FicWad

Chapter 2 : White specter

....and the future will slowly rise in all it's shapes.



Year : 2473

Location : Micor sector, Terra Mirror



There were no more frogs or snakes on planet Lv-B-0192 'Terra Mirror'. Only the rotten damps of the marshes remained, reaching up to the clouded grey skies in utter silence.

It was freezing cold around the wreckage, even for the local temperature. Half sunken into a swamp, it had a grave appearance, almost like a forebode of dead.
With wary eyes the soldiers looked at it. They nearly startled at the movement when the 'volunteer' appeared from the open door on top of the ship.

"It's empty, sir. Apparantly there were no life-forms on board, I found no food and water suplies, nor any remains. The cryo-chambers have been un-used as far as I can see from the generator."
A shout came from the inside. "Excuse me, sir." The man dissapeared inside again.

Cpt. Frank Morrisor eyed the whole scene, and said on a dry tone :"Seems like we've got some renegade Autoncraft here." His men didn't really care. Any wreckage had to be examined, and they were glad for the short break it gave them. Scouting through the marshes wasn't a pleasure.

Frank's thought's drifted back to the only time he had seen an actual renegade Auton. Annalee Call or something. He'd been send to question her. Just a formality, really. She hadn't given any real information. Only when he was about to leave, she said something that made him doubt disobediant Auton were just defected software.
It was the way she had said it that bothered him most.
"There's a mirror that will change the monsters reflecting in it."
As far as he knew, Auton were neither designed to make riddles or life quotes.

That little android had been one of the main rebels in the silent war on Deadfall. Just for fun, he said :"Markens, check for the name of the ship."

Markens wasn't in the mood to wade through the dark stinking waters, so he just circled the ship looking for glimpses of a name. Pressing the oxygen mask a bit closer to his face, he bent down and aimed his flashlight at a certain point.

"It's called : Annalee. Hey, wasn't there a Second Gen rebel called like that?"

Frank Morrisor smiled slightly. Off course. Why not? This place was called Terra Mirror on top of that.

At that moment the soldiers came from the inside, one threw a metal plate out. It gave a giant splash in the water, causing some soldiers to become even wetter than they already were.

"Shulinger, was that neccesary?" the captain asked in his ussual dry tone.
The two volunteers jumped of the ship, the one named Shulinger immediantly reached down to the metal plate.
Quite out of breath he held it up. "Yes sir. Look at this. It's seems the work of acid. It's all across the inside of the ship, and apparantly what caused the engine to malfunction. There was laserfire too, but probably not after they entered the atmosphere. No sign of the androids, however...sir?"

The captain didn't reply. Instead he looked around, seeing his men make jokes about monsters. Frank Morrisor was too old not to take this serious.
Unable to hide the concern on his face, he looked back at Schulinger. "Drop that thing. Jonah, you take a note or two, but for the rest the investigation is over."
Then, turning to his men :"We are moving out. We have four dead soldiers to salvage before it gets below 0 Celsius. Get on it, men!"

Everyone gathered slowly, hating the idea of more mud walking..
The mayor turned around to face their scientist for this mission, trying to urge him with his notes. Jonah Mnason however was nowhere in sight.

"Now where did the kid go?" he asked irritably.
"He said something about having found an interesting energy trace, he's out to investigate it." one of the men said.
"What does he think we're having here? A field trip? For goodnes sake, we're here to salvage the remains of four brave men, not to track invisible things. Give me a tc."
The 'kid's' location was quikly determined by the mini-comp (transportable computer).

"Jonah, get back here." Morrisor had regained his dry tone. Seeing him calm again however did not settle the mood of his men. They were stil nervous, some even seemed to doubt an answer to come.

"In a moment, sir, I found something of major interest." said the voice on the other side in hazes.
"You seem to misunderstand me. That was an order."
"No can't do, sir. I'm not in service of United Systems Military. Can't take any orders." His voice was so cheerful it was an utter anoyance to the wet men.
"You better get back in one piece, we're not getting paid to fetch you aswell." Schulinger said loud enough for the young man to hear.

About 3 years ago, 8 soldiers had stranded here, survivors of some catastrophy on a distant station. Something had gone wrong with the datafiles and no one had come to rescue them at that time. Now the families knew where their relatives were, they wanted to be able to give them a proper burial, though some still called it a rescue mission. But no one could survive here. They all knew that.

