First Contact - Prologue - The Log

Author's Preamble (Please Read): Hello all! It's my first story, so I just feel like I need to post a quick explanation of things. First of all this is what I'd call a 're-imagining' of the story I started over on another site. (I'll post a link there to here shortly) To those who may've read it, here's my explanation/excuse: I got caught up with other events for a long time (hooray for college life), and when I finally got around to looking over what I had written I realized that the story had taken a new direction in my head that just didn't fit with what I'd written anymore. So I'm starting fresh, I'm not changing the characters or the broad storyline or anything, but I am going to re-do most of the scenes and the backstory. (first-time readers please pay attention here) You may also notice that I've bumped the rating up, that's because I've been getting very friendly with my dark side, and this story will contain all of the following: Violence, harsh language, adult situations (ie: sex, still deciding on how explicit), and situations of extreme horror, I mean it even freaks me out some of the stuff I'm capable of imagining. Oh, and one more thing, I'm kinda upset that this place doesn't have a 'Military' or 'War' genre as either of those fits this story so much better than horror, because while parts of it are scary, it doesn't pervade the entire story… Anyways review please and I'll see ya later.

Disclaimer:

Official – The world this story is set in is the sole property of the Nintendo Corporation, and I make no claims to ownership of any of the content save for the original characters, some of the backstory, and a bit of the technology. I'm glad they're letting me play around in their sandbox.

Unofficial – I'm a poor college student, please don't sue me.

Darkness and silence.

That was all that could describe the room, it was a complete, all-encompassing pitch-black darkness, oppressive and heavy. If anyone was to experience this utter darkness they would know total sensory deprivation. There was no light, no crack in the walls to illuminate what lay beyond, and no sound to be heard in the emptiness. Beyond lay more dark corridors and empty dusty rooms sprawled seemingly forever in an endless labyrinth.

The room had lain dormant for years, waiting for a time that may never come, waiting without end for someone to stumble upon it and plumb the secrets held within.

Today was different.

Muffled sounds of banging and clanking echoed through the walls of the room, along with the heavily muted sounds of peoples' voices. There was a grinding sound and an opening appeared in one of the walls. Blinding white light poured through as two human figures huddled in the doorway, illuminating the room for the first time in centuries.

"Is this it?" One asked in a whisper.

"Can't tell." The other said. "Hang on."

He stepped carefully into the room, metal plating creaking under his boots. He was dressed for cold weather: a jet-black parka with a small red insignia on the left breast and insulated pants. His breath misted in the air before him through his face mask. He pulled large goggles off his face and and peered around. The bright light cast from his small flashlight revealed a large oval-shaped room, white-walled, and with a slight depression in the center. One wall was covered in what looked like rows of computers. The man approached them and gently brushed the dust and frost off of the faces of the machines with a gloved hand, peering closely at the wall.

After a moment he turned back to his companion, a woman similarly garbed, and smiled. "Radio the commander. Tell her we've found it."

A short while later the room had been transformed. Bright halogen utility lamps had been brought in, scattering light and illuminating the room brightly. Several space heaters glowed dully from the floor, gradually bringing the temperature back up to normal. Several more black coat-clad people were now working in the crowded space. Some had pried one of the panels on the wall off, exposing large bundles of multicolored wires within; while others were fussing over the dormant rows of computers. The door, now revealed to be a hatchway, was open and similarly well-lit. Two more people walked in, dragging heavy gray cables with them.

"Not yet, we still have to isolate the main power trunk and close off the circuits to the other systems." Said one of the technicians at the wall when the cables were brought over.

They dropped them with a thud and turned to go loiter by the entrance.

"This sucks, why are we even here?" the man asked.

"Because the boss told us to and that's all we need to know." His companion, a woman, replied. "Although I wouldn't mind knowing what this place is and how he knew it was here."

"Yeah, whatever. It isn't like they'll tell us anything and they don't pay me enough to be stuck in a frozen hell-hole like thi-" he stopped and went rigid as another person came in through the hatchway.

He was tall and powerfully built, with broad shoulder and a square, sharp face. He was dressed for cold weather as well, but his mask was pulled down around his neck and his goggles were pressed against his forehead.

"Attention on deck!" the two individuals shouted snapping to attention.

The man's lips curled into something close to a sneer, and he observed the room with dark narrow eyes. "Carry on." He ordered with a sharp cutting voice.

He walked through the door, four other individuals flanking him. They simply stood in the middle of the room, calmly observing the technicians as the worked. It grew warmer, and eventually everyone shed their heavier coats and gear, wearing lighter black pants and shirts. The man who had entered later sat with his companions on folding chairs brought to them from outside. Unlike them he was clad in a simplistic suit rather than the uniform all the others, including his lieutenants, were wearing.

After half an hour the power cables were affixed to the cables in the wall with the help of some adapters, and the computer banks at one end of the room glowed with twinkling green lights. The technicians grinned for a moment, then connected a few laptop computers to the computers, typing rapidly and muttering to themselves.

The man, undeniably their boss, listened with half-hearted interest to their conversation.

"… Never seen an OS like it…"

"Can we translate it?"

