Blood of the Covenant

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

Valyria gazed up at the sky that was covered by dark clouds; she wouldn’t know, as she had never been to space, despite her planet’s designation as an intergalactic trading hub.

She leaned casually against one of the outer walls surrounding the Council member’s manor. A cold, bitter wind wrapped itself around her, bringing with it the stench of death and rot. The whole world had been torn to hell, and its gray and black hues surrounded her. She was probably one of the only inhabitants of this planet that actually remembered what it looked like when everything was green and still alive.

She had been hired out as a mercenary, and given guard duty while the Council hosted a major event. Something about an Awakening. She didn’t remember the details, and she didn’t care. She would get paid double for working an event like this, and they had offered several quarts of human blood as a bonus. It was an offer she couldn’t refuse, given how starved she was for blood.

She heard footsteps approaching in the distance, and knew them to be that of another mercenary. All of them had been instructed to stay at their posts along the outside wall, watching and killing any degenerate beasts that wander too close. She idly wondered why he was walking around, and decided she didn’t care as he stopped close to her.

Icy blue eyes stared out at him from the black hood that covered the rest of her face, silently asking him what the fuck he wanted, and why he had decided it’d be a good idea to bother her with his presence. An unfortunate lump of a man, she knew his name was Grolf, and he struck her as not very bright.

“So, how does it feel to be the harbinger of death for your own kind?” he asked with a crooked smile.

“What do you want?” she snapped, turning her gaze back to the dark clouds in the distance.

“I got bored,” he shrugged. His accompanying grin was filled with crooked, rotten teeth. His breath reeked of stale alcohol as he spoke again, “I thought I’d talk to the lonely vampire bitch standing all by herself. So, does it bother you to kill your brothers and sisters?”

She didn’t respond to his insult. They were all afflicted by the same vampiric disease, but the side effects had manifested differently for her. She was part of a small percentage of the population where the disease gave them the typical preternatural abilities that human lore associated with the creature “vampire”, but a large majority of the population had been turned into rabid, cannibalistic monsters - the degenerates.

“You have 3 seconds to leave before I kill you for your insolence,” she hissed, unmoving. Unfortunately, she couldn’t kill him - this is one of the many reasons why she hated dealing with humans. Murder of humans had been outlawed, because they were now classified as an endangered species. It didn’t matter that there were still plenty of them. “Go back to your post. If I don’t get paid because of you, I’ll rip your head from your shoulders.”

The man scoffed, but didn’t say anything further. He leaned against the wall a few feet away from her, arms crossed, paying no mind to her threat. After a few blissful moments of silence, the man spoke again.

“Quiet, ain't it?” he said almost in a whisper, in a tone tinged with apprehension. "Ain't seen no degens around."

She knew what he meant - with the increased human activity for the event, there should have already been a few attacks from the degenerates. The fact that they hadn’t seen any movement at all put her on edge.

“Too quiet,” he muttered, and she felt him glance sideways at her. So, he could feel it too. A premonition of potential disaster. A calm before the storm.

A few seconds later, trumpets began to sound from inside the wall.

****

The Nyx hurtled down through the lower portions of the Earth’s atmosphere, alarms blaring. The crew of the Nyx had just narrowly avoided capture - and death - by Earth’s security commission, following a botched robbery on a small mining facility. Their client had demanded that they procure Tritia - a highly valuable mineral that put this desolate planet on the intergalactic map.

“I could really use that starboard thruster right about now, Alice!” Nathan shouted over his shoulder. His hands gripped the yoke of his ship so tightly that his knuckles were white. The security detail had been far more capable than they had originally expected - how was he supposed to know they had high energy penetration missiles? This was Earth, after all - a planet that was literally stuck in the dark ages.

“Working on it!”

Nathan could tell by the shrillness of Alice’s voice that the chances of that engine coming back online in time were not good. “Jack, take the helm,” he said, raising his voice over the wailing of the alarm.

Jack appeared at his shoulder, the burly man towering over him as he fought to stabilize the ship. They traded places swiftly, Jack taking Nathan’s place in the captain’s chair. Nathan turned, stumbling slightly given the ship’s angle, and made his way to the engine bay to talk to Alice.

It took him less than a minute to reach her, and he saw her small frame tucked between giant pieces of machinery.

“Alice! It’s going to be a rough one! We’re going to have to pull an Ajax - brace yourself!”

Her head shot up to look at him. “An Ajax? But last time --”

“No time! We’re losing altitude too quickly, so strap in.”

Trusting her to heed his command, he returned to the main bay and called to Jack. “Jack, buckle up! It’s about to get rough!”

“Captain there’s --” Jack started, but Nathan didn’t hear the rest. He was already making his way toward the external cargo bay door, navigating the relatively small ship quickly. In a few seconds, he stood at the door, and braced himself.

“Warning, Collision Imminent,” the ship’s computer announced over the intercom for the thousandth time.

“Yeah, we got it, Nyx.” His heart felt like it was going to pound out of his chest as he took several deep breaths. Closing his eyes, he focused his mind and created an energy shield around himself, anchoring his body to the ship. Blessed with telekinetic power, Nathan’s abilities had saved them from a situation like this once before, on a ship named the Ajax. Unfortunately, that ship hadn’t survived the destruction that unfolded, despite his best efforts.

He pulled the lever to open the external door, and its ramp unfolded immediately with a whoosh.

His heart dropped into his stomach. The ground was so much closer than he anticipated; they were losing altitude at a breakneck pace, and they were all going to meet their untimely demise if he didn’t do something now.

