EXPLORER AN AFRICA: HUMANITY’S LAST BASTION STORY
By: Lucky Patrick
Tags: Fiction, Africa, Space Exploration, African Literature, Philosophy

EXPLORER

AN AFRICA: HUMANITY’S LAST BASTION STORY

HE DODGED TO the right, evading a mad claw swipe from the reptilian looking ape. The fell beast had the physique and poise of Earth’s gorillas, albeit twisted with the visage of a lizard. Its claws could tear a human to pieces in seconds, its eyes glinted with primeval intelligence, bestial fury were roars from its fanged maw, and the conspicuous want to glut itself on Ojukwu’s blood and meat was clear as hate on the face of a bigot. The creature’s strength was twenty times greater than a human’s, but that reduced to ten times greater since the explorer was clad in a powersuit.

Ojukwu backed up a few paces coming up from his evasive roll, the Ikenga exoskeleton boosting his physical prowess as the explorer loosed shots in the gorillizard’s thick-scaled bulky form. The beast wailed its pain, cyan-coloured blood streaking from bullet wounds on its dark-green thorax. Giving into instinct and rage, the gorillizard spun on its axis, swinging a thick rigid barbed tail at Ojukwu. The speed of the tail-attack blitzed the former Newgerian army captain, making a mockery of his power armoured enhancement.

The blow sent the ex-soldier spinning three-point-five meters up into the air, the powersuit’s systems screamed alarms in Ojukwu’s ears, warning of the damage and instance of death as he slammed against the hardened trunk of an orange alien tree ten meters away.

His rough travel against the alien jungle floor leaving grooves in the dirt and plant-mush in its path.

The gorillizard bellowed mirth at dealing a good blow on its obstinate prey, closing in for the kill, loping towards Ojukwu sprawled mechanized bulk with a furious burst of speed and nigh abyssal hunger on its red-eyed, wide-nostrils, cruelly fanged face.

The ex-soldier was far from finished, battling the encroaching unconsciousness, trying to concentrate amidst the warnings voiced by the powersuit’s AI as it reported on the exoskeleton’s status, his health and survivability options on the HUD within his helm.

THROUGH THE HELM’S pale visor, Ojukwu saw the beast cover meters with inhuman bounds, lunging at him with a snarl, and a spread-out dangerously clawed six-digit hand to maim the explorer laying seemingly defeated against the tree.

Ojukwu, years of training in the Newgerian army, and experience from the ongoing Human-Annunaki war came to the fore. Ojukwu kicked up, rolling out of the way, the powersuit’s servos whined loudly as they augmented his movement and its ectoreceptors sensed the environment, picking up the rigidity of the tree that halted the ex-soldier’s flight, the wetness of the loamy purple soil and moist deep blue leaves of the trees beneath him, and the ash-coloured bushes that filled the lush alien jungle.

The armoured suit fed Ojukwu information on his surroundings, mimicking the human sense organs.

Powersuit ectoreceptors relayed the thunderclap sound of the gorillizard pounding into the tree in a bludgeoning arc, a killing blow intended for the ex-army captain. The gorillizard’s attack carved a large chunk of the tree’s trunk, revealing green-purple innards.

Ojukwu had leapt away to safety, the tree taking the brunt of the attack visited on where he had been leaning against a few moments ago.

LIKE ANY SOLDIER, Ojukwu’s weapon barely left his gun hand. Hefting up the M66 assault rifle, aiming in a show of martial discipline, exoskeleton providing buffs for an already well-toned physical abilities, the ex-soldier opened up with his rifle. Ojukwu let loose a stream of energy-encased bullets, the gun bucking and barking with angry actinic flashes as the energy-wreathe rounds stunned the beast.

The bullets left angry-red tracers, ionizing the air in their path, riddling the beast with steaming holes. Shrieks of pain became a twisted melody in the jungle’s confines as the gorillizard cried out its agony, dancing to bullet impacts, bleeding cyan blood from ruptured skin and damaged vital organs.

