beep

beep

beep

"Five more minutes..."

beep

beep

"Leave me alone"

ZAP!

AHHH

I jolted awake as the electrical shock coursed throughout my body.  Damn this new alarm clock, who puts a tazer in an alarm clock anyway? Regardless, I got out of bed, the electrical burn still hurting. I turned around and looked at the messed sheets and misplaced pillows, along with the hole burned into the sheets. I shrugged and decided to leave that way. I started to make my way towards the bathroom, as I entered; I decided looking for some burn ointment would be the first thing on my agenda of the day.

As I opened up the medicine cabinet, the lights flickered for a moment, I looked up in confusion for a moment, and they kept flickering for a moment before suddenly stopping. I shrugged looked for the ointment.  I eventually found it in the form of a small tube, 'Burn aid' it read. I quickly applied it, the gel like substance was unusually warm for an ointment that hasn't been used in months, anyway it hardened quickly, and the reason for the hardening was simply to keep it from being washed away to easily. The burning pain suddenly stopped after the gel hardened, I took a quick shower and got dressed.

I looked in the mirror to check to see if any part of my uniform required adjusting. I was wearing a light gray/blue shirt and blue pants with a dark tan belt, underneath said shirt was a thin vest made of primitive Kevlar as a just in case. I went over to my bed and grabbed my armor and helmet, both were a light gray color, the armor was in all honesty, a flak jacket (normally used as shrapnel protection) it came with small armor plates for the shoulders. The helmet, on the other hand, was way more complicated. Containing a built in short range walkie talkie and a yellow tinted visor, along with two small holes on the top for my horns. All in all, I looked like a solder in my gear, quite misleading since I'm a so called 'Farm Guard'. My jobs, along with many others, as a Farm Guard is too protect the farming industries and snack manufacture plants. After all, Vort Station 7 supply's most of the food for the other stations including Station 9. This station was also a Resisty hot spot, their always trying to raid the food depots, it was too much for the regular security to handle, so us farm guards were trained to replace them. We have about the same amount of training as an S.W.A.T team.

I made my way out the door; it automatically locked on my way out. I walked to the elevator, as I walked into it; I was met by neighbor, Flo. Flo is an Irken florist, kind of risky considering she works with untreated water, 'Makes the plants look healthier.' She says. She was wearing a pair of blue coveralls with red shirt beneath, sandals and a couple of fake flower clip ons, the clips matching her blue eyes. We exchanged our greetings and waited as the elevator slowly took us to the bottom floor. "Have you ever noticed," I began "that everyone on our floor has something to do with plants?" She thought about what I had said for a minute before answering "I never really noticed that actually. I mean Elroy works on the local farms, you're a florist, I'm a Farm Guard, Jekyll works with plant based medicines, I mean come on! Even Morse works with plants and he hates them." Flo listened contently to my morning rant, it was like a ritual, I rant about something and she just listens and gives the occasional comment. "What was it the Morse did anyway?" she inquired "He looks after the big scary carnivorous ones with the delicious fruit." I answered. "Wow, amazing that he can keep all his limbs." She said, slightly astonished. Before I could continue, the elevator doors opened with a slight 'ping'.

We both exited the elevator and passed by Alen, the land lord of the apartment. He was also an Irken, a bit chubby wearing gray pants, a white long sleeved shirt and for some reason, a green vest. It seem to match his dark green eyes, he was currently watching the news behind the reception desk, on a small television mounted on a small stand attached to the upper right corner of the room. The news it was displaying was fairly usual, news on the armada, a list of the planets taken, in local news were the Resisty raids,  but on the unusual side the news caster started talking about recent bombings by some terrorist group calling themselves the 'Agents of the Haunter'. As I walked out I heard it mention something about the empire losing all contact with a couple of planets near the abyss. 'Probably another magnetic storm,' I thought 'they seem to happen a lot near the abyss.'

Flo and I split up into different directions, exchanging farewells as we went. I walked down the street passing all sorts of Irkens and Vortians; many were either farmers or scientist on leave. As I walked down the street, I noticed a janitorial drone spraying some kind of anti-paint solvent on a nearby wall. On it was the words 'The Blood Comet is coming brothers! Pull up your arms and weaken the great Haunters foes!' The so called Agent of the Haunter was some sort of cult/rebellion, a rebellion against the government, all forms of government actually.  Anyway, there were all sorts of graffiti aside from the Agents' there was Resisty graffiti (namely The Resisty rocks!' and 'The Empire fails, epically!' they were childish and immature at best.) And then there was your normal everyday graffiti, not worth mentioning or reading actually.