However, as he scanned the horizon, he gasped. A few hundred yards behind the ship, a black wave rolled out behind them, chasing them on the ground. A wave created by a horde of what could only be described as demons, their black bodies writhing over each other as they ran on all fours. There were so many of them that he knew if the Nyx hit the ground, they wouldn’t survive - telekinetic powers or not.

Fuck.

*********

Trumpets blared, alarms sounded throughout the town, and the screeching of the alarms pierced Valyria’s ears. Screams of terror pealed through the air immediately.

Valyria cast her gaze to the top of the wall - guards were scrambling down toward the interior.

They’re on the inside? How the fuck did they make it inside without breaching the wall?

She had felt nothing, had not sensed their approach. But she now heard the all too familiar screams of people being torn apart by the degenerate army. She pushed herself away from the wall, backed up a few paces, and jumped. She did not spare a glance for the other mercenary, who had started running back the way he came--likely toward one of the gates into the town.

In those short few seconds, the screaming had intensified. When she landed atop the wall, the scene before her was utter chaos. Humans ran in every direction, followed by humanoid forms that ran on all fours - the degenerates. Their skin was an oily, oozing black, and open festering sores covered their whole body; an unfortunate side effect of the disease rotting their bodies from the inside out. Their eyes were a fierce red that gleamed with their hunger, and toxic saliva constantly dripped down from their open mouths.

As she prepared to jump down into the fray, the wall vibrated with the force of something colliding into it. She glanced that way and, a little more than a hundred yards from where she stood, a very small transport ship had crashed just outside the manor, destroying part of the wall as it came down. She saw a shield flickering around it, which appeared to have protected it from the majority of the crash damage. Bodies of degenerates were crushed underneath it, black blood oozing from their corpses.

She turned her attention back to the chaos below as she drew her two Slayers - massive combat pistols loaded with silver tipped bullets. She took one of the sets of stairs that led down to the ground, running down at a full sprint. When she was close to the bottom, the acrid tang of blood hit her in the face and made her salivate with how potent it was.

Even though only seconds had passed, the ground was painted red and slick with blood, with various body parts strewn across the ground. The degens were never neat about their eating habits, and tended to waste vital body parts that contained blood. While she did not care for humans, and did not care if most lived or died, if they went extinct, then she would have extremely limited food options.

With a gun in each hand, Valyria opened fire, and took down two that were right in front of her as a bullet dug its way into each one’s skull. Valyria saw a small group of four degenerates running toward a small transport ship that had crashed, and moved to take them down.

There’s no way I’m getting paid for this.

Valyria aimed Celeste, the gun in her left hand, at the group of degens running toward the crashed airship, and fired. The single bullet tore through the side of the leading degen’s head, exited out the other side, and buried itself in the degenerate right next to it. They both went down. Two shots from Selene, the gun in her right hand, took down the other two that were heading toward the ship.

Degenerates were not hard to kill; it was their overwhelming numbers that made them difficult to deal with. She watched as a Titan - an enormous suit of mobile, military-grade robotic armor controlled by one of the humans - entered the fray. It ripped degens apart easily, but its guns were almost useless. They lacked precision, and in this battleground where humans and degenerates were everywhere, it couldn’t just open fire.

She picked up a human arm that had been ripped away from its owner, still dripping with fresh blood. Struggling not to get drunk off the scent alone, she put the arm to her lips and bit into it. She almost moaned at how delicious it was - fresh blood was so, so rare now--even blood that was kept refrigerated wasn’t necessarily “fresh”. There was nothing that compared. It took her no more than two seconds to drain the arm, blood dripping down her chin, and she immediately felt rejuvenated.

Frosty blue eyes scanned the battlefield - most humans had taken shelter in the buildings around the town. Some humans were fighting, and she was rather impressed to see a few holding their own. The degens were far faster than humans, and stronger - for humans, they were tough opponents. But as she analyzed the carnage, she felt a growing feeling of dread. This wasn’t even a large number of degenerates. Not even a fifth of the numbers she had seen on the outside. Meaning that this attack probably wasn’t meant to wipe out the humans - they had another objective in mind. And while the degens’ primary job was probably to run around and cause chaos, it was still relatively organized, as they had mainly stayed close to the main part of the manor, which means that there was probably an Ascendant vampire controlling them somewhere--

Suddenly, everything stopped. The growls and snarls of the degenerates went quiet, and they stopped dead in their tracks. Each of them raised their head, as if they were listening for something. She watched as one that was relatively close to the crashed airship rose on its hind legs, and peered into the cargo opening of the ship. It then let out the most bone-chilling screech she had ever heard. The screech was immediately echoed by the ones closest to it and then others farther away picked it up. The noise was deafening.

She did not wait to contemplate what the screeching meant. Aiming for the first one to start screeching, she lifted Selene, and put a bullet through the creature’s eyes from a hundred yard distance. The degenerates closest to the one that had died stopped screeching and turned toward her. They began sprinting toward her on all fours, and she couldn’t help but think they actually looked angry. They appeared to be...cooperating? Why? They cannibalize each other--she had never seen them give a shit about one of them dying.

A side glance at the Titan showed that it was under attack by a group of them, with more running toward it. They were gathering up into larger groups, which was another highly unusual behavior for the degenerates. Valyria reloaded quickly, and opened fire on those running toward her. She did not miss, and each of them went down, one body collapsing on top of another. Spinning quickly, she turned to kill one coming at her from the side.

Why are they ignoring the humans? Where is the Ascendant that is so obviously controlling them?

Whatever it was that had incited that initial screech was inside the transport ship. She had a feeling that the Ascendant was probably in there, too. She took off at a sprint towards the ship, picking up body parts and draining them as she went. With every drop of blood she drank, she gained speed and strength.

To be continued....