Hitam

By Vasil Meg

The Machine rules the world. Humans have been reduced to a primitive state, and all life on the nameless red planet is beyond salvation. Three individuals struggle to survive in this hostile environment. They don’t know each other, yet hope is what they share. Hope for a better tomorrow. But is that enough? Can they succeed where others have failed, against a phantom enemy that seems to control their every move? The tragic story of Purple Clouds and White Skulls continues... in HITAM.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vasil Meg
• Release date: Dec 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005335021

Vasil Meg

Born in Athens, Greece in 1986. Studied Journalism and Educational Civil Engineering. Now working as Journalist, Novelist, Translator and Photographer.

Book preview

HITAM

By Vasil Meg

Contents

Prologue

1st Chapter: The leader

2nd Chapter: The solitary

3rd Chapter: The wanderer

4th Chapter: Purpose

5th Chapter: Supplies

6th Chapter: Anguish

7th Chapter: In Clearib

8th Chapter: The order

9th Chapter: With (out) control

10th Chapter: Massacre

11th Chapter: Obliteration

12th Chapter: Movement

13th Chapter: Under ground

14th Chapter: The Machine awakens

15th Chapter: Inside the Machine

Epilogue

Prologue

Mr. Naumiache was a highly respected person in the scientific society. Although not a scientist himself, his essays and short novels about the development of the Artificial Intelligence had earned him a place in the renowned Academy of Sciences, in the Old Capital. With ideas radical and more often than not absurd, yet solid and verifiable, he managed to make his name known to everyone on the Blood Planet in the years after his arrival.

His reputation however, apart from the praise, included a series of certain dangerous enemies. But, it wasn't the lethal competition that turned him against the human race during the last days of his life, no more than his disturbed disposition had actually contrived to.

Everything we know about him comes from the great database of the N.H.S.E that some recklessly fortunate individuals obtained not long before the atomic onslaught had claimed so many lives. The real horror had started a while back. It was in the year of our Saviours 376 B.E. (Base Establishment) when the Develces overthrew their masters through a devastating riot that lasted only a year, almost destroying entirely creator and creation alike.

This was a tragedy worthy of mourning and lament. Borned and manufactured creatures had perished in the red flames of that war, and the winners Develces, seeking a new world for their hywised kin, deserted the planet of blood. Naumiache was a name already fading in collective memory back then. But not his deeds. His evil actions have wreaked an everlasting chaos on our lands; a purple cloudscape of death from which no one can survive.

The Destroyer of the World from The Annals of Ash and Rust

1st Chapter: The leader

Countess Rennis stood a great deal puzzled at what she had just read on the blue screen of the old and leper - crumbling computer. Encircled by a sparkling yellow that completely and utterly filled her eyes, her pupils dilated again adjusting her vision in the enveloping darkness as the light of the machine in front of her abruptly faded out. The small, black spikes on her pale face, horizontally and vertically like a cross, reflected the dying glow.

Mr. Naumiache it is then she whispered in a devilish angel voice and a guttural noise soon replied.

Yes, my countess. A pitiful specimen of a hu-man was standing behind her; all black and broken, naked and charred from the morbid devolution owning to the results of the Great Rebellion. He or rather it had no name and Countess Rennis referred to it as slave, a reliable or so it seemed obedient object.

Let's go she said and a door opened nearby interrupting the deep shade of the interior. A weak ruby light crawled inside and the two intruders walked quickly out.

The air that greeted them was heavy with the stench of burning flesh and melted iron. Men with grim faces and black leather outfits on hovering motors turned their heads towards them. They were the Mobhers, ruthless killers who believed only in killing and plundering. Countess Rennis was their leader. And she was a worthy leader. The gleam from the red clouds above was more than enough to reveal the form of that strong and cruel woman.

She was tall, the tallest among her soldiers. She was wearing a dangerously provocative dark fishnet top, oily black skinny trousers and a pair of ebony leather boots with small spikes on the toe caps. Her visual aspect framed by a radiant set of silver locks - the back of the head shaved - were horridly alluring to resist. She looked fierce, but that was deceiving for she was fiercer.

She stepped to her men ordering the slave behind to climb onto one of the sizzlingly loud motors. The poor disgusting thing obeyed without the slightest hesitation and it vanished inside a black metal box at the rear of the driver's seat.

We got what we wanted the Countess said to one of her crew, a muscular man with long black hair, naked from the waist up and full of terrific tattoos. He was her lieutenant