#undyingverse
Stech trudged through the thick mud and undergrowth. The wet earth sucked at his feet and the pink and purple vines slithered against his skin as he passed through the jungles of JWP-1e28. Behind him, three other yichtaran conscripts followed, Hitrin, Sebach and Yohktak. Portable pulse cannons were slung over their backs as they prowled the jungle and their packs rested heavily on their shoulders. There had once been five in his hunting party, until Rolhu was shot in the leg. The wound became infected and festered nauseatingly until he could no longer keep pace. Stech commanded he be put out of his misery rather than return the lost cause to base. His ammo and rations were distributed evenly among the remaining soldiers, his weapon properly disposed of so as to avoid acquisition by the enemy and his body given the final prayers and buried. They were getting close and Stech wasn’t about to throw away two days of searching.
Overhead the dense blue foliage blocked out all but a few rays of sunlight and through the close-knit trunks of skiznak trees could be heard the distant mating calls of dozens of animals native to the jungles of JWP-1e28. However, Stech and his team were not in search of any such organisms. Their prey was much quieter, much craftier and much more dangerous than any of the native fauna of JWP-1e28. The yichtarans were not the only invaders of the jungle planet. Somewhere else in the primaeval forest a group of humans evaded Stech and his warriors. Stech smiled inwardly. They wouldn’t be evading him for much longer.
The group of humans hiding in the foliage had been giving the shii'az a difficult time. JWP-1e28 was abundant with a rare crystal, valuable to the shii'az for their weapon production. Processing procedures of the planet were due to begin 0.23 cycles ago but had been hampered and harassed by the elusive group. The shii'az had called back their workers and called the yichtarans to sort out the troublesome humans. Stech and his team of thirty yichtaran hunters had landed 0.19 cycles ago, nearly ten sunrises and sunsets on the alien planet. Since the beginning, they had hounded the humans constantly. Tracking and hunting parties were continuously searching for the humans, using the original shii'az mining offices as a base of operations. Cut off from outside support, communication and reinforcements, the humans had still managed to elude discovery or capture and multiple run-ins with the guerillas had resulted in the deaths of many of Stech’s own warriors. They had initially gone searching in six groups of five until one group was lost entirely. They merged the remaining groups together, finding some small solace in numbers, knowing the humans were less likely to attack a large group. However, as time went by, the humans were able to pick off the yichtarans and no matter how many humans they seemed to kill, the humans always managed to find replacements.
It felt like a war of attrition as Stech watched his original group dwindle down to a mere handful. The shii'az had estimated a human group of twenty but with each passing at one another it seemed as though the humans were far greater than twenty. One of their own would fall into a human-made trap or be shot by one of their primitive projectile weapons and at the same time, two or three or more humans would be mortally wounded with yichtaran weapons, natural or otherwise. Stech had even bitten off the arm of a human with a patch over one eye, leaving her to bleed out in the filthy morass. Her blood had been red and warm, like the embers of a fire. Stech could still imagine the taste. Both groups would retreat to recuperate yet the human numbers never seemed to lessen. Two yichtarans, Alloch and Garro, had remained at the base. Stech was so close to finding the humans’ hidden camp he dared not ask and wait for either of them to join him lest he lost the trail. If he failed to wipe out the last humans with the three other yichtarans with him, he would need to notify the two warriors of the coordinates so they could leave the planet and disintegrate the guerilla camp from orbit. Stech was no longer interested in his bonus. He was going to see these humans dead, even if it cost him his life.
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Yiirt turned the pages of the tome listlessly. The human letters swam before her eyes, their strange curves and alien edges making sounds to make words to make sentences. Sentences piled up into paragraphs and then into pages. Somewhere among the endless pages was the information the shii'az coveted so, though these pages simply regaled a story of something called a ‘Hobbit’ and its search for treasure amongst the horde of something called a ‘Dragon’. The books, a human invention, had been numerous. The shii'az knew the humans kept their knowledge in many forms and these books were just one of them. The cramped room Yiirt found herself in was something called a ‘personal Library’, previously belonging to an incredibly wealthy human on the moon of EHY-1n19, a garden world if a moon could be considered a world. Yiirt had heard that the full sized Libraries of the humans could span entire blocks, large enough to house several civilian-class starships but, instead, housing millions and millions of books. Yiirt was grateful she hadn’t been assigned to scouring such building.