Ojukwu’s trigger finger remained in that tight squeeze familiar to every gunslinger, he didn’t stop till the beast lay still from its death throes.

Ojukwu willed the power suit’s sensors to scan for any shred of animation in the corpse, before redirecting them to scan the environment for any other threats that may linger at the dark corners of the alien jungle. Of course, a typical jungle would always teem with life. Even an alien one on a planet as dangerous as Alamortem, every biome on the face of the strange world was populated with biotic and abiotic conditions inimical to human life.

The Newgerian glimpsed and felt the wan blue sunlight that slipped through the apertures dotting the jungle’s tree canopies.

The very jungle Ojukwu prowled like a forlorn cub definitely teemed with life, like those he had adventured in during childhood years with friends and family back in Newgeria.

From the critters crawling the vegetation laden jungle grounds to the soaring birds past the forest canopies, the feelings of nostalgia and displacement were two immiscible feelings in Ojukwu’s gut as he switched through the spectra on the helmet’s HUD sensors relayed.

SATISFIED WITH THE powersuit’s AI reporting of no threats, the battle with the gorillizard probably scaring other fauna away, Ojukwu decided to head for the gorillizard’s nest-enclave. He had stumbled upon it as he traversed Alamortem’s hostile jungle, the beast had taken him to be manna. Intent on feasting on human flesh even as Ojukwu tried to escape its slavering razor toothed jaws.

The confrontation between him and the beast proved inevitable, the gorillizard was not the first alien monster the Newgerian had to slay since crashing upon the unfriendly surface of Alamortem.

The ectoreceptors picked up the rancid smell of the already decaying corpse, the buzz of swarming alien insects’ intent on feasting on the carrion, the probability of scavengers coming up the way of the cadaver and the need for rest and repairs.

The ex-army captain changed location without further delay.

Nestled within the nest-enclave of the dead gorillizard, a myriad coloured flora-canopied burrow dug ten-point-eight-seven meters into the ground, looking like a cave but one clearly of semi-sentient artifice; Ojukwu observed the proper rites and rituals that ensured his continued existence on the death-world of Alamortem.

The AI of the pitted, scratched and dirty red-white Ikenga exoskeleton made diagnostic scans of his powersuit, checking for wounds on Ojukwu’s person and power-armour.

POWERSUITS ARE MARVELS of science and technology, constructs of the third millennium; one of the biggest inventions of the 2060s. Powered by portable plasma generators reminiscent of ancient trunk-like backpacks; armoured in durable metallic alloyed plates from head to toe like chivalrous knights; resilient fibrous meshes and bundles at joints so as not to impair movement, and an AI to serve as a nexus where man and machine became one; the exoskeletons made the average human a literal insectoid demigod. They also sported several attachments, utilities which depended on situation.

There are more efficient power exoskeletons way better than the Ikenga, but the Ikenga powersuit was one of the few suits available to Ojukwu… and the others.

It was salvaged from the spaceship’s wreck.

Ojukwu’s red-white powersuit was scarred here and there, dents were evident as concussive impacts stove in the metal alloy plates. Though there seemed to be nothing serious on the outside. The AI checked on the circuitry and software which served as the CNS of the machine.

The explorer’s exoskeleton had barely any attachments, except the additional nutrient pack—a black featureless lunchbox for the lack of a better word—locked to the small of his back. Wires and tubes connected the bodies of men to their suits, marrying them as one. For Ojukwu, asides the regular connections, the nutrient pack kept him nourished. Food on Alamortem was not meant for human physiology and so he had to venture out with it.

It contained nutrients in liquid form, fed directly to his bloodstream.

Ojukwu’s rifle lay beside him, the ex-army man cuddled in a dark corner of the nest-enclave. The gun’s holster should have been where the nutrient pack lay but the Newgerian had no problem with the allowances made. In a few hours, the ex-soldier would have to head out into the wilderness of Alamortem again.

Ojukwu’s body rested, but his mind did not.

