Stephen Landry: The Red Flower Was a War Factory

There was blood on my hands. A dove or something like it flew through the air. Its wings struggled in the harsh wind. All the same I should have been running too but I watched it fly into the ash colored sky. I could barely breath. There was no one else around me, not anymore anyway.

Errikus was a colony for the Eeks, peaceful humanoid race and with the exception of their seven-foot tall stature and hideous face they were almost pleasant to look at. They were like abstract art. Multiple eyes ranging from four to eight sat on their large square foreheads. It was rumored that each Eek shared at least two brains. It was strange to imagine two beings sharing the same body the way they would. This was just one of hundreds of worlds they had at their disposal. Each world was governed independently. Errikus was so far out from most colonized worlds it welcomed everyone. They needed the trade. The world itself was an inhospitable jungle filled with alien beasts. The megacity of Errikus sat behind a giant wall. Behind the wall was a megacity, spaceport and all stretching into the sky. Fungus had been planted on and around the wall to help clean the air and veins of clean oxygen had been set up through every street. The veins stretched over buildings and looked like wires hanging from building to building. The city was dirty but the air was good. Outside the city you would need an oxygen mask or an amazing set of lungs. Chemicals and dust from plants and animals poisoned the air outside. The city was the only place you could breath in peace.

I along with a few thousand other humans had become temporary colonists here while our ships went to another world for some more exotic upgrades.

I was a part of an expedition. A drone had found a small set of Lethe ruins. The Lethe were an ancient alien race and the first to venture into the immer, the space our starships use to travel from point A to B. It should have been a simple excavation but it all went wrong. We thought we were prepared. We thought we had thought of everything. Oxygen masks, rifles, survival gear, rations we even had a drone watching us from the sky above.

Our drop ship looked like a giant metal bird. It set down nearly a hundred yards from the ruins. We were so close we could see every bit of the alien structure. Organic vines twisted around a bright red metal that spread out like flower pedals from the brown soil that surrounded it. It was about the size of a two story house. That was only the tip of the iceberg though. Our first impression was that this must have been a research center or a small outpost.

Errikus was the last planet before an empty area of space. Even in the immer gravity from stars, planets, orbitals it all pulled at each other inside the spiral of our galaxy. Going beyond Errikus meant going beyond the spiral. It meant entering a new area of space where the laws of physics changed. There was nothing out there anyway, nothing but false hopes and dreams as far as I was concerned. It would only make sense for the Lethe to put an outpost here. It would be the best way to warn lesser species that this was their last stop before darkness.

I came here as a scientist. My thirst for knowledge endless. Even the implants in my brain that let me access information at an accelerated rate and would feed me logic couldn’t comprehend the actions I had taken. From the moment we entered the ruins we crawled inside a trap. This was not an outpost nor was it a research center. The red flower was a war factory.

It took us twenty minutes to break through the red metal door.

There were eight of us that came. We were dressed in armor fearful of the wildlife. Each of us was wearing a breather. We all had basic training. A requirement when your race is always at war with another species. We each carried an M44, a long barreled pulse rifle that dispersed a blue light of radiation. The light would penetrate the target whether that be armor or an animal husk and depending how long you held down the trigger you could make someone sick enough they would be stunned or you could melt their insides and kill them within three seconds. The gun ran off it’s own mini reactor and in a worse case scenario could be used as an explosive. We considered opening the door using some of our M44’s rigged together but one of the younger crew warned against it not knowing what we would find inside. He could never have been more right.

We had entered a long hallway. It was slightly sloped down. The walls were solid gray. It was like we had entered through the mouth of a giant beast and were marching our way down through it’s throat. That analogy could never have been more right. Less than a mile through the walls were stained with streaks of acid. The hallway turned into smaller rooms. Each room was a prison cell holding an embryo. A crystalized egg sac the size of Eek. The scientist inside of me had never been so excited. This was the closest any species in our galaxy had ever come to seeing how the Lethe lived or waged war. I forgot to ask the question — if they were waging a war who was it with?

This was a breakthrough. There was enough to research here to keep us in Errikus for years and possibly make us rich. Species all over the galaxy would want to see what we had found.

Within a few hours we had set up a mini research lab. We brought an oxygen bank with us so we could use it to pump fresh air into the facility. I already had one of the egg sacs on the table. I was cutting it open when I realized I wasn’t feeling quite right.

“Are you alright?” my assistant asked.

“Yes I’m fine,” I shouldn’t have said that. I should have acknowledged that something was off. The implants in my head were screaming at me.

“Get out” I could here a voice whisper.

“Enough!” I yelled.

My assistant looked at me strangely. “Sorry about the outburst…” I hesitated, “I’m just anxious to see what’s inside.”

As I began to move the scalpel down across the egg my assistant threw himself at me. His eyes had turned solid white. I couldn’t tell what was happening and I was afraid so I jabbed the scalpel into his neck.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I begged.

Then I saw it. A parasite that resembled a tick had attached itself to his back. I ripped it off. He laid there bleeding.

“I could see everything, I could see everything,” his last dying breath. This was the first time out of a simulation I had ever killed.

We called it a day and buried the body. “It’s what he would have wanted. To be buried with this great discovery,” I spoke to no one after that. No one spoke to me except to say they understood. Errikus is a hostile world and we knew that from the beginning. Beyond the city walls there is nothing but death and danger. We knew the risks when we came out here.

I spent the night in meditation.

Running through a white meadow. I ran to the center and spread my arms wide in the air. A flock of white doves came down from the sky and one landed in my hand. I ran my fingers down the back of its head feeling its soft feathers rub against my skin. It felt soft and warm.

Waving my hand in the air the dove took off with incredible speed. Then I was falling. Falling through the world. I watched white clouds surround me. When I landed I was inside a pool of warm bath water. I began to melt becoming a part of the water. I was becoming one with the world around me.

For a few moments I felt like I was a God.

That was when I saw his face. Someone had interrupted my meditation. From the corner of my room I heard a scratching against the wall.

“Hello?” I said. We each had separate rooms. I should have been alone in there. That was when I remembered. The door was locked from inside.