The captain sighed, and turned to one of his men. "Private Willson, go bring mr. Mnason back." he ordered.



Jonah, a youngman hardly past his twenties with shaggy blond hair and glasses, was completely cought up in his scanner and had forgotten quikly why he had come to this planet. This was his first field operation, and admitable a lot tougher than he had expected.

But his new discovery made him forget his aching body and the fact that he wore the wrong boots.
In the distance he had detected vague, blurry readings of something as plasma. Plasma energy, here! And scattered over such a wide area. No way it could have been the remnant of the long gone human civilization.
Now he stood before a giant crater that stretched further than the mists allowed him to see.
Looking around and remembering his geology and astronomy classes, this was definitly not something made by a meteorite. More like a bomb, but if so, a very defect bomb. The presure marks on the area differed, at some places there were remainings of scorched trees, while other places were mere gaps.

Though the crater was partially soaked like the rest of the land, it did remain a crater. The water seemed to be drained somewhere in the middle. Probably an underground cave-system.
From this whole area the vague plasma readings came.

Jonah became all exited, unless there was a really weird malfunction in his scanner, there had been a plasma explosion here. A plasma bomb.
Mankind stil did not know how to generate those just yet. There were alien species said to posses this technology however.

A soppy sound cought his attention. Looking around, he saw a man approaching from the distance. He didn't seem to have noticed him yet.
Jonah tended to keep a childish attitude when it came to such opportunities, so he hid behind a rock, planning to scare the man. Perhaps it was Schulinger or Erwin, those were alway's so grim toned, it would be great if he could give one of them a fright. He knelt down beside a rock where it was reasonably dry and waited.

The person waded through the marshes, straight past the rock. Jonah jumped out with a branch in has arm, yelling :"Freeze or you'll die."
The man just stopped walked, but didn't even flinch.

Jonah was dissapointed.
"~Oh well. Who is that anyway?~" thought he.
Being a pretri-dish generation child, Jonah was genetically not very stabile, and since he didn't have the money for bionic eyes, he needed glasses. The ones now on his nose were for far sight, and he needed to switch to close range sight to see the man before him clearly.
He reached in his pockets searching for those glasses when he heard the man's voice say :"Commander, I came across a civilian."
An radio-like voice answered : "A civilian? Here? Give us a second, trooper."

Jonah didn't need glasses to know that this was not one of his companions. Nervously he kept searching for them, and when he placed them on his nose, he saw the person before him clearly.
The man was all covered in a military outfit that he did not know. A facial helmet even shrouded his eyes. Also, he held a riffle in his arms.
"Don't move a muscle." the stranger said to him. Jonah suddenly felt the cold of the world around him start stinging into his body as he was presented with a possibly life endangering situation.

A few minutes passed in completely silence, then the voice, apparantly coming from the helmet itself, answered :"Oh crap, there's a charity mission here to fetch some dead guy's. I told Angleson to check for those, but noo, he had to-"
"Your orders, commander." the trooper said slightly anoyed.
"Oh, yes. He's stil there, I presume?"
"Trembling like a rabbit."
"Well, he saw us. Elliminate him."

The trooper seemed to hesitate. "Can't we just send him back insane? That would be so much more fun."
"No time for that, private. Use the shocker for paralization and drop him in a pool somewhere. Nice and tidey, will look perfectly like an accident. Oh, and try to avoid any other charity people, okay? It just so happens we're on a secret mission here."

The trooper shrugged. "Whatever."
A click indicated the link was broken, and the conversation over.
The trooper turned around to Jonah then. "Gotta follow my orders. Sorry." There was amusement in his voice. He pulled out a short black stick from a unseen pocket and it extended itself.

Jonah wasn't dumb, whatever that thing was, it would be his end and he knew it. This was the time to run. He just hoped this trooper would follow his commanders order and hold fire.
He jumped up and ran for his life. The ground was full of boulders and sticky alges, not to mention occasional hidden pools that could drag you in if you didn't get out quik enough.

Behind him, the trooper followed without obvious hurry. The man knew he would catch up eventually, and seemed more worried about not getting any wetter than he already was.

Jonah kept on running and stumbling, until he realized he no longer heard the splashing of his pursuer. For a moment he actually believed he had shaken the man off.
Then, the trooper appeared from behind an stinking mass that once was a tree. Jonah saw the black stick nearing, and the next moment a static shock ran through his body, just before the white mists around him turned black.



