older man asked.

No, sir, he replied. I think they may have broken off their chase.

A soft whoosh sounded.

Let’s hope they… the Commander stopped in mid sentence.

The boy looked up to see his leader fall to the ground with an alien object imbedded in his neck. The commander gasped only once before freely regurgitating blood down his face and uniform. The youth immediately quickened his pace, never looking back as more and more whooshing sounds emanated from the forest all around him. He screamed in full terror and ran with all his might.

Suddenly, the moon disappeared from sight and the boy was bathed in darkness. He realized he was under the belly of his ship. A brief wave of elation poured over him as he saw the welcoming light of a loading ramp ahead. The grated incline seemed to rise into heaven itself as it faded into a tiny speck over a hundred meters above the ground.

As the youth neared the base of the ramp, he noticed a pair of enormous red eyes glowing in the sky near the nose of the ship. His fear then doubled and, suddenly, the shrubbery to his right began to rattle with horrendous violence. He screamed and took leaping strides, blindly jumping over anything that might be in his way.

He felt a cold hand on his shoulder and then a sharp slash across his back. The boy screamed from the shocking pain and he leapt for the ramp, turning to fire his weapon in the process. Streaks of red energy shot from his gun barrel into the darkness, but they found no target. The youth backed hurriedly up the ramp, turning only when he was a good twenty meters off the ground. He then began running up the incline, making loud clangs with every step. The outline of human forms in the opening ahead brought warmth to young man’s heart.

Close the ramp! he shouted. Hurry, they’re right behind me!

One figure disappeared briefly from sight. Soon after, gears grinded and metal squeaked as the ramp started to retract. The incline beneath the boy shifted suddenly, and he was nearly thrown off his feet. He felt the climb growing more difficult with each step, but he knew he would have enough time if he could just keep running.

Come on, kid, one shadowy figure yelled. Hurry! You’re almost there.

The boy leapt with all his might, landing with the bulk of his torso in the hatchway. Friendly arms grabbed for him, pulling his body forward. He let out a shriek when someone inadvertently raked across the wounds on his back.

Come on, we’ve got you! one man reassured, pulling his arms.

With a unified lurch, they all fell back and collapsed on the white deck. The boy panted heavily, holding his head in his hands. The ramp finally closed with a loud clash, which startled them all.

The boy looked up.

I have to speak… to the Governor.

In a purely white control room, a balding man of fifty typed solemnly at a console - his back to the rest of the world. The man raised a trembling hand to his lips as he thought on what to type next.

Governor, a man at the door said. There’s someone to see you.

The governor turned only slightly. Yes? he invited.

The man at the door stepped aside, and the shaken youth entered the quiet room.

Governor, he began with his head bowed. Commander Emmerich is dead.

The Governor closed his eyes. How many of you made it back, son?

The man at the door disappeared to talk with someone outside.

Very few, the young man said. We lost… hundreds… He paused for a moment, scanning his terrified mind… Crick… Saunders…

Governor! the man at the door shouted. They’re gone!

Those cursed red eyes in the dark? the Governor asked, worriedly.

Yes, sir.

The young man looked up to his Governor. He saw a wave of fear sweep over the older man’s face.

The governor looked to the ground. Then, it’s too late, he said. He turned slowly to type one final entry on the console:

THAT AWFUL TOWER MUST FALL…

A soft wind had already picked up when the Governor and the young soldier walked out onto the surface of their ship. Cool air rose from the thick metallic skin, which was rough and blemished from years of rainfall.

The Governor craned his neck toward the sky.

With unhidden fear in his voice, the boy asked, What are we going to do, sir?

The Governor shook his head as the sky began to lighten. All we can do is wait, son… and pray.

A red glow began to descend on the ship from somewhere in the heavens. Feeling a sliding sensation at his feet, the young soldier looked to the ground and saw that the soles of his shoes were melting. A massive wave of heat slammed the entire ship, driving both men to their knees. They screamed as their flesh boiled, but before either could exhale a final breath, a sharp flash appeared before their eyes.

In an instant, the entire ship swelled and every window exploded from the inside out. A low rumble sounded from deep inside the vessel as each portal on its hull began to glow from a flowering inferno within.

As the wind from the initial shock wave dwindled into a pulsing breeze, a warm orange glow emanated from the burning ship. This steadily expanding fire illuminated a pair of watchful eyes hidden among the leaves of the forest. For hours the eyes did not blink or waver in their gaze; they only stared onward with cold indifference as the dying ship belched out a steady stream of smoke and ash toward the heavens. The perpetual stream carried with it an unheard cry of pain and sorrow that did not fade or dissipate until it reached the starry depths of space…

I - THE ARRIVAL

1

The void was speckled throughout with the glimmer of billions of stars. One star alone in the blackness would only have been a single pilot light of hope. But there was not only one. Infinitely in every direction, the pure, white light grew intensely from the innumerable white torches and shattered the darkness in its way. The bright hope that the stars spread forth over the sky conquered the eternal night.