He was arrested by visions of the war back on Earth, the dilemma currently faced on an alien world, and utterly devastated at the thought that humanity might never be able to escape the leashes of their tyrannical overlords.

The damned Annunaki.

IT’S THE 2060s and humanity faces absolute servitude, if not extinction, in the face of an old master that once ruled them as gods. The Annunaki are a galactic empire that had a hand in humanity’s nascence. Out of nowhere, the Annunaki returned to claim back their servants. It wasn’t easy for the more advanced nations to acquiesce to a supposed higher power; and so the Human-Annunaki wars began.

Almost all the continents have been devastated, three out of seven utterly in ruins. Populations cut down to one-fifth of their original number, enslaved and shackled to serve forever more the Space gods. Most parts of said continents are epitomes of ash, dust and human decay… except the tropical regions of the world, which serve as refuges and rebel outposts. The largest being the enigmatic regions of Australia and Africa. For some reason the many realms of Africa are spared the ill attentions of the Annunaki, becoming a staging point of a grand rebellion and the last hope of humanity’s claim on Earth.

It was in one of the skirmishes that Ojukwu fought that found him captured by the Annunaki forces. Ojukwu remembered fighting clad in a heavily weaponized Ogun powersuit in a wasteland once known as London. A metallic hulk bristling with guns, servos whining with the power of a mechanical demigod, it’s terrifying visage cyclopean to all who gazed upon it. The battle in London was ghastly, men blown to bits of charred crimson meat, cooked in powersuits which turned to slag under enemy fire, evading the emerald beams of alien cyborgs, robots and vat-born soldiers; exchanging fire in dogged street gunfights and mass suicidal charges. The battle was lost, the enemy overwhelming the humans in number and firepower.

Ojukwu was captured alongside many others, put on a behemoth Annunaki spaceship on its way to an unknown destination in the galaxy.

OJUKWU DIDN’T KNOW whether to call it fortune or misfortune, but his mind replayed the destruction wrought on the massive spaceship like a movie. A group of aliens not of the pale Annunaki had attacked. Both sides were utterly destroyed, the unguided spaceship crashing to the jungle-world of Alamortem.

Leaving the human captives’ fates in their own hands.

Ojukwu shook his helmed head as the thoughts kept pouring over the fatigue-melted steel gates and walls of the Newgerian’s militaristic mind, the burdensome role as a scout for the captive humans trapped on a planet lightyears from Earth heavy on his shoulders. He couldn’t countenance dying in a strange land, let alone a strange world.

Ojukwu reasoned he might never see Earth again; living family nor rest alongside ancestors.

The war with the space gods had shattered the human condition. Humanity forced to fight as one, Africa elevated past its status as a footstool and resource reservoir for advanced nations.

It was a time to be alive.

The ex-soldier’s body rested, but his mind did not share in the recuperation.

Ojukwu reached for the meter-and-a half sleek black piscean rifle, checking it for damages. Satisfied, he held it loose in his gauntleted hands, finger ever close to the trigger. His armour hummed with captured plasma-power, the explorer could feel the subtle micro-vibrations. The HUD, the powersuit’s AI, the ectoreceptors and other sensors working in concert to keep him aware of twenty meters of jungle surrounding the temporary hideout.

THE AI REPORTED that his body needed at least two hours of rest. The explorer had been ceaselessly on the move for the past three weeks, the timepiece on the helm’s display showing 10:30PM. The ex-army captain willed the day’s date to his helm’s display, it read 2/2/2067. He and the others had barely adjusted to Alamortem’s crazy intervals of long days and nights. Their timepieces still read in Earth’s standard units. Ojukwu remembered leaving Earth on the 26th of November circa 2064; spending three years sailing the star filled void of space in the company of detained human rebels, slave-human mutants, vat-born alien freaks and cyborgs under the tyrannical gaze of alien overlords.

Ojukwu let out an exasperated sigh. Truly, he really did need more rest. The explorer stayed put for a while longer as the AI advised.

The ex-soldiers body rested; his mind never did.