About a week had passed for the thousands of individuals on the troop carrier CTC-8073 in its voyage, and everyone was soon expecting to offload onto Gateworld Thoma later that day.

  “What’cha writing there?” Vertan nods to Hilgo, who seemed to be penning away at a sheet of paper.

  “Oh, writing?” answers Hilgo. “I guess it could be writing, I’m just trying to figure out what it means, though.”

  “He’s got a crush somewhere onboard!” jeers Fero from behind. “Tell me, what’s her name? What does she look like?”

  “I’m not interested in any lady right now, buddy,” responds Hilgo.

  “What’s his name then?” jokes Fero just before his cranium gets rubbed in under Hilgo’s knuckles. He rushes off to rejoin Etrad and Calian soon after, Vertan laughing behind him. Hilgo rolls his eyes, but can’t help but show a slight grin.

  “Oh, right,” continues Hilgo.

  “Yeah, you were saying?” asks Vertan.

  “It’s what I saw on the Tank Demon a few weeks back.”

  “Wow, what is that? Demon markings?”

  “I guess? I could be getting a lot of it wrong, to be honest. Memory’s a little fuzzy and a lot of it was all charred up.”

  “It looks kind of like it could be a language.”

  “That’s what I was going to say. I don’t know, I always found it weird that nobody ever questioned it. Wouldn’t this be useful for us to figure out what kinda demons they are?”

  “Like we could decode it?”

  “Yeah, like you said, it could be a language. I don’t know though, maybe it’s some ancient script and we don’t know how to translate it anyhow.”

  “What’s that drawing?”

  “This one?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  “It’s what I remember that emblem looked like.”

  “An emblem?”

  “I guess it’s an emblem.”

  “Weird to think they would have one, and that doesn’t look very demonic to me.”

  “I suppose not, too. Maybe it’s some leftovers from whatever civilization they came out of.”

  “Probably.”

  In Hilgo’s drawing, depicted a circle surrounded by what appeared to be a wreath. Atop the circle appeared to be a symbol akin to a small star, with three elongated diamonds on each side of it. The diamonds at the top of the emblem were positioned farthest away from the star, and the ones at the bottom, likewise closest to the star.

  “Who knows, though,” muses Hilgo. “I doubt I’d be able to figure anything out.”

  “And who cares, right?” says Vertan. “It doesn’t affect us even now, let alone once we come home.”

  “I care enough to be curious about it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Talk about their destination increased the closer they arrived to Gateworld Thoma. First-time newcomers share a mix between excitement or disappointment over potential boredom, while the more experienced veterans share a sense of quiet relief from the demanding amount of work.

  “You two boys said you’re gonna go home soon after this, right?” asks Etrad.

  “Yep, that’s right,” answers Hilgo. “I’ve had enough with putting up with Vertan, here.”

  “Hey!” exclaims Vertan. “I’m coming home with you too, you know?”

  “Oh, the tragedy,” quips Hilgo.

  “How soon though, may I ask?” queries Etrad.

  “Not too sure how soon after Thoma,” replies Hilgo. “Depends on whether our request goes through and is accepted or not, and how soon. Hopefully not long after.”

  “What about you, Etrad?” asks Vertan. “Remind me, how long have you been here again?”

  “I think it’s coming up to be about, uh, twenty years?” says Etrad.

  “Twenty years!” exclaims Vertan. “That’s quite a while.”

  “I get that a lot,” chuckles Etrad. “Not so much for a member of my species.”

  “Fair enough,” says Hilgo. “All proportional, then. When do you plan to leave?”

  “Leave?” replies Etrad.

  “If you are, anytime soon?” Hilgo continues.

  “I’ve tried before, I ended up just coming back,” responds Etrad.

  “Really? How come?”

  “It’s just been hard, man. I find better opportunities within the Special Expeditions. There’s not much going for me back in the Coalition, really, and they don’t really hire people from these because the skills don’t translate. It’s real hard to find a job.”

  “Really?” says Vertan. “I thought this kind of thing is seen as prestigious.”

  “I can tell you’re not from around here,” continues Etrad. “Within the Coalition I guess the system goes on and it’s the same old. That kind of prestige might have been found decades ago, but certainly not now.”

  “Why don’t you move elsewhere, then?” asks Hilgo. “I mean, I get most people make their opportunities here, but maybe a different place might be better for you?”

  “You’d think we could just do that, but we can’t,” answers Etrad. “Everything’s very expensive. Highest income per capita, and most people still just struggle to get by with basic needs. Believe me, even as an Expeditioner, that money I earn from here gets used up real fast back home just for surviving. That's why I came back here.”

  “How is that like back home?”

