Colonel William Mellor sat alone in the dark, he needed space to think and there was precious little of that on the arkship Hope. He sat in what he assumed had been used as a laundry room but seemed now to be random storage of linen and unrelated maintenance equipment and forgotten personal effects.
The room still had the faint smell of detergent, mingled with yet-to-be-washed clothes, the heat down here probably helped the aroma to survive. He thought of everything in terms of survival these days.
He had been aboard Hope for 977 days and in that time his own hope had evaporated, the terrible machines that had invaded the earth had wreaked havoc on the planet and indeed the solar system. The only reason Hope was safe is because it, like twelve others like it, sat in the sweet spot of the Venusian atmosphere.
It was on the last trip back to earth that Mellor had lost all hope, he had witnessed the home planet of the human race being eaten from the inside by those terrible mechanical monsters. Mellor remembered a time around fifty years previously when they first invaded earth’s atmosphere.
A white hot glowing daylight meteor shower announced their arrival, the bigger ones that got through the atmosphere came in all shapes and sizes. Millions upon millions of machines tearing up the atoms of organic and human made material alike, then using it for their own growth and propagation.
At first measures to fight the relentless alien machines bore some fruit, however they adapted and what neutralised them one day, failed to do so the next. Within a few years large parts of the earth became uninhabitable.
The colonies on Mars were no better, they had been infected decades before, however a much smaller Mars population were not aware of the dangers before it was too late.
The machines seemed to have no purpose but to destroy, consume and grow. They had no demands, no strategic agenda apart from consumption, in that respect they were mindless, however Mellor reflected, they still seemed to have enough basic intelligence to allow them to operate in a coordinated and wholly destructive manner.
The first missions to Venus were largely unsuccessful, hastily designed and put together ships either didn’t make the journey, or failed catastrophically when they arrived. Worse still some of the ships brought over infections, tiny microscopic versions of the machines, replicating unseen to the human eye, until it was too late.
Unfortunately for them, but luckily for their fellow colonists, the data received back from those doomed ships helped the survivors to formulate a defence plan, they discovered that the machines found it impossible to survive in the Venusian atmosphere, especially at the higher levels.
The scientists were working on a charged particle and sulphuric acid rain theory; all Mellor new is that the machines had shown their adaptability, and there was no way they could allow any more infections to get on-planet.
It was bad enough knowing there was a cloud moving out there in the solar system. As far as Mellor could see the human race was doomed, he didn’t know how long it would take, but those machines didn’t stop, they just kept destroying almost everything in their path and growing ever larger.
Mellor had over three hundred and seventy thousand people aboard Hope, it had grown quite a bit itself since being in the Venusian atmosphere. They all looked to him to keep them safe, to come up with a plan that would somehow save the day.
In truth, he had nothing, in shear desperation he had arranged for the distress signal to be broadcast, it had taken all his influence and sway. Broadcasts of any kind had been restricted for at least a century and a half, when the cloud was first discovered in deep space; it was feared at the time, and still was, that the cloud was programmed to respond to signals.
Mellor sat in the darkness, his back suddenly straightened and his jaw hardened as he thought to himself;
“If there is a species out there intelligent enough to create those monstrous things, then there’ll be one or more who are capable of taking them out. If one is near us, it’s not such an implausible thought that the other will be too.
I hope so, for all our sakes, because without outside help we’re done for.”
Metal Rain: Chapter 9 - Message From Home
Metal Rain: Chapter 8 - First Born
Metal Rain: Chapter 7 - First Contact
Metal Rain: Chapter 6 - The Impossibility Of Being
Metal Rain: Chapter 5 - Entropy Envy
Metal Rain: Chapter 4 - Vacuum Call
Metal Rain: Chapter 3 - Transformation Requiem
Metal Rain: Chapter 2 - Nanostorm
Cryptogee Chronicles Book Two: Metal Rain - Chapter 1 - Void Edge
Altered image: Cg