The holographic advertisers all around suddenly flickered as another surge came. 'The station really has to do something about that' I thought.

I suddenly realized that I missed the local café; I quickly backtracked to achieve another morning routine, getting coffee on the way to work. I walked in; many of the people there were watching the news. "Blorch, Maxius II to VIII, have all gone dead quiet in the recent weeks, more disturbingly was the mass scrap yard of several Resisty and Irken battle ships found near the border of the Nightmare Abyss." The famed Nightmare Abyss, it was like our version of the Earther's Bermuda triangle, ships go in, they don't come out.

As I waited for the service drone to take my order, I along with everyone else was looking on in awe as the images of at least several dozen Resisty and Irken ships, all but held together by their horribly warped frames, many blown in half or completely melted into hardened chunks of metal slag. “Strangely, no bodies or flight records have been found as of yet.” I decided to ignore the rest of the news report and ordered my coffee, black. It came to me in the form of a small foam cup with a plastic lid; I paid the required amount and left the café. I made my way to the end of the street; I set my coffee on a nearby E-mail box. As I opened the lid to tick a sip, a sudden explosion came through the air, the shockwave knocking down at least a dozen people, flaming debris and burning pieces of flesh and even a body flew through the air. I turned around to see nothing but a burning space where he café used to be. An incessant ringing suddenly came through my ear drums. I quickly concluded it was shell shock.

I stumbled a bit; still dizzy from the shock, luckily my flak armor saved me from any injuries aside from this morning’s rude awakening.  Then a ship flew awfully close to the street, an Irken in a hood dropped a small metal chest with a half-dozen little tubes on the top down onto the street and quickly flew off. The small hoses on the box came to life with the thanks of machinery and sprayed “Agents of the Haunter, the great ones are coming!” the words were red with a black outlining onto the wall. The sudden sounds of ambulance sirens filled the air as a bunch of fire fighters with liquid extinguishers put out what was left of the fire.

“Damn terrorist.” I muttered as I got up, shooing away a paramedic.
_ _ _ _ _

Eventually, I reached the Farm Guard main building. The annoying ringing from the explosion was still in my head.  As I entered the overhead lights began to flicker, like back at my apartment, except for good ten or fifteen seconds   instead of one or two.”Hey man! You OK?” I turned my head to see Red walk up to me, “I heard about the explosion, you OK?”

“You mean aside from the wound your tazer alarm gave me, the same one you got me on my birthday?” I answered and questioned at the same time.

“The sales drone just told me it wakes you up in less than six beeps. I just thought it started to get louder with each beep.” He answered, shrugging.

Just I was about to answer we heard a yell “Hey, dumb and dumber,” Oh great, it was Mak “Zed, Red get your asses towards agriculture tower C-38! Apparently the local security is getting paranoid again.”

“What’s with the temper Mak?” asked Red

“Never mind my temper, Zed you were supposed to get here ten minutes ago. Now grab your gun and get moving, or its Vapple peeling for the next two weeks, you got that!?

“Sir, yes, Sir!” we said in stereo. I mean nothings more boring than peeling fruits and I certainly wasn’t doing that for two weeks! Either way, we got moving towards the transport ship, a rarity here. You see, unlike many other stations here on Vort, station 7 tends to use the more primitive vehicles because the people running this station don’t anything majorly important combined with the fact that the large amount of farming folks don’t get paid enough to buy ships. So instead they buy those cheap rovers.

Anyway, we got aboard our designated ship, apparently so were a bunch of rookies to, anyway the ship started its engines, the vibrations from the engine could be felt through the metal until the dampeners stopped it. As the ship moved a good thirty or thirty five feet of the ground, it started to move. By peeking out the door less back side of the ship let us see the dozens of wheat like fields and orchards that take up most of the station designated territory. It was beautiful in a way. Beautiful until the sprinkler system down below activated and started spraying water, everywhere.  Most of near the back, namely me, Red and a couple of the new guys got soaked, the ship in response, raised it altitude at least another ten feet. Soon we started to pass by the hot zones A.K.A the areas where police and the Agents’ fought it out. These guys seemed common in the other stations excluding station 9.