Captain Morrisor looked around nervously. Neither Willson nor Mnason had contacted them yet. Not that alot could really happen out in the marshes, he told himself, but they needed their scientist now.

Almost unrecognizable, under a pile of ex-plants, they had found the wrecked spacecraft with the United Systems mark, and a tent nearby. Inside, there were two dead soldiers. They had been put inside bags by now, and placed on the hovercart, the only one they could afford for this mission.
At least, they hoped those were the soldiers. Lying in the water for years had made the bodies swell up and become a white waxy and extreme distgusting mass. There were two more of such bodies outside, and his men were having a little trouble recognizing a corpse that was pulled into two halves. Was it a human or some sort of local animal? It looked like a pig, but the scannings indicated they could also be human. Human gened pigs had been a common mather ever since the year 2000, and perhaps one of them had survived here.
They were totally lost about what it actually was, and no one wanted to bring a dead pig home to a waiting family.

The captain paced around on a boulder and again tried to contact Willson. Private Markens sat on the edge of the rock, fidgetting with a piece of equipment he had taken from the android vessle. It was a scanner, busted, but he tried to get it working. It was a nice way to drive away time and with some luck they could even track the two missing men.

Suddenly, the voice of Willson whispered out of the tc in the captain's hand.
"Sir, we have to get out of here."
"Willson, where are you?"
"Not so loud, sir. Listen, we have to head back to the ship immediantly. Forget those bodies. Look, I don't have much time. About 12 minutes ago I slipped and fel into a pool, I got stuck, which probably saved me. I heard two people pass, one of them saying something about checking wether someone else had killed the nerd already. I think they meant Jonah." His voice seemed agitated and hasty.
For a moment silence followed, and cpt. Morrisor listened with tension.
"When I got loose from that branch, I got up and looked them walk away....they don't wear any sort of insigna. Sir, head to the ship immediantly. Something is wrong here. I will meet you there. Over and out."

The soldiers had stopped trying to put the bodies into bags. They all listened to the nervous voice on the other side of the ct. Markens had left his gizmo's on the rock and walked over to his captain. "What do we do, sir?"

Morrisor let the ct play through his fingers nervously. Then he made a decision.
"Private Carronin, you head to the ship with private Schulinger, you're fastest and you know how to operate it. Bring it into air and scan for both Mnason and Willson, but head straight here. We will be here, hopefully with the bodies salvaged by the time you arive. We'll use the lift to get them up."
The two men nodded and headed out.

"Why not head for the ship directly, sir? Begging your pardon, but this is not practical. I know Willson, he never overacts." Markens said.
"But are we going to tell them home? We saw shadows move through the mist and got scared? It's not that I don't believe Willson, but at home they will say that he was suffering from swamp gasses or some other crap. No, we need to do this the right way. We have little to lose in this world, so we'll be losing all if we fail on a mission as this."

He put his hand on Markens shoulder and then turned around again, urging his men to continue. They'd just have to bring all of the white mess.
Markens sighed, and decided to go help his friends.
He never saw the Auton scanner activate as he put it down a little too hard, nor did he notice how it connecting with the software of his compounder. On the screen, a message appeared in common english : Detection hostile : Enigma Commands.

Suddenly, the man sitting on the hovercart jumped up. "There's Willson, sir."
Almost all turned their faces to where the man was staring. Markens stepped forward, wanting to greet his friend, but then he stopped, and started stepping backwards.

From the mists, over 50 more shapes arose, all armed and without insigna on their uniforms. Their riffles were aimed straight at the group of soldiers.
Cpt. Morrisor gathered his courage and approached the one closest to them.

"I am captain Morrisor from the U.S.M. Ariston. Please state you-"

"Ooh, he's a captain. I'm soo impressed." the man before him said.
"No wonder, they probably didn't want to waste any important people on cleaning up corpses." another one said.

Cpt. Morrisor took a better look at them. They were wearing uniforms for sure, but without insignia, at least, none to be seen with the bare eye. Judging from their highly advanced oxygen masks, they were well financed, and their weaponry was of a sort he had never seen before. Small and probably very lethal. He needed to be no genius to realize he and his men were in serious danger.

"In name of the Interstellair Alliances, I demand to know what System you serve." he spoke firmly, but unable to hide the shiver in his voice.