  “You break a leg or get sick, you pay half your savings to a private hospital just so they’d think, ‘maybe I’ll treat you, maybe not if it’s not worth my time or money.’ At least here, that comes free, and I have friends and comrades which I don’t have back home.”

  Hilgo frowns at this. Somehow they had the idea that Coalitionites must live luxuriously with such a high income. And yet here they were, stressing about more things than they did on Ulminh.

  “I take it that it all doesn’t feel very special to you then, huh?” asks Vertan.

  “Yeah, not really!” continues Etrad. “I know a lot of people still do, but it’s become the same old for me.”

  Overhead, the intercom crackles,

  “Attention all personnel: Atmospheric entry to Gateworld Thoma is complete. We are now approaching Port Four, Base Seven. Disembarkation will commence at 0500 local. Observe standard code of conduct and operational discipline. Orientation will follow at 0900 local. Welcome to your new post.”

  Looking out the window upon their descent, Vertan is greeted with a sight unforeseen to him. There was no sun, yet somehow, the planet stayed lit. Across the sky, he could make out a few of the twelve gigantic gateways orbiting the planet, each large enough to swallow a moon. They are supposedly powerful enough to transport anything near-instantaneously across great distances. Their troop carrier had come through one of the smaller, lesser gateways orbiting the larger main ones, each the size of a city.

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  Down below, he now understood the unofficial moniker of Thoma being a “fortress-world”. Every bit of it was armed to the teeth. It seemed so saturated with its defensive measures from below the ground up to the stratosphere that he wondered if the planet was even made of anything else. Gigantic, armed ships constantly flowed in and out of the gateways. It seemed unfathomable to think that in the middle of a rotation like this, there is actually less going on than during peak hours.

  Vertan could make out their destination: Base Seven, out of twelve. It looked like it could dwarf a small country, and at its center is a complex the size of a city, housing a pillar that drew from the planet’s core, working in tandem with its gateway that is tidally locked in orbit above.

  “All this and for what?” Fero chuckles. “Nothing ever comes out here.”

  “What can I say?” Vertan replies. “I’m sure they have their reasons to be careful.”

  “All seems overkill to me,” Fero grumbles.

  “How come?” asks Vertan.

  “All of these resources, I just think they could use them better at home than out here.”

  “Isn’t this here for extragalactic security though? It’s anti-demonism, I’m sure that protects home.”

  “After a while, I kind of just get tired of it. It’s because of it that we get less back home.”

  “Why don’t you make a change then?”

  “Acting like we have the option to, huh?”

  Vertan rolls his eyes. He disliked having to talk to Fero most times. His attitude and behavior didn’t sit with him, and his tone of voice spoke of pessimism. He and Hilgo made a change to improve their lives, he reasoned. Pinning the blame on something else seemed less productive to him than taking the initiative for himself, so he thought.

  *****

  It was shortly after their brief orientation after landing that Vertan and Hilgo walked with the rest of their platoon to their station. The gateways shone as great concentric rings across the sky, nearly as bright as natural moons, giving light in the eternal night.

  “Wow, hey, look at that, a shooting star!” comments Hilgo, pointing to a burning streak across the sky.

  “Pretty!” quips Syani, behind him. “How small and cute!”

  It soon disappeared. However, trailing behind it, followed more and more shooting stars. Vertan gazed up in awe as the sky brightened under the full meteor shower.

  “Amazing!” admires Vertan. “How lucky we are. Wonder how often this comes around?”

  “I don’t think this ever does,” says Fero from ahead of him. “Must be the first time.”

  The shower appeared brighter and more vibrant now, becoming more and more chaotic, as though shooting stars from all different directions swarmed across the sky high above, surrounding all of them. Distant thunder could be heard from the ground.

  “Anyone’s communications working alright?” asks Etrad. “Wonder if this shower’s causing interference.”

  “Might be,” replies Calian. “My signal’s a bit spotty, what about yours?”

  “I’m having trouble hearing through mine,” says Etrad.

  A particular comet seems to catch Vertan’s eye as everyone around soon discovers their related issues with communications. A commotion stirs and spreads, as people realize a meteor shower never happens at all. As it burned through the atmosphere, he could start to make out different parts of it. Is that—?

  “...Vertan, do you see that—?” begins Hilgo.

  Suddenly, without much warning, directly high above, a bright, burning ship careens through the air, breaking apart into multiple pieces. It continued on its trajectory over the horizon, before finally meeting its demise in a monstrous fireball a few miles away.

  Confused anxiety began to build up into a fervor now. No information from other troops and platoons, no communication from other bases across Thoma. Alarms have yet to even go off—why haven’t they gone off?

  A distant siren attempts to scream into the void before a doomed ship silences it once more. There were no longer just streaking, shooting stars, but also peppering, bright explosions around a gateway.

