The Kotothi
By J. L. Young ‘Fire emanating from my chest. No. Not fire. Pain. Why am I feeling pain in my chest? The pain is worsening. What’s wrong? Look, damn you. Work muscles. Eyes, what do I see? Arms flailing, useless. Get control. Fireworks! What the fuck! Punch out! Punch out!’ The intermittent hiss of the ocean crashing on a beach entered my consciousness. The world breathed around me. The familiar smell of rubber and bad breath filtered in. I’m alive, face down in the sand. My hands found the quick-release, setting me free of the ejection seat. It was night. A glance at my watch revealed I’d been out for three hours. A scan of the horizon revealed a glow over a large dune. My ship still burns. It’s a beacon drawing the Kotothi. Who are the Kotothi? Well, they were here before us. From what the scientists say, the Kotothi were here during the snowball Earth period and fled when the ice receded. Why would they come back now? They developed the tech to permanently revert the Earth to a glaciated state. They learned our language from the radio signals we sent out. When they made first contact, they demanded we vacate. We, of course, told them what to do with themselves. Diplomatically, of course. However, their arrival did do something. It united the world, just like in the movies. The Kotothi love a protracted war. We ramped up production on our highest tech ships. They produced equal technology. When we had nearly depleted our stockpiles, they held off waiting for us to make the next step. To advance our technology, then created weapons something with similar advancements. They have been playing with us for a century. All my life I fought the Kotothi. I have killed them in space, in the air, and in hand-to-hand combat. They are a formidable foe. They do have a weakness. It’s their anatomy. They can’t survive temperatures above -89 degrees C. They rely on their environmental suits. Granted, they are awesome and dreadful things. However, when their suits are removed, their blood boils and they pop. When they do, they smell oddly like a bakery. We nicknamed them poppers.
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May 2024
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