How long.. had we truly been blinded by the enviroment around us?
Over six months had occured since that unexpected finding, and not a word has come back from the six recon groups we dispatched to Eden's small outpost. Strange yet, all signel's from Eden suddenly stopped four months ago, which was odd considering that even if they had abandoned the base, a faint energy signature would've been present even if the eletricity was turned off. There would still be residul trace amounts.
What we lacked in understanding, we made up for in our knowledge of our surroundings. When one of our recon groups finally made contact with the Eden base, there report shocked us down to the deepest depth of the human soul:
"The wall's are painted in blood, bodie's everywhere, it's as if someone had sent these people into the vacuum of space, only far harsher."
Those words would haunt my people for some time to come. Panic had insued, we knew something was odd when we landed here some-time ago, now we realized - this planet was already inhabited by another race, and that race didn't like us being here uninvited.
Our first clue was the destruction of Eden's base, the second clue was the destruction of our front line defense column that been set up just down the mountain from Eden's location.
The third clue... and the most damaging... was when half our population suddenly vanished late at night. Woman, children, 46% of the population just up and disappeared without any warning, without any signs, no foot prints, no sighings... nothing.
Security had been streagthened, new measures put into place. You could no longer walk around the outpost without someone being with you at all times.
It wasn't until the forth and final clue emerged that told us that we truly weren't alone.
It was late in the day, we had just finished preparation's to launch our first RLV sinc we got here. Everything was ready, it was loaded with the material's needed to create an orbital skydock, the skydock had taken twice the amount of material's to create than the very original that we used on New Terra, but that was because this Skydock was shielded from the effects of the blight.
I was in the observation tower when I heard it.. a terrifying.. and horric sound. It came from the space port's command center, scream's could be heard across the interfacility comm. line
What we saw next made us wonder if it was organic, machine.. or something else. The RLV suddenly liquadified, before the fuel on board was ignited. Hot liquad showered across the launch pad, burning through the windows as if they weren't even there. Countless people where injured, many more killed.
By the time my men and I got the port's command center it was to late, all that remained was bit's and peices of bone and the wall was splattered with blood, there wasn't a single location where there wasn't blood.
No evidence though. No foot prints. No tracks of any sort. It was as if an unseen force was striking at our people and then vanishing into the darkness of the night. And these attack's only occured at night, rarely during the day.
We didn't know what we where dealing with, we didn't know how to stop these attacks. What we DID find out was that every attack was occuring either at a mineral refinary base or within the research labs. We searched the records and discovered that the attack's began shortly after we started mining a new mineral we discovered in a deep deep cave located 120 kilometer's from our main base. The mineral held very unique property's, one of which was useful for combating the blight, in fact it actually very effective at this, canceling it out within a certain radius of the mineral.
We also noticed that the mineral's had been completely destroyed in every attack. This got us thinking - maybe the only reason we hadn't been attacked before was because we hadn't been persumed a threat, maybe now that we where mining this mineral we where considered a threat to them. We did know, however, that even if we stopped mining the mineral the attack's woud most likely continue.
Our theory was correct. We stopped mining the mineral for six months, yet the attack's continued, we had now lost over 450,000 people since the attacks began. We had barely 50,000 colonist's remaining.
However, another discovery had been made. One of our recon scouts had picked up a very faint bluish image that was darting across the land, it was moving at a high rate of speed, so fast that the camera's barely got it.
Another thing we discovered, that we had over-looked before, the wall's in our research lab's had already been fitted with this material.. however everywhere else the attack's occured everything had been destroyed.. the attacks in the research facility's had been clean, to a degree, no machine's or anything had been destroyed.
We took advantage of our over-sight and used what little material we had left to construct an energy field to trap one of these strange creatures, the only advantage we had was that the scout's where able to pick them up.. we would use that to figure out what these creatures are and why they are on this planet.
Of course.. what we discovered after words sent deep dark and horrific shivers down everyone's spine...