"The programs are running, just gottta hope that we can at least figure out the user interface."

"Good God, look at that! The system diagnostic is done, check out the specs on these things."

"Petabytes of space? Must be a malfunction, check it again."

"I did, it's right."

The man sighed, he had known that this wouldn't be easy, but then again he had never let that stop him before. These were some of the top experts in the field of computing that his considerable wealth could buy. The man needed to know what secrets this isolated place held, and yet a small part of him still could not believe he was even here. All those months of research and piecing together clues that no one else had seen had led to this. He knew they would succeed, it was only a matter of time. It seemed like hours before one of the techs shouted out.

"Got it! We're in!" He glanced around nervously and then approached his boss, shaking slightly even in the warm room.

"Sir, we've gained access to the computer system, we're ready whenever you are."

The man just nodded, staring at the center of the room. The tech scuttled back to his fellows and tapped a rapid series of commands into his laptop. He paused and looked up.

"Ehrm, sir, the lights…"

"Kill the lights." The man ordered, not bothering to look back.

The lights were all switched off and the only illumination in the room now came from the red glow of the space heaters and the soft light from the computer screens. The tech tapped a final sequence into the computer and looked up expectantly. Everyone in the room leaned forward with baited breath, waiting for whatever was coming next.

It started quietly; there was a moan, then a squeal of mechanical protest as long-dormant mechanisms within the floor ground into action. A circular section in the center of the floor irised open, and a cylindrical pedestal emerged. There was complete silence in the room now other than the sound of everyone's breathing. Then came a flutter of light above the pedestal, then another and another. A blinding flash of color and light played in the empty space and a hissing screech of static blared from hidden speakers in the room's walls. The tech paled and reached for the laptop to make an adjustment, but the cacophony only lasted for a few seconds.

In rapid succession images appeared above the pedestal, changing so quickly that they could only catch glimpses of them. A gathering of people in a huge room with a blue floor; shuffling, dull-eyed people standing in long lines in front of some building; a double-helix strand of DNA changing and growing; a picture of some blue and green planet surrounded by what looked like red dots. There was a pause and then more images appeared, even more disturbing than the last ones. Armored vehicles advancing down city streets, soldiers in green camouflage, rockets lifting off of deserted launchpads, another shot of that planet that the people in the room didn't recognize; this time with what looked like lines of light stabbing down at the surface. Another pause, and then a flash of light blasted out from above the projector, clearing to reveal a mushroom-shaped pillar of fire towering high into the sky. Then there were more pictures: fields of dead bodies lying contorted in agony under a dark and brooding sky, with individuals in heavy overcoats and gas masks walking among them and last but not least a huge, metallic spacecraft glimpsed in space, hanging above the planet, which now had a dirty gray atmosphere.

This disturbing slideshow was accompanied by numerous overlapping voices, all from different sources.

"…The US has declared a state of emergency…"

"…energy and food crisis is worsening…"

"…The United States announced today their intentions to begin selling their oil domestically…"

"…calling it a second Cold War with a re-formed Eastern Bloc…"

"…yesterday the United States finished launching a series of satellites into orbit to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles…"

"…the UN called for the de-activation of the Aurora Array…"

"…Today the US declared its intentions to militarily annex Mexico and Canada, calling itself the United States of North America. The United Nations has renounced the country and was thrown out of New York… "

"…World War Three is upon us…"

"…Surprise missile attack…"

"…USNA on the offensive…"

"…Western European lines crumbling under mechanized assault…"

"…Nuclear retaliation…"

"…Casualties in the millions…"

Then everything stopped, the voices and the sounds. Everyone looked around uneasily, disturbed by what they had seen. Save for their boss, who was looking thoroughly entranced at the sights and knowledge. Finally the air above wavered and another form appeared in the empty space.

It was a man. A man of light incarnate, a frozen fragment of a time long since past. His image twinkled slightly as dust motes floated in and out of the hologram. He looked to be in his mid to late twenties, was tall and athletic, standing about six feet, with a fair complexion and dark brown hair. His face was sharp and solidly built, with a long, deep scar cutting straight down across his undamaged left eye. He was clad in a strange, black and red uniform. An assortment of colorful ribbons and medals adorned his left chest, and an unreadable name tag hung on the right. From each of his lapels a pair of shiny silver bars twinkled. On one of his shoulders there was a red circular patch with a strange geometric shape with the letters "USNA MC" stitched in gold around the edge. However it was not the man's bizarre attire that held the audience's attention. It was his eyes, gray mournful eyes. One could tell instantly by seeing them that this man had been through hell; that he had seen horrors in his lifetime that few others could imagine. His eyes captured and held the attention of his audience, especially their leader. Then he spoke.

"Hello, whoever you are." he said, in a weary voice. "My name is Captain Joshua M. Miller of the United States of North America Marine Corps. I don't know who, if anyone, will ever hear this, but I owe it to myself and to the fallen to leave some record behind." He glanced upward at the ceiling and then back down. "Someone has to know, some record has to survive, dammit," his voice got a little choked up. "I have to make sure that this survives. So that someone somewhere will remember their sacrifices, all the lives lost in the war for this godforsaken mudball. Everyone else has forgotten, their minds wiped and their memories destroyed, I'm the only one left, the only one who still remembers the hell we went through to survive here."