Yiirt turned the last page and slammed the book shut. Nothing of value was held within those pages. She sat back in the comfortable wooden chair, sinking comfortably into its padding. She tossed the book into a discard pile, slightly annoyed that the previous owner had been so careless in his or her organisation. The shii'az scribes had discovered that the Libraries were often sorted into ‘fiction’ and ‘nonfiction’, a breakthrough that had cut their research times by more than half. The humans were notoriously interested in creating and digesting falsified information as a popular past-time. However, the old owner of the house she had taken up temporary residence in had simply put all of their books together, not following any of the protocol that was used in regular Libraries.
Yiirt took the liberty of spinning herself in the comfy chair, grateful that the humans had been so akin to the shii'az that their furniture would fit her comfortably. The biology of the shii'az and the humans were analogous, at a glance. The two races were very similar, as alien races went. Both had two legs which bent the same way and both had two arms with manipulators on the ends. The shii'az and the humans both had heads where their eyes and brains were situated. However, the humans had no tail, only one opposable thumb per hand rather than two, hair on their bodies rather than smooth skin, two forward-facing eyes rather than six and they came in different shades of skin rather than the deep blue of the shii'az. That was the only way she could tell them apart; by their different coloured hair and skin. They could, apparently, discern between one another just by the slight differences in their very uniform facial structure. Still, the differences between their race and hers were relatively far and few between when one looked at the other races in the galaxy. It was a shame their people had to fight. They could have been good friends if the humans hadn’t been so unnecessarily tenacious.
The war with the humans had been going on for the better part of the last three cycles and countless lives had been lost on both sides. It began as a territorial dispute with the shii'az; Yiirt’s people had purchased a tremendous territory from the Galactic Conglomerate, the closest thing the galaxy had to a centralised government. It just so happened that the homeworld of the humans occupied part of that area and the shii'az were eager to begin processing of the unique planet. The shii'az were not cruel; several worlds were offered elsewhere in their newly purchased territory for the humans to populate with their displaced people. However, the humans were unbearably intractable. The world they had spent generations abusing and ruining still, for some reason, held significant value to them and, rather than taking the generous offer from the shii'az, the humans remained stubbornly anchored to the little planet. The shii'az declared war and the yichtaran were compelled to support their long-time allies.
The Galactic Conglomerate was not one to intervene in a sovereign territory and the humans found themselves outnumbered, outgunned and without any hope of outside assistance. The shii'az Directorate were expecting a 0.5 cycle scuffle before the humans realised the dire consequences of their thoughtless decision and accepted the shii'az offer. The yichtaran War-chief expected a brutal 0.3 cycle war before his fleets exterminated the humans entirely. However, as the war stretched on past either the shii'az or the yichtaran predictions and onto its third cycle of constant fighting it became abundantly clear that the humans were unconcerned with anyone’s predictions. They were not going to offer an easy victory if one was to be found at all.
Yiirt spun herself one last time, taking little joy in the brief intermission from her dismal research. The shii'az Directorate had been searching quite some time for a weakness to exploit. With all they knew of the humans it was deemed impossible that they had lasted so long. There was clearly some aspect of the humans that remained unknown to the shii'az. Yiirt halted her spinning by sticking out a webbed foot to catch on the great wooden desk by the chair. The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with books on wooden shelves. Here and there empty spots widened as Yiirt worked her way through the books and a pile of the rejected books grew in a lonely corner of the room. The only parts of the walls that were not lined with books were the door which she used to access the room and a large glass window that allowed in natural light. Looking through the window she could see the blue grass fields of the moon’s meadows and the barren planet, EHY-1n19, high in the sky. Speckles of yellow dotted the vast expanse, tiny flowers the humans called ‘Dandy Lions’ which had the amazing ability to take root anywhere they were introduced. Yiirt would have loved her time on the moon of EHY-1n19 if she didn’t have to spend most of it in the tiny book room. She gave out a sigh as she pulled another book, titled “To Kill a Mockingbird,” from a shelf. What a Mockingbird was and why one would want to kill one, Yiirt knew not. She began reading.
