[the] [links] [are] [all] [empty] [as] [is] [space]

Falmo'o stared at the computer screen in front of him. It was measuring the gravity waves off of the neutron star, it had eons of records, all showing the flow the gravity around the neutron star. There were three sets of measurements. From the surface, which was impossible, since the surface should have had crushing gravity. Instead the gravity didn't start until several miles up, while gravity on the surface was 1.5 Galactic Standard (1.25G) around a base that slowly spread until it was nearly 125G on the opposite side. The gravity that started a few miles up was 1010 times Standard Gravity but was 1012 on the opposite side of the planet from the base.

It shifted, over the time-lapse, but not by much. He kept watching, until the very end. Then he restarted it.

"Whatever you're doing, do it faster," Taynee said. She was holding a flamer, liquid fuel dripping on the floor, and dressed in a suit of engineer's armor.

"We can't take it out of the lab, can we?" Falmo'o asked.

"For the fifteenth time, no. It's hard-wired that way. We of the Imperium are a bit paranoid, I'm sure you understand. The glassing of Earth and all that," Taynee said.

"Open the door," Dru'ulgot moaned through speakers that were laying on the floor. "Open the door, Dulmo'ok. You should hear the music as I do."

"No. Go away," Dulmo'ok said. It sounded to Falmo'o like the other Lanaktallan was crying.

"Don't worry. Gotti, the one in Imperium armor, he'll kick down the door and rip Mooky's head clean off in about five minutes. After that, we won't know where he is till we hear him on the speakers," Taynee said.

There. He saw it again. Rewinding it didn't show it, but every time he played it through from the beginning he saw it.

He told the computer to isolate each frame, each time stamp, and put them in a separate file.

"Please, Dru'ulgot, go away," Dulmo'ok cried.

"Whatever you're doing, I wish you'd speed it up," Taynee whispered.

The computer beeped. He still couldn't get over how fast the computers were. Eight thousand years in human history, with the speed they ripped through new technology, and the computers were still faster and capable of heuristic thinking and multiple self-corrected data-sorting techniques.

He played it and stared, his legs starting to tremble.

It was a face. Not a human face. Not a Lanaktallan face. Not even a Mantid face. It was a face all the same. It pushed its way out of the gravitational field, screamed, and sunk back in. Eight times.

There was a steady clanking sound coming from the hallway marked "EMERGENCY PODS", getting closer.

Imperium power armor, went through his mind. He ducked down and motioned at Taynee. "Psst."

Taynee abandoned her spot by the door, running over next to Falmo'o and ducking down. She looked at the screen, gasped, and shut it off.

"Yeah, we saw that. We don't play that," Taynee said.

"Why?" Falmo'o asked with a whisper. The clanking of the boots of the power armor kept getting closer.

"It attracts... things," the human female warned.

Both went silent, ducked behind the damaged computer banks.

The armor walked in. Blue, with red edging, the Terran Eagle on the front in burning red warsteel, the edges sooty black. It moved deliberately, stately movements, slow, steady. The helmet moved side to side, the pilot obviously looking for anyone or anything that might confront it. In one hand it held one of those huge pistols/SMG's, in the other it held a chainsword that growled softly as it moved the teeth in a slow purring circle.

There was a screeching sound from the passageway marked "HABITATS 13E - 19J", echoing through the room.

The figure in armor lifted the heavy gun, firing into the passageway, revving up the chainsword. It roared in rage even as it fired, the shells as thick as Falmo'o's fist.

From out of the passageway came horrors.

Terrans and Lanaktallans, but ripped apart, the pieces joined together by sinew, nerves, and blood vessels. Limbs ripped from torsos, organs pulled free from the body, still connected by vessels, eyes and face ripped off, ears pulled free, jaws torn free but still connected to the flesh by tendon, teeth warped and twisted, lengthened in serrated.

They swarmed the Combine Marine, screeching, flailing at the armor, ripping big gouges in the heavy duty plates even as the chainsword tore into flesh. More rushed out, two fell from grates in the ceiling.