Laughter arose from the hostile troopers before them. And as sudden as they had started laughing, they stopped again in a grave silence.

The one standing before cpt. Morrisor said : "Well, in the name of the same Alliances, we have to kill you people since you saw stuff you were not suposed to see. In a next life, make sure you keep any nerds in your team close."

He raised the weapon and pushed Morrisor in the chest.

"Now follow nicely. It's the difference between slow dead and quik dead. Oh, and let's not make things irritating with that patathic gun you're about to pull." Under his mask the hostile smirked, as he saw the cpt. lower his hand again. He didn't even bother snatching the gun. Anything not laser weaponry wasn't danger anyway.

At that moment, one of the other soldiers pulled his weapon out and fired it at the nearest enemy. His target just stood there as the bullets bounced of the black clothing he wore.
"Idiots." said the leader and shot Morrisor's oxygen tank leak.
That stopped the gunfire. They all knew what happened without decent oxygen here. A very slow, painful dead due to the poisonous atmosphere.

"Now we nicely walk over to your ship, where your corpses are going to make it all look like an unfortunate accident."

Seeing the fearful expression on the faces of the soldiers, the leader of Enigma Command E-208 smiled in satisfaction. Watching fear in others had become such a nice thing after the scientists had disabled the part of his brain generating fright.



Jonah became aware of the foggy grey sky above him. It was as dark as storm.
"~Evening...~" flashed through his head. Soon it would be too cold to survive.

Though the actual cold had not yet set in, it seemed polar to him. He was soaked to his skin.

Wearily he tried to get up. Where did that guy go, the one chasing him? Vaguely, his memory returned, first the meeting, the chase, the thrill of electricity. Then the words....
Elliminate him.
Cold. He only knew such voices from movies.

What had happened? He had passed out, that was a fact, but why hadn't the trooper or soldier or mercenary or whatever he was, finished his job?

He stopped for a moment, realising he was stil slightly paralysed. He took a few deep breaths, and tried to calm down. Probably one of the soldiers had come along.

Jonah recalled how well equiped the trooper had been. How big were the chances any of the people he had come with, could take such a person out? Heck, they could not even afford proper oxygen masks. The bitter atmosphere felt like acid in his face, constantly burning.

When he felt clear enough, he pushed himself up on his elbows, just a bit too hard causing him to slip of the slimy rock he was lying on. Something solid cought him however, shooting underneath just as he tipped of the rock. In a reflex Jonah cought grip of the object, then it softly began pushing him back on the rock.
For a moment he stared at the strange object his hands were resting on. It seemed almost like bone, but much harder and rougher than the chalkbone of mammals.

He followed here it came from, and turned half around he saw a blurry white shape, only slightly sticking off the grey mists in the distance. Without his glasses he could not see very much. Now he wished he would have brought his lenses, but he had alway's been afraid to put them in his eyes.
Jonah tried to focus, but what he believed to see made no sense.

It was giant shape, much larger than a human. A skull-like face seemed to be in the middle of it's body. Looking a bit better, he realised it had to have a long neck, the head hanging low. The shoulders, or extension of the head, he could not be sure, ended in three points.
It had four legs, sitting on them like a dog does. The thing he as leaning on, was the tail. Just as this tail, the entire being seemed to be made of bone. And it was gigantic.

Jonah blinked, his mind ran past all possibilities. What could it be within the known reasoning?

He came out blank, doutbed that even if he could see clearly that he'd be able to explain it. There were only two options left : mutated or extraterrestial life.
Now Terra Mirror was weird, but not unnusual. He could see no way anything that had lived her could become this thing. Perhaps it was an extra-terrestial that had lived here before the humans came, perhaps their species was the reason everything had gone wrong here.

Forgetting the fact that his oxygen was running low and there were a bunch of hostile humans running around, he tried to figure out what to do.
"Okay, this is like...a close encounter. First contact...o shit......are there any rules about this?" he looked at the being again. His hand was stil on it's tail, and the being hadn't moved at all.
Jonah pulled his hand back. The tail swiftly pulled back to the creature.
Was this even intelligent life?

It was observing him, it seemed. But what was it observing? Was it just really stupid, or like an animal?
A beep came from his back. Pulling the counter out of his jacket, he saw it was almost empty.
He gulped. He knew better than anyone on this planet what symtoms dying by this air gave. The only way to survive was to get back to the others or the ship, anyplace that had full oxygen tanks.

