Nebula Chronicles I A thousand nightmares
Chapter 3 Alien autopsy
17th April 2365
Cyrus system, space station Andromeda
It had passed an hour since the body arrived and Sachiko had transferred it into Observation One and Doctor Patricia Freeman and her team had arrived and had started cutting through the exoskeleton careful not to harm anything else. They focused on the chest area first.
Behind a wall of glass stood the onlookers. Sachiko off course was required to be there. Telford was there to keep her company and the rest for curiosity. Those being Hayden, Gunnery Sergeant Matlock and Staff Sergeant Natalie Elliot. Natalie was leaned close to a screen displaying a camera angled above the autopsy table. She had taken her helmet off and was almost entranced by what was occurring. She dabbled with a combat knife in her hands and licked her lips.
“There, we are through the lair of exoskeleton,” Doctor Freeman announced.
“How different do you think its insides look Doctor?” Hayden inquired.
Sachiko shrugged. “It would h-have organs we’ve never seen before or it could have two lungs, a heart, kidneys and everything. There is really only one way on knowing.”
“I can see flesh here, black, like the blood,” Freeman said. “See if we can remove a little in the way to see the internal organs.”
“Nat, you good?” Matlock asked his second in command.
“Fuckin’ great,” she grinned. She shifted to a camera that was closer. “Can you zoom in?” She asked the techie.
Sachiko gestured for him to do as the creepy eighteen year old asked. After a fifteen minutes Freeman had managed to get through a ribcage and find the internal organs. It was a slow and careful process. It took another while to widen the gap down to the waist.
“These looks like lungs,” she stated.
“I count four of them on the monitor,” Sachiko said over the speakers to the autopsy.
“Yes, four pair of lungs. Looks like a heart cased in bones. Not easy to get through to that.”
“Did you take any samples from the body?” Hayden asked.
“Off course we did,” Sachiko said frustrated. “It’ll take a few hours to analyze it.”
Sachiko scratched her eyes. She was so damn tired. She sat down in a chair and put her face in her hands for a moment. She felt sick. It shouldn’t be the autopsy, she had seen animals cut open before and she had seen gore before, especially on Grimsby’s Folly. If she could she would go home and bed herself down with Reiko. That girl never argued when cuddling was ahead. Unlike her excuse for a partner Scott Reiko’s love was unconditional and constant.
Doctor Freeman kept noting the aliens insides for a good while before seeing if the head was somewhat intact, the brain specifically. Freeman was the Chief Surgeon in her wing. She usually studied and cataloged animals on alien planets.
Matlock looked at Sachiko.
“Are you okay doc?”
“I’m fine, just fine,” she sighed.
Matlock seemed to accept that and looked to his remarkably young second in command.
“Enjoying yourself Nat?”
“Oh yes. This is the best,” she answered in awe.
Sachiko got up and made for the door out of the room.
“Doctor?” Telford inquired.
The others turned their heads to her.
“I need a glass of water, be back soon,” she said in a voice as plain as could be.
She found a small staff room where she grabbed a glass and poured cold water into it and then swept it down. She splashed cold water in her face to keep her senses sharp.
“Keep it together, keep it together,” she told herself.
17th April 2365
Romano System, planet New Rome, Spaceport city of Euphoria
601st Mobile Assault Battalion
It had only been a day since the invasion began and the military worked hard to evacuate civilians and beat back the aliens footholds planetside. Euphoria was the planets capital and had the largest population, one hundred thousand, a seventh of the entire population, and it was suffering from a heavy bombardment from Heavy Bombers cracking through the defending Squadrons of Interceptors and a handful of Multirole Fighters. A third of Euphoria had been turned to ruins and dust with humans and aliens battling it out amongst the ruins and houses still standing. A lesser man would have been overcome by the screaming, the echoes of bombs falling, Interceptors from both sides crashing mixed with collapsing buildings and gunfire.
But Scott had been a marine for a very long time. His entire life actually. He had fought before-nothing like this or on this scale-and he managed to keep himself together to this point. He was clad in the black plated armor that was standard for the Marine Corps. In his hands he held a M.A.C.C. assault rifle. He planted his back against the side of the doorway and peeked out into the rubble covered street.
“Major, we got more trouble rolling in,” his second in command Fayden said through the comm in his helmet.
“Copy that,” Scott affirmed. “Report.”
“Heading down the street towards your location, sir,” Fayden started with a Somalian accent. “Have a Platoon sized infantry unit encircling a…ah, tank, I think. Never seen anything like it.”
“Goddammit. How far from us?”
“Two hundred meters west and closing in. intercept?”
“Can your Platoon handle it right now?”
“We can do some damage.”
Scott heard confidence in Fayden’s voice.
“Don’t overcommit your men, but seen what you can do, I got a Platoon moving in for support to deal with.”
Fayden paused on his end.
“Yes, sir. We won’t let ‘em fuckers overrun you.”
Scott saw six of the three meter tall grey exoskeleton skin aliens and opened a new channel.
“Staff Sergeant Wyden, ten o’clock! Rock those RAWs!”
He fired a burst of four rounds of one of them. The high velocity rounds penetrated the unprotected exoskeleton arm of one of the charging soldiers. The alien didn’t even flinch though. They kept firing yellow bolts of plasma. From the window seven meters away he heard a pair of RAWs fire and a hail of bullets that mowed down three aliens in three seconds, on the five second mark the combined Light Machinegun barrage brought two more down with black blood splattering. The last leap behind cover of some rubble. He fired three bolts before Scott pinned him down with four bursts of rounds before he had to reload. When he did the alien got up and fired a bolt before ducking down to avoid the RAWs bullet spray.
Scott heard screaming of agonizing pain. The bolt had hit someone and he had already seen firsthand what the bolts could do if they touched skin. If they managed to burn through the armor they could do horrific damage to the skin, flesh and bones below. Anything organic really.
“Medic!” The female voice of Wyden cried through an open channel. “Medic!”
A grenade was lobbed out towards the crouched alien and though he tried to jump aside he was caught in the blast and the detonation killed him. A shrieking scream escaped from his mouth. It was as inhuman as anything Scott had ever heard. He shifted his barrel to fire a burst into a smashed window where plasma bolts was sprayed from.
What happened next happened fast. Faster than he could react. There was an explosion and he was thrown across the room into the wall five meters behind him. He couldn’t hear anything, it all went silent and the last thing he saw before he blacked out was his own cracked visor and the bodies of two marines that had been with him.
ns 15.158.61.51da2