Falmo'o looked at Tanyee who put one finger to her lips.

The gunfire stopped, still the creatures screeched. The chainsword stopped and there was the sound of someone trying to breathe past lungs filled with blood. Tanyee looked up, quickly, then back down. She hefted the flamer nodded to him, and stood up.

"BURN THEM WITH HOLY FIRE, SISTERS!" she screamed. Falmo'o flinched, the scream ripping and pounding at his mind. He felt his nose start to bleed as she stood up and bathed the area in flame. The creatures shrieked, one tried to scrabble over the desk, fat popping and crackling. It reached for him with talons that fell free, bit at him with jaws that fell to the floor.

The smoke was black and greasy, coating everything as Tanyee looked down at him, holding up the flamer with one hand and digging that package of 'smokes' out of her pocket. She lit one with the flamer and looked around.

"There's an airlock a little ways away. Help me drag them down there. We'll eject them," She said, parking the edge of her butt on the bench.

"What will that do?" he asked. "Won't they come back?"

"Yes, but it will take longer," she answered. "Sometimes they don't come back."

Falmo'o sighed. He got up, helping her get a grav dolly and load the corpses up.

"I told you, every time we see that, those things show up. It think it calls them," Tanyee said when dumped the last of the bodies into the airlock. She reached up with the flamer and slapped the 'PURGE' button.

There was a screeching sound from inside the airlock, claws scrabbled at the hatch, then there was a vibration and it was gone.

"Whew, barely," Tanyee said. "Another thirty seconds and we would've had to fight them again."

"What is that face?" Falmo'o asked, shuddering.

Tanyee gave a shrug, puffing on her smoke. She looked at the pack. "Damn, four smokes left. I'll probably get killed again soon but at least I'll have a new pack."

"You said there's a station on the neutron star?" Falmo'o asked.

Tanyee nodded. "Yeah."

"What's there?" he asked.

She sighed. "Worse," she said. She looked up through the glass and smiled, a tooth bearing expression that Falmo'o knew he should feel anxiety over but after the last few hours he no longer cared.

"Define: worse," Falmo'o said, getting to his hooves. Tanyee stood up with him.

"First, you have to use the mat-trans. Sometimes you wake back up somewhere else, sometimes you make it, other times you have terrible nightmares and don't move at all," she sighed. "It's tech from a long time ago. Old tech, ugly tech from when we still used silicon wafers for computers."

Falmo'o frowned. "How did your people figure out how to do matter transmission? Everything I know says it's impossible."

"Scientists with unlimited budget, unlimited resources, and no oversight designed it during the First Cold War," she shrugged.

"What's a Cold War?" Falmo'o asked.

"When two ideologies compete without outright warfare to avoid mutually assured destruction with nuclear, atomic, biological and chemical weaponry," She said.

"Most civilizations don't get out of that without outside help," Falmo'o answered.

"We almost didn't. Eventually, we managed it. The Second Cold War was between Terra and her colonies. They got destroyed by the Mantids too," she shrugged. "They scorched the whole Sol System. Only glassed parts of Earth to teach us a lesson we'd already learned."

She started walking down the hallway, leaving a trail of smoke behind her. Falmo'o followed, bringing around the rivet gun she'd handed him.

"What lesson?" Falmo'o asked.

"That the universe hates us and wants us to die, but only after it takes away everything we care about," She said. The defeatism in her voice made him shudder.

There was a shuddering and the whole station seemed to rock. There was the screaming of metal, panels fell open on the ceiling, and sparks shot from the lights and power cables. A chunk of metal, what looked like an air purifier, fell from the ceiling, crushing Tanyee beneath it, splattering ragged chunks of the Terran across Falmo'o.

Falmo'o back up, felt the floor drop away, and fell. Weightless for only a moment a blinding pain filled him and he realized he was impaled on a torn section of the station wall.