This brought him to the next problem : his scanner and tc were jolted by the zap he had been given by the trooper, and the rest of the damage was done by the water. A sizzle of electricity hit his hand, and he dropped the tc in the water. The scanner was the same kind of mess, it only gave vague readings.

All of the sudden, the white shape before him moved. It seemed to extend a leg, or rather, an arm into the black water, reaching for the dropped tc. With one move it closed it's fingers around it and brought it up, offering it back to Jonah.

So this being held more intelligence than an animal, Jonah observed. Perhaps communication was possible after all.
"No use." he said, shaking his head.

Oddly, the being seemed to understand, as it retracted it's arm and brough the tc to it's face, as if looking at it.
Jonah felt how slowly, the airpresure in his tank reduced. He had to act now. Enviously he thought of the tank the trooper had been wearing. Why did the badguy's alway's get the good funds?

He jumped of the rock, and sank nearly up to his knee's into the drappy water. Almost he had tipped over face into the dark drap. This time, there was no tail blocking him, but he grabbed hold of a rotten mass of tree.

Jonah looked around, and didn't see the creature anywhere. He felt quite lost now. Noway to go anywhere.
A soppy sound remained in the marshes around him. He saw the being then shimmer up from the mists again, moving on it's hind legs. Now he saw it was even larger than he had estimated, well over 5 meters high.
It carried something, half holding, half dragging it along under it's arms.

He needed no good eyes to recognise what it was.
The white alien dropped the dead trooper on the rock Jonah just had been on. Stains of red covered most of the black suit, and the head, arms and chest seemed to have been chewed on. Blood and bone dropped off the corpse.

Before he became afraid, he had to vomit. Pulling the simple mask of his mouth, he threw out a yellow mass that nicely matches the stench of the planet. Frantically he put the mask on again, and looked again at the dead man.

That thing had killed the trooper. But what really bothered Jonah, was that it also ate from the human. It ate human.
He had never been brave, not even enough to speak up in class. Right now, Jonah Mnason was losing it.

He turned around and started running in the direction that he considered away from that thing. Behind him were a few splashes, then nothing.

He knew this. A few dry pieces remained in the wetlands, and this was how he was suprised earlier. He quikly changed direction.

The odd feeling entered him that this was but a mere game. Fun for whom, he thought.
As expected, the white shape appeared from out of the mists just before, he would have bumped into it if he hadn't tripped over a rock.

Half sitting, half kneeling in the dark drap, he thought : "~Well, this is it. But hey, maybe I'll choke before that thing eats me alive.~"
Jonah grinned insanely. He would have loved to pass out like he had done when the 'pop-gang' of his school had pushed him into the stadion with nothing but his towel.

To his dissapointment however, he remained awoke, not able to decide wether he was shaking from the cold or the fear.

The monster again held something up to him.

It suddenly started to reach his mind, this being didn't want to kill him. It was alone. As he realised this, a strange happiness came over him. He wasn't going to die. It had been a game, a welcome game. Now, the game was over, and he got a prize.

Even before the creature held the object close enough for him to see, he knew it was the oxygen tank of the trooper. Intact and holding enough oxygen for something that was either 13 or 18 hours.

Either how, plenty of time to reach his ship and get out of here.
Saddness.

Jonah put on the new tank, just in time as the other one ran out of oxygen. Then he looked back at the being. There was the overwealming feeling of sudden sorrow.
He was not sure why, but he said :"You can come with me."
A new, silent rising of enjoyement, like ....another game. Unwillingly Jonah smiled, then he realised this being had the ability of some form of telepathy, or empathy perhaps. It did not seem to deciver his thoughts, but did respond to his feelings and what was connected to those.

With a new oxygen tank, Jonah now tried to straighten things out.
He was facing a being of certain intelligence, perhaps even knowledge of right and wrong, but he could not afford to marvel at this. His companions were in danger.
There were more of those troopers out there, and they had probably come for something secret. If they'd try to kill him, they'd try to kill the others aswell. He had to do something.

Things started to fall into it's place.

"Did they come for you?"

No response.

"Are from here?"

There it was, the sudden, clear feeling of no.

Jonah shifted on his feet. This was amazing. He had the chance to communicate, and on a whole new plain than anyone else could. If he could make his plans clear to this creature...wait, it was a female.