  The Third Platoon could only watch in horror as millions died in the scorched skies and orbit above.

  *****

  A very slight quake could be felt through the ground every few minutes as everyone rushed to their station at Base Seven.

  The orbital defense cannons fired incessantly with intense fervor, struggling to break apart the gigantic ships into smaller pieces before they could make it through the atmosphere. However, most of them find themselves crushed in vain.

  Arriving at Base Seven, the Third Platoon finds and meets with the four other platoons of their company that had managed to make it with any surviving members. There was no telling the status of the other platoons. There was a clear understanding however, that they are now vastly short on number to properly defend Base Seven from any anomaly.

  Crucial minutes pass by like hours. Everyone maintained posture and conformity amidst the chaos. The orbital defense cannons, whether previously manned or automatized, continued to fire salvo after salvo, barely keeping up, and defending Base Seven by a razor thin margin.

  Then, almost as suddenly as it had first appeared, the bright mayhem in the skies began to dim and subside. The thundering began to dwindle and quiet. Soon, the skies returned to its original darkness. However, there was so much debris up there that a band soon coalesced in orbit around the planet.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Anyone find anything?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Any signal out there?”

  “Base Six, do you read me? Base Eight, do you read me?”

  “This is Base Seven, is anyone receiving this signal?”

  “Are we alright now?”

  “Is the sky a little darker than it was?”

  “Probably taking some adjustment.”

  “No, look up!”

  As others point out, everyone soon looks out at the night sky to find that, indeed, it was slightly darker than it should have been. One of the gateways in orbit that could have been seen from their perspective on the ground appears to have significantly dimmed, appearing severely damaged.

  Slowly, and then very suddenly, the ring began to fold, crumble, and eventually collapse in on itself, igniting into a great brightness once more as though a final cry against the void, before it leaves a dark empty spot in its wake. Around the same time on the ground, appearing tiny against the distance across the horizon, everyone could make out what appeared to be a great explosion belching from the earth beneath, stretching up several mountains high, before in equal speed and fashion, collapsed back into the planet. The sound and shockwave would not come to shake the ground beneath them for another few hours.

  The sky is dimmer.

  Several platoon members can be seen kneeling down and begging in prayer to whatever religion they followed. But just like their severed communication lines, no god will answer their pleas.

  A swirl of thoughts raced through each person’s head. What could possibly have happened? What kind of a catastrophe is this of this order of magnitude?

  An hour had passed as many are now surrounding an illuminated global map of Gateworld Thoma, as displayed in the communications control room. Several lights either flickered red, or were out altogether. But most alarmingly, the light and symbol for Base Six and its respective gateway is out completely, as are any of its satellite bases. A crowd began to gather.

  Base Five blinks off.

  Everyone stares up in disbelief and terrified awe. Surely it must have been a glitch in their system. A result of the global blackout.

  There’s no way, right?

  That would mean many millions have just died at that moment, right?

  Word began to spread like plague through Base Seven.

  “This is a disaster!”

  “What kind of a disaster even is this? It’s beyond it!”

  “I don’t believe it to be just a disaster!”

  “They wouldn’t allow it to be one!”

  “How could the Coalition be so incompetent to let something of this magnitude happen?”

  “Maybe they didn’t let it?”

  “It still happened!”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Are we under attack?”

  “Who said that?!”

  “Not me!”

  “We are not under attack!”

  “There’s no way this is a coordinated attack, right?”

  “You got any ideas what else it could be?”

  “Demons don’t coordinate attacks!”

  “What if they do, huh?!”

  “I bet Base Four is next!”

  “We just saw Six’s gateway implode in front of our eyes earlier! What natural phenomena could possibly do that?!”

  “Would this be an anomaly?”

  “This can’t just be an anomaly!”

  “No—!”

  “Is this what they’ve spoken about?”

  “I thought that was just rumors! Legends! Propaganda!”

  “There’s no way!”

  “Why would it come here? I thought it wouldn’t come for places like this!”

  “Who cares why!”

  “What matters is that it's here now!”

  “Nothing matters anymore! We’re all going to die and nobody is going to hear us!”

  “This is Base Seven, is there anyone out there? Hello? Someone please answer!”

  Communication attempts continued in vain. The various platoons and other people already stationed across Base Seven continued to hold their position, not knowing what to anticipate. No training prepared for this. All recon, support, and information may as well be nonexistent now. The typically busy logistics hub is now completely devoid of anything moving anywhere. The world was going dark, suffocating them in blindness.

  Above, something shadowy blinks across the sky. Most could have missed it. It was so subtle, so soundless, that if it were not for what was currently happening, many would have questioned their own senses.

  But there was no longer any denying that they are doomed to the Abomination.