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Stech sniffed the air. The smell of burnt flesh was faint but it was there. The humans were the only race Stech had ever known to prepare their food in such a strange way. They would kill an animal and, rather than eating it fresh, would almost always suspend it over a heat source. The flesh would spoil from the heat, even turning black and burning at some parts. Only once the flesh was ruined and unappetizing would the humans indulge in eating it. It was a revolting tradition but Stech couldn’t help but feel an intense satisfaction come over himself as he smelled the acrid stench. He had been following the smell for a little while now and it had been growing stronger. Their disgusting habit would be their downfall.
How the humans had succeeded in enduring the yichtaran attacks for so long, Stech would never understand. The yichtaran were a proud warrior race, bred and trained from birth to kill. A mouth full of pointed teeth, four limbs tipped with razor-sharp talons, infrangible bones, substantial strength, twin tails tipped with knife-like ends and a durable scaley hide; their natural physiology made them a formidable foe. Their natural gifts coupled with shii'az pulse weaponry meant there was very little in the galaxy that could stop a yichtaran conscript from completing an objective. The humans, on the other hand, were pitiful in comparison. They had no claws, their skin tore like wet tissue, their bones snapped like twigs and their teeth were trapped in laughably small mouths. The waddled around on two legs most of the time and most were too weak even to lift their own body weight. Their faces were dull and seemingly invariable; Stech couldn’t tell one from another except by the shades of their skin.
The humans were clever, Stech would admit at least that. They weren’t smart or wise in the sense that the shii'az were. They hadn’t even developed faster-than-light travel by themselves; they had traded for it. The weapons they were using against the yichtaran and the shii'az were, by principle, the same weapons their ancestors had used on one another generations ago. They weren’t well versed in Conglomerate law and were unable to transcend their narrow perspectives but they were clever. The guerilla fighters had to make due with what limited supplies were available to them on JWP-1e28. They had pulled together crude traps of all sorts, from hidden pits filled with sharpened sticks to spiked branches, bent and poised to swing should a hidden length of twine be stepped on. Stech had lost eleven good soldiers to the myriad of traps the humans had laid out.
Still, the human cleverness could not explain away their success so far. Reports came to Stech of hunting parties being ambushed by groups of humans numbering between three and ten, though the reports were shaky estimates at best and wild guesses at worst. One or two warriors would be shot, maimed or even killed. The humans would face casualties of their own. The reports almost always involved the humans melting away into the trees bearing fatal wounds. Wounds from pulse weapons, lacerations and maulings from the claws and teeth of the yichtaran. Yet no matter how many reports of human maulings Stech received, there were always more humans to ambush his groups further in the jungle. Sometimes the humans would leave behind a bloody trail to be followed but there were never any bodies at the end. Stech knew the humans were hiding the bodies, perhaps burying them the same way he did with his own. Respect for the dead seemed to be the only thing that the primitive aliens and the yichtarans had in common.
“Stech. Here, look,” whispered one soldier as he placed a clawed hand on Stech’s shoulder.
The young but promising recruit, Hitrin, pointed a talon at a blackened patch of solid ground. Upon closer inspection Stech recognised the tell-tale signs of a temporary human camp; a ring of stones and the grey ash that the humans left whenever they prepared their food. He pushed a hand into the ashes and felt the warmth of what had once been a fire. Pressing his nose to the ground he could smell the faint scent of rubber from the soles of human footwear, leading off into the jungle. Stech gestured towards the others and tore off into the trees. They were close. So close he could almost taste their coppery blood. The taste of victory.
Tree trunks and wide blue leaves rushed past Stech as he ran on all fours, following the malodorous trail. Behind him, the three other yichtarans kept pace. Like them, he had left his pulse weapon to dangle against his body. The weapon and his pack bounced against his back and his side as he ran through the tangles and undergrowth of JWP-1e28. The fetid trail was getting stronger as Stech neared the hidden human encampment. Both of his tails whipped behind him, eager to rend flesh from bone. By his count, the original group of twenty humans was down to its last four to six individuals. Still, it would not do to get overconfident. The humans numbers never seemed to dwindle as they should and Stech was cautious. Hubris kills, especially when facing a foe as shrewd as the humans.