Capt Miller shook his head as if to clear it. "Of course you're probably hopelessly confused, I'll start from the beginning. You, me, every human being currently living on this planet is technically an alien, a foreign invader. Our homeworld, Earth is halfway across the galaxy from here."

His image was replaced by a blue and green globe hovering in empty space. The occupants of the room stared at it blankly. It didn't look like any globe that they had ever seen of their world, but the marine's hologram was speaking again, interrupting their thoughts.

"Well, to make a very long and very complicated story short, my country back on Earth, the United States, came into some wealth and power right in the middle of a very bad economic recession. Several other countries banded together and under the leadership of some extremely radical leaders they ostracized us from the international community and eventually declared war on us." He shook his head. "We didn't want the war to escalate, we just wanted to be left alone, but they forced our hand. It raged for fifteen years, and near the end we reached a deadlock, neither side could gain the advantage and we were worried that they'd try to push us back out of the European theater and maybe back to our own coastline. Against strong reservations we began using our nuclear arsenal against the hostile nations. At first it was limited to small tactical warheads deployed on the battlefield, but when resistance went on it just amounted to indiscriminate bombing of hostile cities. They fought back, but our anti-missile system protected us from any retaliation. The other countries were completely decimated, but their blind fury at our actions kept them going. They fought back with guerrilla tactics and other strategies that made it impractical for us to bring our full might to bear against them, and the war raged on. Eventually we reached a cease-fire, if only to avoid destroying the planet beneath us."

He looked around with haunted eyes. "I know what I'm saying will never translate fully. You had to be there to realize the extent of the misery we were living in after the war's end. There was no food, even the water tasted like ash, and the world was dark and cold even in the middle of the summer. Lung cancer rates quadrupled, and people had to wear breath masks outside at all times. The government tried to pass this off as a victory, but even they were appalled at their own actions, after the fact of course."

"The next ten years were the hardest we've ever faced as a country and as a species." He went on. "There were huge clouds of dust in the air from the nuclear explosions. It became almost impossible to grow food. Almost every government in the world save for ours was in shambles. Mass starvation set in, and artificial food quickly became the norm. Wildlife on most of the continents began to die out, and the world population was plummeting. Eventually we faced the reality that we may have rendered Earth uninhabitable, and they began looking into the possibility of colonizing other planets in the solar system. Another project put into motion was a huge array of solar refractors that were supposed to be placed in close orbit to the sun in an attempt to force focused rays of sunlight through the cloud cover."

He swept his arms wide. "While the probes were out there they found something new, something we'd never thought possible. They called it 'Ryan's Particle'. It was basically the key to traveling faster than light. It could be used it to manipulate gravity and create 'tunneling wormholes'. The sun turned 'em out like mad but only a handful escaped its gravity long enough for us to nab 'em. Anyways there was a big push to establish a terraformed martian colony with a fleet of faster-than-light vehicles shuttling colonists to and from the planet. But the plan fell apart when the projected costs of the project came out. It would've cost trillions just to get started, and there wouldn't be measurable results for decades. The final nail in the coffin was when the prototype engine exploded when they tested it. Apparently the conflicting gravity forces tore the thing apart."

"So we merely shelved the plans for leaving Earth and tried to repair what we could of our shattered world. Then we found this place." He shuddered slightly.

"A long-range telescope spotted it and spectrograph analysis showed that it was Earth-like, with breathable air and it was just right for us to live there. So the government and a few companies dusted off the old phase-point drive plans and decided that a ready-made planet was far more attractive than one that you'd have to pour mountains of cash into to make livable. Especially one that wasn't as screwed up as Earth. So for the next five years they built the USNA-ISV Flame of Dawn in orbit. It took most of our industrial capacity and economy to accomplish, but we did it all on our own."

"Now towards the end of the construction the rest of the world, what was left, started to get real nasty again. They didn't think it was fair that we'd get this second chance on a new planet with just ourselves and none of them. They tried to bully us into letting other countries provide crew and passengers, but we stonewalled them. However, the strain of building the vessel drained most of our industrial capacity, including our ability to wage war. And right around when she was finished the rest of the world was starting to re-arm."

"Well, we left before the peace talks broke down, as I knew they would. A million of us were put in a hibernation coma inside a two mile long craft and shot off to parts unknown. The thing is we had to be around the orbit of Neptune in order to safely fire the phase-point drive, so a skeleton crew stayed 'awake' to monitor the situation and the ship. From what they heard from Earth things were going downhill faster than anyone else could have predicted. We were already on the brink of war, I don't even understand what they were fighting for anymore." He sighed and spread his hands. "We left before we heard what happened, but my guess is what was left of the world wiped themselves out."

"Well, whatever happened to Earth, it was out of our hands. We spent the next fifty years in hibernation on the flight out. When we woke up the ship was on its way in towards the new planet and we were on our own one way or another."

He looked back up.

"And that's when the nightmare really got started."

A/N: Review Please!