8 Chapter II The Autumn - Part 3

Locus and Keith strolled through the residential district area, he saw many multiple rooms with doors, including layers of different levels of floors. The floors were neatly rowed with the same line of doors on the first level to the next layer and the other after that. Inside the many such rooms were different kinds of residential homes for the people, some were decorated while others had the same design as when they first got them. He could see through the residential from the seeable glass door, not a lot of privacy was enforced on this ship, but precautions had to be in place, housing this many people it was a mandated action. They couldn't afford to allow devious people to plot an evil scheme, especially at a time like this. Next to Locus was a large rectangular glass window viewing the many rocks and dust of Saturn's Rings and beyond that, the open explorable world of the galaxy.

Locus held an urge to talk to Sergeant Keith about the aftermath of the battle of Chicago. He swallowed a large amount of unease in his throat, "Can you tell me what happened after the battle?" He stared at him with interest, he felt silly asking him as he knew many people already knew about the aftermath of the invasion of the monstrous race; Scars.

"Once the Chicago War ended, the Locust soldiers were killed as every soldier was stationed at Chicago. The United States were in shambles from the invasions, we fled by boats and planes to the east near Europe and other countries as they were open to allow the citizens of the US to flee. The Militia set up a temporary stronghold in Europe along with other countries in that regional area, the stronghold housed our Military and residence.

America was completely taken over by the Scars and obliterated. Not long after, they invaded Europe and other countries next and wiped out everything, just like in North America.

A New World group called: The Council of World decisions (TCWD) was quickly formed from the remaining leaders of different countries and they initiated a commitment to escort everybody to Russia to build a massive community underground and store everyone to restore and rebuild.

Everyone helped to build massive walls and the underground community. Now the walls were built to potentially harvest a defense and build the cities from within one day.

The underground world stored about two million people during that time, this number of survivors scared a lot of people during that time as the population was 12 billion people before the invasion started.

Five years passed and only three ships were built deeper underground. One was The Autumn, the second was called The Voyage, and lastly, Winterstorm. The construction was assembled and completed without delay. The next step was raising them from the underground world and into the frigid cold, snowy surface to fly and test.

The enemy found us just in the nick of time, they blasted most of our strongly built walls, now these walls weren't your average ten feet walls, these were built like sixty feet tall, almost built like skyscrapers, but wider and thicker. The people gathered quickly from underground and unto the surface. They evenly grouped in the three hundred something foot gigantic ships and fled out to deep space to hide and rebuild.

To this day, we have lost contact with the two other ships, Winterstorm and The Voyage. We don't know if they have been obliterated by the Scars, or have been rebuilding without us knowing."

The long story intrigued Locus, he was a little sad, yet hopeful that he can reunite the others to rebuild a fleet. Now a final question was to be raised, "What happened to the Locust program?"

"It died out, no one could revive it because the vaccine to produce these soldiers was lost. The only leaders were either killed or missing. It's like Director Flint just vanished from thin air."

Hope was fading away from that sentence, "My Father…." he said under his breath, the Sergeant caught on and forgot that he was the son of the successful Director, who was too busy making the world better rather than spending time with his only son.

"Once they died, no one knew how to recreate the Locust soldiers," The Sergeant told him coldly.

"What can I do to revive the Locust soldiers?" Locus asked with such bold confidence, it suddenly inspired The Sergeant, "We need them now more than ever and I'm the son of the creator, I know I can make a remedy."

"I don't really know Locus, since your bloodline is related to your parents, I imagine you can probably replicate the vaccine, but even then it took your father- I mean, the Director years to successfully make the vaccine," he mentioned.

"I'm not a scientist, I'm built to be a warrior, it may seem stupid to think I can bring back the Locust program. But still," he clenched his fist tightly, "I'll find a way."

The Sergeant smiled, and thought in his head, "Your persistence never ceases to amaze me," as they walk away from the residential district and into the main armory area.

Locus and Sergeant Keith entered inside the main armory, around Locus he saw tons of everything: rifles, sub-machine guns, pistols, snipers, light machine guns, assault rifles and semi-automatic rifles lying neatly and organized on the many surrounding wall racks inside the premises.

On the opposite wall, held different kinds of basic armor for the Militia soldiers. "How can you exchange my armor for something new?" Locus questioned while he inspected his hands and forearms noticing the burn marks, scratches, and dents created from battle. "Those armor pieces for the Militia soldiers won't fit or cover me."

Keith reassured him by stating the obvious, "I'm not going to completely replace it, but I will adapt and upgrade it."

Locus reached and took his helmet off, letting out a deep exhale as it was the first time breathing simulated oxygen from Earth, extracted into the ship. He rested the heavy armored helmet on the steel bench closeby, and he saw his reflection through the slightly cracked and filthy yellow visor.

In the reflection, it resembled his long cramped black hair about shoulder length dangling over his face, he wiped away his messy hair and his hazel colored eyes showed in view of the visor, a scar runned down through his left eye towards the lower jaw.

"What happened to your eye?" the Sergeant asked with concern.

Locus touched the scar lightly with his left hand, sliding it gently down lower towards the jaw where it ends. He responded with the sudden memory of how the scar came to be, "I think I got this from when I took off my helmet from the skyscraper during the battle of Chicago's survival. I was trying to view and find my fellow subordinates as my helmet was caked with slime, that's when a Scar cell leader slashed me from a hidden spot and nearly blinded me. Then he grabbed me vigorously and threw me out a broken window and the last thing I remember was putting my helmet back on to protect myself from the fall."

Sergeant Keith replied, "Man, you Locust soldiers got it rough. Your stories are incredible!"

"If you say so. Those moments shaped us and made us stronger," Locus told him as he took off more of his titanium armor shell pieces one by one carefully. Eventually the only thing remaining was his black under armor suit. The Sergeant noticed Locus's right leg was wounded and poorly, "Oh my goodness! What happened to your leg?"

Locus replied, "I fell down twenty feet of a tall church tower and a beam was just so conveniently placed to wound me."

The Sergeant jokingly said, "We should've sent you to the hospital district!"

Locus replied back, "It's fine Sergeant, it's not a big deal, it can wait."

The Sergeant insisted to him, "I'll fetch a quick nurse in the area to take a look at that wound for you to make sure it's not infected."

Locus nodded and rested down on the steel bench, looking more intensely into the wound, remembering the moments after that incident, meeting Jeremiah and his wife and children. He wondered how they were doing.