human voices began bleeding through the trees as they neared the camp. Stech slowed his progress and his three soldiers follow suit. Stech took his portable pulse cannon in hand and proceeded stealthily. The humans were few and primitive but the danger they represented was still tangible. Stech was willing to lose his life to see them dead but he would rather he did not need to. Stech paused to step over a suspiciously taught vine and gestured to the others to do the same. Looking around he noticed signs of other traps, cleverly hidden from the untrained eye. He had had too many close calls to dismiss the subtle signs so easily. The voices were getting louder and the reeking smell of human cook-fires began burning at his nose. Stech stopped to listen. They were practically at the human camp, though it was all but hidden by the dense plant life that grew everywhere. Stech sent a prayer to the Great Hunter before he broke into a sprint and burst into the human camp.
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Yiirt closed another book with force and threw it into the reject pile. It was a boring book detailing the many intricacies of human economics. She slammed her head against the wooden desk in frustration before eating another handful of Tyontyon berries to keep her awake. The white juice dribbled down her lip before she wiped it away with a hand. She quickly began to feel the effects of the berries mingle with her intense fatigue. Her senses felt sharp and she felt as awake as ever, though, at the same time, she felt as though she were half-dreaming.
“Just one more book,” she told herself as she pulled a heavy volume from a bottom shelf. “Just one more book and then I’m going to go rest.” Yiirt pulled a book from a shelf, titled “The Life and Times of Jonathan Wang,” determined to find the secret to the humans success.
The shii'az had become desperate. It wasn’t that the humans were particularly special tacticians and their weapons were almost laughably primitive. Their ships were slow out of hyperspace and their soldiers would take relatively little damage before retreating to die on their ships. It was their sheer numbers. It was easy to laugh at their primitive weapons, with their archaic bullets and bombs. Mere nuisances to a shielded ship of shii'az design. That was until there were billions upon billions of the nuisances shattering shields and hammering away hulls, leaving broken bodies adrift in space. Their ships were clumsy and weak, easily outmanoeuvered and outgunned. Alone they were practically non-threatening. They were never alone. Space was never as black and hope never as dim as when the human armadas blotted out the very stars, each one of their harmless ships becoming a part of the hammer and anvil that smashed entire fleets.
It didn’t make sense at all, from a simple mathematical point of view. It wasn’t as though the humans were the most numerous race they had encountered. By initial estimates, the humans had numbered around twenty billion at the beginning of the war, a mere fraction of which were suitable for battle. The cortoeen had numbered at eighty billion at the beginning of their conflict with the shii'az and the sook wa hives had numbered at close to three hundred billion when the yichtarans declared war on them. Both races had faced defeat at the joined hands of the shii'az and the yichtarans, though not without inflicting significant damage of their own. According to current estimates and past projections, the humans should have run out of soldiers long ago. Their armies should have dwindled, just as the cortoeen and the sook wa had. It was nonsensical that they still managed to field as many soldiers as they had when the war had begun and it was completely maddening that there was no apparent decline in quality. The shii'az needed to know their secret.
Yiirt licked her eyes with a long, neon-pink tongue, moisturising them as she shut another useless book, titled “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” The humans’ thirst for made-up stories would be the end of her, she knew it. Glancing out the window she noticed the alien sun of EHY-1n19 setting for the third time, marking the thirty-sixth hour she had spent in the lonely room. The sky slowly darkened and the stars began twinkling against the black backdrop of space. She briefly considered calling it quits and returning to her temporary quarters for a little rest and relaxation. Yiirt spun herself in the chair as she considered her options.
“One last book. The very last,” she promised to herself. From a lower shelf, she selected at random a heavy textbook, titled “The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine, sixteenth Edition.” Yiirt carried the hefty book back to the comfy chair and set it down none-too-gently against the heavy wooden desk. “Oh, hey! This one’s got pictures.” Yiirt opened to the first page, slightly upbeat at the sight of the colourful illustrations.
The shii'az had many theories concerning the seemingly unending human armies. Some believed the humans had hidden cloning factories with which they produced endless ranks of soldiers. Others claimed that the humans reproduced and matured faster during times of war and it was a simple means of killing them faster than they could be born. There were even wild rumours that the humans had torn the very fabric of space and time to call on the help of other humans from parallel dimensions and that it was the very multiverse that the shii'az and yichtarans faced. The truth was far worse. Far, far, worse.