After leaving the mini battle zone behind, we eventually neared a large metal structure. If you looked at it the right way, it looked like a combination between an Earther oil tower and a giant sprinkler, in a way it was both. It sucked the mineral saturated water out of an underground spring, and sprayed it over all the crops. This one was Agriculture tower C-38, also known as paranoia central, why was it named that? It was named that because it has the most paranoid staff you’ve ever seen. I mean they’d believe a simple roach in their trash can was a mechanical spy bot. Soon after circling it a couple of times, the pilot after deciding the landing zone of his choice, touched down.

As we left the transport, I started to give some instructions. “Well,” I began, the rookies looking at me with eyes just screaming ‘where was the action!?’ “Let the boredom start!” I finished, their look of excitement quickly drained away. As they moped about due to the lack of action, I quickly flopped down onto a chair and pulled out a deck of cards. “So, poker or go fish?” I asked, shuffling the deck of cards.

_ _ _ _ _

It was currently night time; the day was fairly uneventful aside from the mornings bombing. The lights all over the city were flickering all day, no one could tell why. Two of the regular staff had panic attacks, but that was normal for them. Some talked, some read, some napped, but we played against one of the rookies and we were winning.

“Irk Dammit!” yelled the rookie, throwing the cards onto the floor, who’s name we learned was Guzzo. He was a thin, light red eyed Irken with fairly long antenna which were sickle ended. He was currently wearing the regulation pants, belt and boots; everything else was beside Red. He quickly undid his belt tossed it on the table, which Red grabbed and placed it on his side. Red was also a red-eyed Irken, except his eyes were a dark red and one of his antenna was snapped in the middle and hanged slack, he was wearing the regulation uniform. “I am going to seriously get my stuff back with this hand!” he yelled.

“Yeah, you do that,” I said laughing a bit “just be ready to hand over those pants.” I started to crack up a bit after saying that. Guzzo replied by quickly slapping down his hand.

“Four aces.” He said smiling.

“Why you cheat!” yelled Red, he quickly yanked my cards out of my hand and slapped both his and mine down, revealing we both had two Aces. He had the ace of Clubs and Hearts; I had the Diamonds and Spades. I wondered for a second on how he knew my hand, but I chose to speculate later on. Anyway, just as Red was Just about to jump over the table and strangle Guzzo, someone randomly started yelling and pointed to the sky. Every one stopped what they were doing, some actually woke up; and we looked to where the staff member was pointing. We were amazed to see a large, bloody red comet fly in the distance of space. The lights started flicker again and suddenly shut off along with the rest of the city’s light, it was as if the comet demanded that it should be seen and stared upon.

“Why does it keep doing that?” asked Guzzo

“Do what?” replied Red

“The lights.” Was Guzzo’s only reply, no more, no less.

“Well maybe it’s the comet causing the flickering and black outs,” Said one of the more intellectual rookies “it may be causing an electromagnetic field interfering with worlds power grid.” He continued.

“It’s doing what now?” I asked him.

“He means it’s using a light version E.M.P on the world.”

“Oh.” I answered.

The comet in the distance was somehow strange, almost unnatural in some way. It sort of looked more like a red star, and then it hit me. Some of the graffiti I passed by earlier today said something about a blood red comet signifying the end of the world or some other nonsense like that. But I couldn’t help but wonder how similar the events the graffiti told were happening. ‘Just a coincidence.’ I guessed.

_ _ _ _ _

A fair distance away from Vort’s moon, sat a small asteroid field within it was Battle station 493. Apparently, it was built into a large asteroid. Barley manned by a skeleton crew, it was in disuse, its original use was to keep an eye on the Irkens allies, but it no longer served any purpose, considering Vort’s conquering some time ago. Most of said skeleton crew was either on leave, relieved or sleeping. One Irken in particular was slumped over a radar console, sleeping. Missing the light show the strange comet gave. Unknowingly to him and the rest of the empire, the console beeped at a steady rhythm as hundreds of dots showed up on the radar.

Blorch and the Maxius system was only the beginning, now Vort would share their fate…