In the midst of this perpetual throne room where light reigned supreme, a single glimmer, very tiny in comparison to the stars and nowhere near as powerful, presented itself timidly for the stars to judge. It passed among them without challenge to their authority and merely requested of them one of their orbiting bodies on which to stop and rest. It had been searching for centuries without success, and now, this day, it seemed as if a decision had been reached, and the fate of the entity was chosen.

As the enormous spaceship entered the planet system of a nearby yellow sun, scars of collision and erosion on its epidermis were made apparent in the gleaming light. Its surface was flecked with hundreds of minuscule dots of light. Symmetrically spotted amongst the glowing freckles were several huge glowing domes that seemed to pulse with warmth and life. One such dome was shattered, revealing only a cold chasm within - a harsh memorial to an earlier time. The only insignia on the massive ship was a simple ‘β’ symbol across its nose.

Although it glided quite smoothly through the void, the vessel seemed to ache with every bit off of forward motion. The ship appeared ready to collapse and go dark at any moment. This, the second and final lifeboat to be sent into the ocean of stars by the human race, had finally scanned a nearby planet that appeared to meet the environmental standards necessary to sustain life for its human occupants. To this ship of distress, it appeared that its purpose had been fulfilled, and it would soon find rest at long last.

As the ship came near the second planet in the system, a searing red bolt of energy streaked across the darkness and impacted its ancient hull. There was no sound from the explosion to carry in the vacuum of space, but the light of this strike flashed magnificently in the darkness as bits of hot metal shot outward into infinity. Only a small fragment of the vessel had actually been destroyed, but the inner damage dealt by the blow immediately caused a power shutdown within the ship. All the tiny dots of light that came from its hundreds of windows simultaneously disappeared, and the ship began leaving a trail of sparks and debris in its wake. It slowly and gracefully turned on its side and arced in the direction of the planet’s gravitational pull. Soon, the vessel was skipping along the planet’s atmosphere, slowly penetrating it. As it did so, the sound of this crash-landing finally became apparent. A shrill whine, mixed with the whooshing noise of a gigantic body slicing through the air, permeated the atmosphere.

The ship’s recently disabled engines sputtered for a moment, and then returned to working order in a desperate attempt to control its decent. Its spiral became gradually less pronounced with each moment, and the ship’s course began to straighten out. Its momentum had already grown too great to be changed, however, and the ship fell horribly fast down through the air, leaving a thick trail of smoke and dust behind it. A vast film of clouds dotted with glowering mountain peeks in the distance concealed the alien world below. The titanic object blasted a path through the haze and vanished beneath its billowy curtains.

The ship lay motionless on the ground, propped up on one side by a giant mound of earth. The battered, but still intact wreckage lay at an angle near the edge of a sharp precipice, which dropped two hundred meters to the churning sea below. A deep, wide trench of uprooted trees and moist dirt stretched on behind the ship for three kilometers - all the way back to the hillside where it first slammed into the soft ground. The freshly created valley was a trampled mass of dark soil and mangled, damaged forest. The dust and flying leaves were still settling when the noise of the impact finally dwindled into an echo somewhere off in the distant mountain ranges.

Although the ship rested on a cylindrical belly, it did not rock or sway in either direction. The valley it had carved out created even support on both sides for its engine arms. The horizontal midsection of the massive transport was at ground level because every section below it had been driven underground. The ship lay at a slight diagonal since the ocean side of the trench in which it was cradled was slightly more raised than the inland side.

As the cloud of dust finally settled, the calamity and confusion that had risen in the forests and plains nearby began to quiet down as well. Herds of native beasts that had begun stampeding finally lowered their pace and resumed their perpetual grazing elsewhere in the region. Rodents and vermin again emerged from their holes in the ground and out from under fallen trees. Flocks of winged raptors that had been disturbed from their roosts swarmed over the hillsides and nested in new trees, away from the now tainted and violated section of the forest.

A deep gash, nearly a half-kilometer long, cleaved the ship’s skin along its midsection. Small, evanescent wisps of gray smoke occasionally spewed from the fault. All of the glowing domes were now cracked or shattered, exposing pitifully brown arboretums to fresh air and direct sunlight for the first time.

Though the massive ship had calmed from its less than graceful entry, no life stirred about it. Nothing emerged from the wreckage. There was only the quiet, endless passing of time. Soon the minutes became hours, and still nothing stirred outside the ship. An occasional native creature might wander close enough to sniff some of the debris that was scattered about the wreckage, but it would quickly return to the deeper sections of the forest - away from the contorted metal objects whose odors it could not recognize.

As the hours drifted by, the usual life of the forest resumed as if nothing had happened. On the microscopic level, the planet had already begun to repair the damage done by the devastating crash. Trees were beginning to decay, and seeds were already sifting down into the soft ground where they would later grow to replace the dead timbers that had once been a large portion of the dense forest. Animals were already constructing new burrows and dens to replace the ones that had been destroyed. Although these occurrences were not visible yet, drastic changes would be easily seen in only a matter of weeks.