He died laughing at the absurdity of it all.

----------------------

Falmo'o jerked awake in his 'hammock', looking over and seeing only a single line by his name. He picked up the paint-stick and drew another line.

"Welcome back, Most High," a voice said. Falmo'o turned and saw a being in Lanaktallan security armor standing in the middle of the room. It was a large room, obviously a shuttle bay, but it was empty except for hammocks and crates.

"Who are you?" Falmo'o asked, coughing. He tasted clotted blood.

"Vu'urtunkoo, Security Most High of Demand Answers, part of the First Wave against the Terrans," the Lanaktallan said. "You do not remember me?" he pointed at the wall. "You have my name right there."

Falmo'o looked and saw "MOST HIGH VU'URTUNKOO, DEMAND ANSWERS" written on the wall with four lines below it.

"Most High? The Security Most High? Where are your men?" Falmo'o asked.

"The rest of my squad is gone," the Lanaktalln said, shrugging.

"What... what happened?" Falmo'o asked.

"They took the ship by force, intending on returning home. They told me they were firing the engines and the ship vanished," Vu'urtunkoo stated. "They left me behind, as I refused to mutiny. Most High Amo'otan, who felt that we should not return home until we understood this place."

"What happened to Most High Amo'otan," Falmo'o asked. He remembered that name. The Most High of the warship Demand Answers, which had entered the system repeatedly.

The ship he remembered, vaguely, boarding carrying five atomic demolition mines.

"They threw him from the airlock without a suit," Vu'urtunkoo said.

"Which means, he shows up here," Falmo'o said.

"Not since he took some of the crew and went to the matter transmission station. Since then, I have not seen him," Vu'urtunkoo said, shrugging. "Do you normally lose your memory when you sleep?"

Falmo'o nodded. "The mat-trans is dangerous."

Vu'urtunkoo snorted. "Mat-trans is a myth. It must have been mislabeled. You are insane if you think that those gibbering primates actually devised a system of matter transmission."

Falmo'o just shook his head. "I believe it."

Vu'urtunkoo stood up, slowly unholstering his neural pistol and his neural whip. "Then, let's go find out. You reek of that Terran female. You have been working with the enemy."

Falmo'o held his hands out to his sides. "No, I am loyal to our people."

Vu'urtunkoo snorted. "Let us see."

The Security Most High motioned with the pistol and Falmo'o followed his directions. They trotted through the station, Falmo'o noticing that it was pristine. The floors were perfectly clean, all the lights worked, the air was fresh smelling if a bit high in nitrogen. No sign at all of the horrors that Falmo'o had seen.

The Mat-Trans was nothing special. A hexagonal chamber surrounded by chirping and clicking computer banks. A single door was in one wall and Vu'urtunkoo opened it.

They swarmed out.

Lanaktallan. Split open, torn apart, held together only by thin wires and lengths of nerve ending wrapped around veins. The came scrambling out of the Mat-Trans chamber, screaming and clawing.

The lights flickered, and the station looked ruined as the disassembled Lanaktallan fell upon the Security Most High. Several grabbed each limb, three, Falmo'o thought it was three, grabbed his head, even as he fired the neural pistol wildly.

The lights flickered again, this time red lights were strobing and the computer was howling.

INCOMING MAT-TRANS! WARNING! CLEAR THE PAD! INCOMING MAT-TRANS!

The creatures, the torn apart but still living Lanaktallan all pulled.

Most High Vu'urtunkoo tore into ten pieces.

The lights flashed again.

They were almost on him. Falmo'o raised his chin in defiance.

Flash.

The talons were reaching for him.

Flash.

The first one caught him in the throat, tearing open his windpipe. Teeth reached him next, tearing at his flesh, ripping huge chunks away, even as Falmo'o went down gurgling through the blood.

Flash.

---------------------

Falmo'o coughed, spattering clotted blood on the floor.

He remembered a word. A Terran word. A word that fit perfectly.

"Fuck."