Pull (originally published as Deep Darkness v1)

Living Space

Living Space

    Out of the darkness a small slender creature crept. It stood just higher than our commanding officers knee. Its ears stood straight up and its black fur and long tail swept back and forth. It was gnawing on a huge, white bone pulled from the spine of some sea creature back on Errikus. It was almost impossible to tell were the bones disappeared and its sharp teeth began. Its nose was straight and narrow, sniffing the air as it sat on its long back legs. It made a small growling sound as we moved closer. Its black eyes looked us over. This was the first time I had ever seen a dog. It was the companion to the commander and had been bonded to him since birth. It would die for him, kill for his master and should anything happen to his master he would hunt down and kill without remorse whoever was responsible.

    It reminded me of the bond I had to Aira. We should have never been torn apart! I requested immediately to be transferred back to the Aelita. Of course my requested was declined and there was nothing I could do about it. I had been drafted to the Erebus since my birth. This was the ship my mother served on and the ship she would have died on if the leviathan didn't kill her. I would live the rest of my life upon this ship!

    If they would have granted my request they would have to grant the requests of all the other residents on the Aelita and the Erebus. Not even the orphans were allows to break the structure of the fleet.. So this would be the beginning of my new life.

    On my way to the Erebus there was another creature I had seen for the first time. They were the ones I had heard of before... they were called 'caretakers' and they clung to the sides of the ship's hull. I couldn't tell but it seemed like some of them were waving. They were twice the size of a normal person but they had no real human features at all except that they seemed bi pedal Their skin was a mix of bright, neon green. Actually, they looked more like turtles than humans. I was told that they drew energy from stars and radiation inside the immer - much like plants they were photosynthetic. They didn't need to eat and they didn't need to sleep. They were the perfect workers. They had had what seemed like arms grafted onto the shells of their bodies. There were two arms on their right side and a third on the left. They would use their third arm to hang onto the outside of ship. They lived there. Both the Aelita and Erebus had hundreds. The only way for a "normal" humans to communicate with them was through the ship's A.I. hey were remarkable, a perfect creature capable of living in the vacuum of space.

    As our transport was flying down the side of the Aelita, I could see their enormous black eyes staring at us, observing us. They were already repairing the giant gash the leviathan had made.

    "Pay them no mind." one of the soldiers onboard said.

    He went on to explain that sometime, in the last hudnred years both the Aelita and Erebus had begun to decay on the outside. The nanites that would constantly multiply on the sides of the hull were beginning to die out too. An eccentric scientist was the cause for this decay. He was caught mixing DNA from humans and various aliens that we created. Apparently his experiments involved unwilling citizens that were in and out of stasis. He was to be tried for crimes against humanity but instead of sentencing him to death, some elder insisted that he be forced to put his work to good use. End result, he created the first caretaker. Really it was no more than an egg with human limbs grafted on various parts of its body. It was constantly in pain. It had no idea why any of this was happening. It died a few days later and its body was then thrown out into the vast vacuum of space. The project was a success though. It showed the elders that the manipulation of DNA was possible. Their bodies were all clones. They would resurrect themselves every one hundred to two hundred years. They were constantly plugged into the ship's A.I., which constantly processed and copied their consciousness. From there the scientist's research was improved and finally he had created the right hybrid.