Something major was going on, definitly. The troopers set to kill, the boney monster, the crater caused by a plasma explosion of some sort.....

Ship. How do you transfer the essence of ship into a feeling? Going home. Comming here. He tried to think of travel, and strangely, the creature recognised it almost immediantly. She had to have some knowledge of ships then.

She stood up on her hind legs and started walking in a certain direction, and Jonah just plain knew she was heading to the ship, or at least, the not hostile foreign large presence.
He embraced the new kind of knowing she gave him, and she was amazed how he worked with it.



The android's ship was cleared away safely in the masive ship hovering in orbit around Terra Mirror, for later research. There were no traces of the Enigma Commands ever having been here, as should be.
In the distance, ferocious smoke wirled up high from the Aristo Mission ship. It would be reported as an unforunate accident, noticed by a by-passing science ship. The Generals would be pleased this mission had been spotless.

Well, as for the things they could control.
None of the United Systems officials would be pleased to hear that there was no trace of the containers or it's eggs, whatsoever.
And they would be furious when hearing that it probably were the yautja whom had beaten them to the eggs. Silently Angleson cursed and doublecursed for not being allowed to swear outloud now he was onboard of the ship again.

He also hated waiting. The trooper who had come across the science figure probably was toying with him anyway, completely against orders. It had been over an hour now.
Well, it kept them waiting and Angleson made sure to give him something humiliation to do 'for duty' when he got back.

The scanners then indicated that this certain individual was now heading straight to the transport ship. Good. One of the screen operators mentioned that there was no contact.
"The fool probably waisted all his electricity on zapping air to scare that nerd." Angleson muttered and retreated to his quarters. Now the last member of the Enigma III-B was heading back, there wasn't much left to do that commander Angleson could not put on someone elses shoulders.



"Well....."
He said nothing more.
He had grabbed the arm of the alien, not being able to work himself through the wetlands on his own anymore. Cold started to penetrate through his flesh, and his energy was running low. She practically dragged him on.
Though the monster was alot tougher than he, she did not like the cold either. A while ago she had emited a pleasant feeling to him, they were going somewhere warm.

It had made him smile at first, until there came images. The ship on which he had come was not just warm, it was on fire. Images that were not color, not sound started to take shape in his head, of his ship, burning, bodies inside, gasspipes exploding. People standing around it watching. Having fun. She said she would kill them. They were in the way.

The thought and feeling appealed Jonah very much, but he gathered his senses. Dead waited there for him. He now tried to force away the images still in his mind, unsuccesfull.

However he had found something else that the creature depicted as sun and warm. The ship the troopers had come with. Angered, frustrated and afraid he had gotten an insane desire to kill everyone on that ship and take off with his new ally. Or just leave them to suffocate.

He noticed that this feeling was so powerful the creature subdued for it. While she had been projecting her feelings and thoughts on him, she now copied his.
Obediantly she took the road to the second ship.

As they aproached, a lasershot silently appeared from the mists. She didn't recognise it at first, then an old memory came up, and she pushed herself and Jonah, whom hadn't seen a thing, against the ground.

The shot just scraped past the left side of her corona.
Pain. It wasn't like the pain of the horrible cold. This was another kind of pain. To this pain, anger came.

A voice carried through the mists.
"Hey, Carl, your moron. You're stalling the whole thing. Get your ass over here!"

Jonah pushed himself up, bit didn't see anything, a large boulder was in the way. The alien straightened again, fully on her legs now and very alert.
He felt how she had changed. No more game. Kill. Like the trooper she had killed while helping him.

Jonah found himself whispering :"Yes girl, go. Hunt them down."
Almost at the same time she opened her sharp toothed mouth, and uttered a terrible shriek that deafened the human at her side for a while. He didn't care. Nothing he missed.

In the distance under the useless cover of the mist, someone yelled :"Xenomorph! Did we bring icers?"

The voice was still quite calm. As if they knew what they dealt with. But they did not. She was no drone, and she had two minds to guide her through the slaughtering at hand.

The squishing sound of wet wood and a few splashes was all they heared before a sharp tail penetrated their longues or heads. She was being shot at, but the more they fired, the better she learned to predict the shots, untill it was nothing but a mather of reading minds and feelings in order to avoid any more wounds. Hidden from normal sight by the grey mists and halfly covered in cold alges hiding her from heat vision in the masks, she was a quik and merciless killer.

