EXPLORER

HE DODGED TO the right, evading a mad claw swipe from the reptilian ape. The fell beast had the physique and poise of Earth's gorillas, but twisted with the visage of a frilled lizard. Its claws could tear a human to pieces in seconds, eyes glinted with primeval intelligence, bestial fury roared from a fanged maw, and the conspicuous want to glut itself on Ojukwu's blood and meat was clear as hate on a bigot's face. 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 boosted his physical prowess as the explorer loosed shots into the gorillizard's thick-scaled bulk. The beast wailed as cyan blood streaked from bullet wounds to its dark-green torso. Giving into animal instinct and rage, the gorillizard spun on its axis, swinging its 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 attack 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 damage and instance of death as he slammed into the hardened trunk of an orange tree ten meters away.

His rough flip-travel on the jungle floor left grooves in the dirt, and plant-mush in its path.

The gorillizard bellowed mirth at dealing a good blow on the obstinate prey, it closed in for the kill, loping towards Ojukwu's sprawled mechanized bulk with a furious burst of speed and nigh abyssal hunger on its red-eyed, wide-nostrilled, 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 red helm.

THROUGH THE HELM'S pale visor, Ojukwu saw the beast cover meters with inhuman bounds and lunged at him with a snarl, six-digit talons spread out to maim the explorer 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 and rolled out of the way, the powersuit's servos whined loudly augmenting his movement. Its ectoreceptors perceived 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 that was intended for the ex-army captain. The gorillizard's attack carved a large chunk of the tree's trunk, spraying splinters and revealing purple sap and blue innards.

Ojukwu already dodge-rolled to safety; the tree took the brunt of the attack on where he had been leaning against 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 already well-toned physical abilities, the ex-soldier opened up with his rifle. Ojukwu let loose a stream of energy-blanketed bullets, the gun bucked and barked angry actinic flashes in the ex-soldier's hands, energy-wreathe rounds stunned the targeted 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 powersuit's sensors to scan for any shred of animation in the corpse, then redirected the sensors to scour the environment for additional threats that may linger at the dark corners of the 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 crawling critters populating the lush jungle to the soaring birds past the forest canopies, the feelings of nostalgia and displacement were two immiscible feelings in Ojukwu's gut. He switched through the many optical spectra on the helmet's HUD as the sensors relayed their findings.

SATISFIED WITH THE powersuit's AI reporting of no threats, the battle with the predator probably scaring other fauna away, Ojukwu decided to head for the gorillizard's nest-enclave. He had stumbled upon it traversing 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 perceived the rancid smell of the already decaying corpse, the buzz of swarming alien insects intent on feasting on the carrion, and 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 survival on the death-world of Alamortem. The AI of the pitted, scratched and dirty red-white Ikenga exoskeleton made diagnostic scans, checking for wounds on Ojukwu's person and power-armour.

POWERSUITS ARE MARVELS of science and technology, constructs of the third millennium, and 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 from concussive impacts on the alloyed plates were visible; 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 laid 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, the space gods returned.

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 now serve as refuge 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 metal 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, and projectiles from robots and vat-born near-featureless soldiers; combatants exchanged fire in dogged street gunfights and mass suicidal charges. 

The battle was lost, the enemy overwhelmed the humans in number and firepower.

Ojukwu was captured with many others, huddled with fellow prisoners of war onto a titanic 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; with no guidance from the alien wardens, the unguided spaceship crashed to the jungle-world of Alamortem.

The human captives, and other enslaved extraterrestrial life's fates uncertain, the prisoners were left to fend for themselves.

Ojukwu shook his helmed head as the thoughts poured through the fatigue-weakened steel gates and walls of the Newgerian's militaristic mind, the burdensome role as a scout for the stranded captives trapped on a planet lightyears from Earth was 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; his family in life, nor ancestors in death.

The war with the space gods 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, and checked it for damages. Satisfied, he held it loose in gauntleted hands, loosely fingering the trigger. His armour hummed with captured plasma-power, the explorer felt the subtle micro-vibrations. The HUD, the powersuit's AI, the ectoreceptors and other sensors worked in concert to keep him aware of twenty-meter radii of thick jungle.

THE AI REPORTED that his body needed at least two hours of rest, a tinny monotone feminine voice that the Newgerian sometimes found annoying. Sometimes, it soothed him; the only companion he had during missions. The explorer had been ceaselessly on the move for the past three weeks, the timepiece on the helm's display showed 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 sporadic 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; he had spent 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.

All who lived in the spaceship were under the tyrannical gaze of alien overlords… like insects under a handheld lens.

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.

His body rested, but his mind never did.