As the first day following the crash drew to an end, the sun of the second planet in the system began to set over the eastern horizon. Then darkness came, and the wild cries of the nocturnal creatures that inhabited the alien world carried over the hills and plains, echoing through valleys and eerily repeating themselves as they reverberated through deep canyon walls.

The moon did not shine on that first night. As a result, the countryside was not only dark but also black as the depths of space itself. Not even a single star peeked through the dense storm clouds that covered the nighttime sky. A threatening rumble of distant thunder and flashes of heat lightning also accompanied the impending bodies. However, the swirling masses drifted on menacingly through the darkness only to drop their showers somewhere beyond the visual reach of the lightning’s flash. The first night passed without incident.

Morning arrived with the rising of the sun in the west. A cloudless orange sky awakened the native creatures from their dens and burrows, and they began another day of ritualistic survival - hunting and being hunted in a vicious natural cycle. Some would live only to repeat the process again the next day, but others would be killed and devoured before the sun set again.

Dew had collected against the hull of the relic ship, frosting its slanted metal with moisture. When the sun rose to its highest peak in the sky and all shadows were cast straight down, a new change began to take place. With a deafening screech, an airlock door that had been sealed for centuries stretched its metal joints. The door slid open painfully, revealing a long dark corridor behind it. It continued yawning open with a scraping cry and hydraulic hiss until it clanged to a stop when the entranceway was nearly six feet tall. After a moment, another hiss voiced the awakening of a door on the opposite side of the ship, revealing another long and dark passageway. Soon after, the hissing grew into a snarl as dozens and then hundreds of the same doors slid open in unison. The outer shell of the vessel began to transform into a honeycomb - peppered with hundreds upon hundreds of the small black portals. Several more minutes passed, and when the sun finally arched over its climactic peak in the sky and began to form slightly westward shadows, the first human being emerged from the wreckage.

He was short: about five and a-half-feet tall. His skin was whiter than the foam of the ocean waves, and his hair was a mottled mixture of white and black fibers. He was thin and not very strong as the result of a lifetime of automated survival in a self-sufficient environment. He raised a younger than old hand up to shield his eyes from the intense sun, the likes of which he could never have been prepared for. He took several steps forward onto the hull of the retired ship - the only home he had ever known - and inhaled his first breath of air on a planet. He nearly stumbled with the force of the high-oxygen breath he gasped in, and steadied himself with a pleasant smile on his face. He looked back to the dark shadows of the corridor he had emerged from. After a moment, he returned his gaze to the wondrous natural beauty before him, and then several more humans of various ages stepped out of the doorway to join him.

They each shared a similar rush of fatigued joy at the first breath in combination with the magnificent scenery set before them. As far as the eyes could reach, hills covered in lush trees rolled gracefully in each direction, aside from the rear view which only consisted of the metallic bulk of the upper decks of the ship and the endless blue fade of the ocean beyond. The next wary humans stepped out of a corridor ten decks below and to the right of the first group. Soon after, the various openings began spewing forth dozens upon dozens of cautious, yet ecstatic, humans. They were curious of the new world while simultaneously fearful of its captivating proportions. Trees with bases as large as ten feet around, single hills that were larger in size than the entire bulk of the gigantic ship, and an ocean that stretched ceaselessly forward and disappeared somewhere beyond the pale blue horizon engulfed the crowd in awe.

As the congregation continued to pile out onto the metal diagonal of the hull, there soon amassed a swarming crowd of over one thousand men, women and children, all milling around cautiously but not saying a word to one another. Each one was engrossed by the splendor of natural images that even the oldest person present had never seen before.

After some time passed, the swarm started to disperse off of the metal platform and out onto the plush grass of the adjacent, open field. Soon, the whole crowd was amassed into a tight ball in the middle of the field that faced into a dark, shadow-littered forest. On one side of the huge field lay a scattered string of large, resting boulders.

The thin, gray-haired man stood on top of the largest boulder with several other men gathered around him. The men stated reports and presented requests, which were answered with either quick nods of approval or tempered glares of disapproval. At the same time, other men were arranging large speakers on the surrounding boulders and setting up a microphone for the gray-haired man. Although he was in complete command of what remained of the human race, the man on top of the rock was neither a marvel of human physique, nor a marvel of human intellect. His appointed title of Governor meant that there was no other power above him in the community’s chain of command. However, he had a council of several men who gave him advice and suggestions, which he usually agreed with unquestionably. Although, when he stepped out of the dark recesses of the ship he had lived on his entire life and stared daylight in the face for the first time, a juvenile idea of becoming an authoritarian entered his mind.

The Governor immediately began to ignore some of the more reasonable suggestions of his advisers. He began making commands only