From behind his rock, Jonah was totally absorbed within the creature's mind, fascinated by the rage and power. The blood he saw now in many way's no longer frightened him like it had done before, the deadcries were both terrifying as signs of amazing triomph and ability. Survival! Such a powerful feeling of survival.

Whenever she needed it, he responded by finding another shot she hadn't seen comming. Yet most of the time, he just plain enjoyed and commanded both as served.

"Get on your feet." a cold voice said.
Jonah closed his eyes and still knew the trooper to be there. How he stood, how he held his weapon, what his weak spot was.
Then he turned around like a possesed and grabbed the man's troat with two hands. The trooper had not expected it, but was stil, able to reach his one free hand up to grab one arm of Jonah. The other arm however reached the trooper's troat and started squeezing so hard the weapon dropped into the water.

The blond man lounged up, now bringing his second hand to his victims troat aswell, and pushed him backwards into the water choking him meanwhile. It felt so right, doing this. This was a wrong person, a treat to innocents, to family and children.

With a gasp Jonah suddenly released the man. The trooper crawled up from under the water, but Jonah had the riffle in his arms already.
He had allowed the alien to show him too much. Unwillingly, while taking dominance, he had become submissive. He realised that now. No, he would not be a murderer, or an animal. He wanted to survive, and for that he needed others to survive.

Pointing the riffle at the trooper while in the distance the last screams died away, he said coldly, like brining the news :"You are the last human aside of me on this planet. I'm the one with the riffle. I am the one with the alien friend.

Now we nicely walk over to your ship, while I'm gonna do my best making sure you don't become a corpse before we're off this friggin planet." He mimiced the tone with which the same man had spoken to cpt. Morrisor, before killing him and the rest.



In his quarters Angleson paced from wall to wall, unaware of the masaquere just ending down on the planet. He just wanted to get out of here and return to his wellearned holiday. Who cared about those eggs anyway? The yautja probably had made omelets out of them.

Someone beeped him up. "Report." he said out of habit, though he was completely not in the mood to actually be deciding about anything.
"Contact with all 19 units has been broken. Last message reports xenomorph. Unit 01 still alive. Unit 05 untrackable, another person took over his gear apparantly. The craft is aproaching our ship, captain. Please come to the hangar."
"Is there any xenomorph on board?"
"Sir, you know our ships are resistent to scans."
"Well compensate then. Do I need to do all the thinking here? And don't open the hangar until you're sure there's no xenomorph on board. I don't even want a bloody egg up here."
"Yes sir......crap. The hangar is opening...and the system is being overiden.....Unit 01's code, plus several foreign codes."

Comander Angleson broke the link, and bit on his lip. This seemed to go a little further than insubordination. He hesitated. On one side he really did not want to go to the hangar if there might be a xenomorph, he knew very well what those things were capable off, on the other hand he did not want to be the last one to know what went on, and certainly not to be suprised by one of those droolers while sitting here.

Reaching the hangar, he immediantly went to the small room high above the decks, so that he could overlook all through the camera's.
He was there just in time for the air to be sucked out, and the hatch to open. There was no use anymore in override. The spacecraft docked.

As the air was brought back into the hangar, the 30 troopers present on the Enigma ship positioned them around the craft, their lasers set, awaitening any xenomorphs.

From his relatifly safe cabin, Angleson started cursing to himself again. The Enigma arseny could provide perfectly well icers, which worked alot better in general than the random laserweaponry this ship was equiped with. But those stupid scientists said that it had been over 7 years since the android ship had crashed and there could be no way there were any xenomorph stil alive.

Well, if they were suposed to die after 2 years, why were they here? Perhaps the men down there were just having a bit of a revenge joke, Angleson hoped.
At that point, the hatch opened.

Unit 01 appeared.

"~See. All a joke. Nothing wrong.~"Angleson thought.

Then, a man in a mud covered brown jacket and blond hair appeared, wearing an Enigma oxygen tank. What came at his side, made Angleson's eyes widen, and his mouth drop a bit. A small squeek was all comming out.

At the side of the human walked something that resembled a xenomorph Queen in all it's glory and power, but had some eerie human traits. It's lower head was shaped like a human skull where there was suposed to be only a jawset. It had eyes, five fingers and a translucent lair of white skin covering the exoskeleton on the corona, face, torso, arms and legs.