“What in the name of the Holy Thirteen…” Yiirt wanted to stop reading but her eyes kept scanning the pages as though they had a will of their own, faster and faster until the images blurred and only the black lettering remained, scarring her mind with their dark secrets. “Oh, gods save me.” Yiirt was hard pressed to believe that what she was reading was, indeed, fact rather than fiction. There were no lovable characters and no apparent plot. “No, oh, no. It can’t! They can’t!” It wasn’t a fiction she was reading. “Th-that’s horrible!” Yiirt cast the unholy tome aside with all her strength. The heavy textbook made a loud thud as it hit the floor.
Within the pages, she had found the truth. The humans weren’t making new soldiers. There weren’t hidden caches of soldiers and they weren’t reproducing especially quickly. They were repairing the broken ones! The malicious textbook spoke of the humans’ vile science, a blasphemy they called ‘modern medicine’. It spoke of ancient and modern human scientists who had strived to know the human body more intricately than any mortal mind had a right to. They desecrated the dead and the living, dissecting and vivisecting, dismantling bodies as though they were mere objects to be taken apart and understood. They had paid in oceans of blood to learn the unknowable.
Yiirt read of humans receiving fatal cuts and then sewing themselves shut, like terrible, living dolls. Bloody wounds that were too grievous to sew were burned to halt the bleeding and preserve their lives. Humans that lost too much blood were injected with blood from other humans. Entire limbs could be removed, purposely or otherwise, and reattached or even replaced with clever impersonations. They created and synthesised poisons and toxins to ingest and inject into their bodies to kill off foreign organisms that their inherent immune systems could not. Injuries causing failure of vital organs were mere setbacks to the humans. They robbed the living and the dead for the organs and even grew and harvested them in godless laboratories, slicing out the defective parts and installing the new ones in one another like spare parts in a machine. Severed spines were spliced together again, forced to heal using specialised cells stolen from the marrow of other humans. Even dying would not stop them. Using electrical currents and chemical concoctions on a recently deceased human, they could tear their very souls from the clutches of death, an undead spirit to pilot what should have been a corpse.
The humans treated flesh and blood like steel and oil, defiled and perverted them to extend an individual’s functionality beyond death. The humans had lingered in an execrable domain for their damnable knowledge and emerged something more than mortal. It was no wonder their numbers were so illogically vast, so incomprehensibly static despite the combined efforts of the shii'az and the yichtarans. They weren’t perishing as the shii'az had predicted they would. The shii'az and yichtarans were battling many of the same soldiers each time they fought, not new ones. An army of undying aliens, nearly imperishable and practically deathless, was what they faced.
Yiirt nearly faded into unconsciousness as the effect of the Tyontyon berries receded. Shaking and shivering, whether from fatigue or fear, she managed to push herself up from her seat. She quickly walked over to where she had thrown the book. The vile tome seemed to stare up at her, its colourful images a mockery of the dark knowledge it held within. Clutching the heinous hardcover to her chest, she quickly fled the wicked room she had once felt so safe within and ran to find a transmitter. She had finally found the truth. The humans had no hidden weakness, just a multitude of secret atrocities and a plethora of unhallowed knowledge of themselves.
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Stech emerged into the human camp shocked and surprised. Triangular tents were spread out in a clearing they had made. Up above a false canopy hid the clearing from view. He saw the remnants of a fire, the blackened wood continuing to send up thin tendrils of smoke. However, that wasn’t what surprised him. He had thought there would be four or even six humans left but there were more. Several humans had been sitting by the dead fire, tearing charred flesh from bone with their tiny mouths. Some other humans had been grouped around a table with a crudely drawn map. Other humans milled about or slept. Stech paused at the sight but didn’t stop to count.
“It’s a lizard!” one human exclaimed as the camp burst into action.
The human that had been standing guard at the edge of the camp lowered her weapon at Stech but he moved too quickly. With a single swipe, the human dropped her weapon to clutch at her spilling entrails. Stech fired his pulse cannon at the humans studying the map but they threw the table on its side and ducked behind it. The steel warped and bent but held. Stech shot off his pulse cannon several times as his warriors tore into the clearing. One human was caught in the leg and fell to one knee, screaming in pain. Hitrin’s muzzle and face were shattered as several human bullets found their mark. He squealed and cried out before another round of bullets put him down.