Why was no one busy killing it?
He grabbed a speaker, and yelled :"Kill it! Now! What are you fools waiting for?"
No one responded. All they could do was stare at the two being walking down the hatch that now functioned as exist stairs.

Shaking with anger, Angleson grabbed a weapon, opened a window from the room he was in, and aimed the laserriffle down into the hangar, forgetting they were in a vacant. He aimed for the white xenomorph, but the little red target dot danced all over the ship, his men and only a little over the alien. He couldn't get a lock.

Why was he so afraid? He wasn't suposed to be afraid. He was never afraid. One shot would be enough to kill that monster. Why couldn't he get an aim?
The presure inside him grew. Fear, the need to survive, the feeling of danger, and then.....
his flesh being ripped from his body.

Cringing together on the floor of the chamber, grabbing invisable wounds, the commanders started screaming as if he was being murdered. Yet the only blood comming from him was that of the scratches he made on himself while pulling away claws that his mind alone saw.



She had immediantly noticed the man's intentions, and Jonah was pleased to be of some real use finally. Transferring the memories of the dying troopers on the planet in clear images and strong emotions that did not affect himself strangely enough, it was no problem taking down the commander of this ship with fear alone.

In satisfaction, he looked around to the paralysed troopers. They too were cought in feelings not their own. How easily human minds were deceived. While it had taken him but seconds to figure out the feelings the alien projected on him were not really his own, these poor imbicils believed they were their feelings and thus the fear became theirs.

Jonah had marveled at the absence of most fear in these men, but it was easy to teach them to fear all over again, projecting his own fright on them through his helpful alien friend. He was quite sure now, that it was his high intelligence that had saved him from drowing in the spirit of the white extraterrestial walking calmly at his side, towering above him.
It could kill him easily. Yet he could clearly think the thought of himself being killed by her, she did not even seem to notice. He realised, in her language, lie did not exist.

He decided to make a little speech to explain things to these people, he didn't really want to give them anymore acces to the alien's mind.
"Well, hello everyone. I'm the sole survivor of the harmless charity mission you so inpolitely interupted by killing everyone...almost everyone. And this here is my new friend. She loves to play games and well....you can guess she's alway's the winner. We'd like a ride away from this stinking planet." he said with a tag of amusement and sarcasm in his voice.

They all stared back, some blank, most shivering.
"~Paralysing minds....I think I just discovered a new war tactic.~" Jonah mused withing himself.

Aside of him, she stood, staring around curiously at the beings. She wanted to say hello, they were not hurting her. Good memories and bad memories at this species crossed her mind, but none of them had humans looking like these in particular. Other bodies and colors and lines on their faces and hands.
Her new guard, her first guard knew them better. He felt them danger. He had to know better.
Though she did not understand the fractal combinations he made, she did know the images he asociated these humans with. So she obeyed and kept giving them fear. This strange thing she could emit but not really understand. It wasn't part of her.
She suddenly got a thought, and showed her mother's face and being to Jonah, the being she only remembered from memory.

It made him startle for a moment, then he looked up at her. Then, there was more anger in him. She agreed to this anger. He was disgusted by the humans on board of this ship even more than before. His thoughts matched her memories, and she agreed.
The anger this gave was new, deep, silent, and very very old.

Today had been a good day for her. Many new things. Joy and hate. Good they were, to be so alive. And now, they were going to leave the cold.



The flames of the missionship ceased burning. Life continued dying. The planet became empty again, like it had been before the humans had come.
It was suposed to be a new home, simular to Earth....such a failure Terra Mirror had been.

The ship in orbit, that carried no name on the outside, left.

But before perfect silence stepped in, another ship landed. Merely to pick up the remains of the missing soldiers, and the people that died in an accident trying to get their remains. This time, the goverment made sure no errors occured.

No one officially reported the strange sight they found near a giant crater that could not be explained. They found something resembling a large, buglike yet also animallike creature. A shell rather, a very thick shell. Either how, it had burst open completely from the inside.
The doctor of the mission, a grandchild of the only scientist survivor of a previous xenomorph incident, took the exoskeleton of the alien lifeform on board secretly, knowing what is was.

Then, they too left.

Now there is only a crater with soon to be faded plasma traces.

All was silent again.

Perhaps, like a silence aside of the storm in the distance, for the galaxy would soon be in tremor and chaos.