“Fall back! There are too many!” Stech shouted at the remaining two yichtarans. They hadn’t expected so many humans to remain. Stech leapt behind the cover of trees just as a hailstorm of bullets turned one of his warriors, Sebach, into minced meat. “A thousand curses on the heads of the shii'az, they said there were only twenty!”
Stech could hear bullets hitting the trunks of trees and whizzing by his head. The heavy footfalls of his last soldier, Yohktak, and himself left deep footprints in the soil. The humans were slow but there would be no hiding from them. Considering how far they had come from their base to find the human camp, Stech had only one choice.
“Yohktak, did you get the coordinates of the camp?” Stech asked between heavy breaths as they struggled to distance themselves from the humans. If they acted quickly, the humans wouldn’t have time to relocate before Alloch and Garro laid waste to their makeshift base.
“Yes, by the Hunter, ye-” Yohktak’s words were cut short as he and Stech found themselves suddenly free-falling.
For a moment, Stech forgot he had been running and time stood still. The urgency of the situation disappeared and he felt at peace. Then the sharpened branches pierced his flesh and agony flooded his mind. They hadn’t been paying attention to where they were going and had fallen into a human trap. Stech suppressed a roar of pain as he lay on his back, struggling to pull himself free. One long spear jutted out from his left thigh, two from his belly and another one right next to his neck. Stech looked around and saw Yohtak’s corpse, lying face-down. A length of branch had sprouted out of his back and shoulder.
Stech struggled to pull himself from the skewers but they were too tall. Finally, in desperation, he whipped his tails around and sliced the branches from his stomach. The vibrations from his tails striking the wood was more painful than anything he had felt before. He nearly vomited from the pain as he pulled himself off of the splintered nubs and took hold of the branch that had speared his leg, breaking it as gently as he could. Green blood flowed freely from his wounds and Stech nearly fainted as he limped over to Yohktak. Stech muttered a prayer for Yohktak, promising to come back later to bury him and his fallen comrades. He rummaged through his satchel and found the Planetary Positioning Device, a piece of shii'az technology. Stech slouched in relief when he found it undamaged and turned it on. Deftly accessing the history of the device he found the location of the human’s camp. He punched the location into his transmitter and hit ‘send.’
Stech nearly crushed the transmitter in his massive hand when it read ‘failed to send.’ The distance he had put between himself and his base, the dense growth and the fact that he was several meters deep in his own supposed grave was interfering with the device. Stech looked up from where he had fallen. It was a short climb for a healthy yichtaran but a daunting obstacle for one on the brink of death. Stech took a deep breath and began climbing. The information he held was vital to the success of his mission. Pain racked his body as he dug his talons into the dirt and pulled himself up. His blood had dried against his scales but he began bleeding anew as he climbed. He had a mission to complete and they hadn’t appointed him captain of his team for being soft.
It felt like an eternity in hell as he slowly climbed out of the pit. He shut his eyes in pain each time he had to pull himself up. He felt cold, so cold. Stech clenched his teeth, struggling to hold onto consciousness. He was determined to finish his mission. Finally, his endless climb came to an end. Stech placed one clawed hand at the edge of the trap and felt the warm rays of the alien sun warming his cold hide. His temporary tranquillity was interrupted as the heel of a boot came slamming down on top of his hand. He snarled in pain as he felt one of his talons snap. He would have fallen were his hand not caught beneath the heavy boot. Straining to look up, his glare softened to a look of shock and then one of fear.
“No! No, it can’t be!” he roared at the figure standing over him. “I tore off your arm! You bled out in the jungle! I killed you… I killed you! You’re supposed to be dead!” Stech tried to comprehend how the human with the eye-patch could be standing over him, as hail and healthy as ever. White gauze was wrapped around the stub at her elbow, where Stech had ripped off her arm. Red blood had poured out of her wound like water. Stech couldn’t understand how she was standing above him. The human crouched down to look at the yichtaran.
“I got better.” She smirked down at Stech before standing up. Looking down at him with her dull, dead eye, she lifted her foot and Stech fell back into the pit. A sharpened branch ended his mission.
