Of course, I didn't release the previous chapters fast enough, so if you're not a patreon subscriber you're just gonna have to wait another week, but enjoy episode 5. Episode 6 is actually below somewhere lost in all my regular updates, but I'll post it again.
This is a very action packed chapter so enjoy. It's long though, at 50 pages.
1x05 “Trash, Waiting to be Compacted Part Two”
Released
on www.patreon.com/99geek on February 2018
Charlie was uncomfortably drenched with
sweat from his red hair to his socks. It seeped through his undergarments and
rusted at his body armor. All the Hymalious City forces around him wore the
same dark colors of their army, and it was those same dark colors that made
warfare in the desert downright unbearable. Charlie would have given anything
for some reflective colors right about then.
The general beside Charlie wore similar
bulky armor with all the same dark colors, but she didn’t seem nearly as
bothered by the heat as he was even though she was a good couple decades older.
General Waverly was the head of his squad, and his only mission was to stay by
her side and follow her every order. It was mostly a ceremonial position, as
the general would be spending most of her time coordinating the effort on the
ground while the men and women of Charlie’s squad worked with him to ensure her
safety.
“Line those tanks along the ridge!” General
Waverly yelled into her radio. The tank beside her rolled to a stop, making up
just one part of a line that stretched farther than Charlie could see.
A shell landed near their squad, and
Charlie felt the intense heat from the impact as the men and women cowered with
him from the blast. As hot sand rained down on him, his stomach turned and his
vision swooned. He wasn’t feeling so good.
“Hold!” The general yelled. “We’re just
outside their range.”
“But they’re outside ours too,” yelled a
soldier from the tank, poking his head out through the cockpit. “They can get
greater range with their guns from the increased elevation.” Another explosion
went off nearby and Charlie cowered his head. It seemed the Blazkor were
defending this hill better than anything had ever been defended before perhaps
in all of Rommerian history.
“Keep firing anyway!” The general yelled to
the tanks. “Our soldiers need cover in the sand if we are gonna have any hope
to advance.” General Waverly took a quick glance at Charlie. “Are you okay
soldier?”
“I’m a little hot,” Charlie murmured,
careful not to look up too fast or else he was certain he’d vomit in his suit.
“Aren’t you hot?” His voice was cracking.
“You haven’t gone through any extreme
environment training?” Waverly asked Charlie, pulling out a bottle of water from
one of her many pockets and handing it to him.
“People train for this?” he asked,
imagining that must be the most uncomfortable training exercise ever. He took a
deep swig of the water from the bottle, surprised that it felt as cool as it
did running down his throat.
“Drink up Chuck,” she called him by his
nickname. “Your body is dehydrated from sweating out all your fluids. You feel
any better yet?”
Charlie poured the rest of the water over
his face. “I’m still sticky,” he admitted surprised to find her frowning at
him.
“That was all I had.”
Charlie looked at the empty bottle in his
gloved hand. “I’m so sorry.”
They both cowered as the tank beside them
shot, striking the side of the mountain and making an indent. It was like a
starter pistol setting off horses for a race, as across the line tank after
tank fired their own shots into the mountain. Sand was blasted into the air and
rained down on the line of Hymalious forces.
“Here,” the tank operator yelled, poking
out of his cockpit again to toss the general another bottle of water. “We’ve
got a whole fridge of these.”
“You think I could have one?” Charlie
asked, but the soldier had already disappeared back into his cockpit. The tank
fired again, starting another line of shots. Charlie had to cover his ears as
the sound was deafening.
“You alright lieutenant?” his squadmate and
fellow lieutenant Amy asked while offering Charlie a hand.
Charlie took it and nodded to her. “Watch
out for dehydration. It’ll get ya.”
“Roger that sir.”
Suddenly there was a nearby explosion as
one of the many Blazkor gunships circling the mountain dune swooped in on the
next tank over and its Mark 2 cannon blasted the tank into bits of debris.
A Hymalious forces Enderman G32 swooped in
on the gunship, releasing off a round of machine gun fire and then peeling away.
“Come on,” a woman’s voice said through Charlie’s radio. “Ignore the easy
targets. Come after the real prize.”
The gunship likely wasn’t plugged into the
same radio frequency, but it nonetheless changed direction, engaging pursuit
after the distracting fighter, and the pilot led the gunship back towards where
the others were swarming around the hilltop.
Machine gun fire erupted in their
direction, and Charlie pulled the general behind the tank. Shots ricocheted off
the armor of the large vehicle as their squad cowered in relative safety.
“Snipers!” The general called to the men
around her. “Target the manned gun emplacements first!”
Beside Charlie, Amy unslung her high
powered rifle from around her shoulder, and took aim through the scope. She
took a shot, and on the hill Charlie saw a man drop. The tank they were taking
cover behind fired another shot.
“General!” Amy yelled, spotting something
through her scope. She tried to hand her gun to the general, but Waverly pulled
out a pair of digital binoculars. “The tanks have uncovered something on the
mountainside.” She handed her sniper to Charlie instead.
Charlie looked through the scope where Amy
pointed him. In one of the craters it seemed that a tank had blasted a hole
into what looked like a hallway of their underground base.
The general saw it as well. She knocked on
the tank they were hiding behind. “Advance!” she yelled to it, looking to them.
“We’ll stick behind it and follow it in. Use the tank as cover. If you can get
any shots off, try to keep heavy weapons off the tank.”
Charlie did as he was told, keeping behind
the tank as bullets ricocheted off its hard thick armour. He handed Amy back
her rifle and she got another shot off with it, taking out a Blazkor man trying
to push forward. The General stood back
and beaconed for more soldiers to move forward.
“The rest of the tanks hold the line, and
keep firing ahead of our troops.”
The tanks fired away and General Waverly
signalled for their tank to pick up its pace. Using the impact of the shells as
cover, they pushed onto the edge of the hill and started up. Waverly aimed her
pistol over the top and shot a soldier in the head, taking him out. Another
soldier ran out behind him and Waverly shot that man once in the shoulder and
then a second time in the head.
“Damn ma’am,” Charlie said, whistling as his
feet moved to keep up with the tank. “That’s some good shooting.” Someone took
a hit, trying to fit behind on the right corner of the tank. Moving along the
way past other soldiers hiding with them, Charlie replaced the fallen soldier
he spotted, and saw three Blazkor men jumping their barricade to extend their
defence to cover the exposed hallway. Charlie wasn’t going to let that happen.
Raising his rifle, he released his shots in
three round bursts, spraying the lot of them before they could react to him.
Five bursts in total. He still had half a magazine; his bulky black assault
rifle was longer than his arm but felt comfortable in his grip.
Behind the tank, more soldiers were moving
to keep up, no room to take cover with the ten or so surrounding Charlie, the
best they could do was follow behind and keep firing their rifles to hold the
enemy suppressed.
Charlie turned to shoot up at the top of
the sandy hill with them, emptying his clip. Across the tank from him, he spotted
Amy release more shots at the emplacements on the hill. They were just passing
a foxhole to his right and a couple men jumped in it for cover.
Suddenly there was a tap on Charlie’s
shoulder, and he turned around to see General Waverly. To his surprise she
pushed him from behind the tank into the crater. Then she jumped in after him,
almost landing right on top of him and clinging to his shoulder to steady
herself. “This isn’t the one we needed,” he reminded her though he was pretty
sure she already knew.
Amy jumped in after them, landing lightly
on her feet close to them and quickly reloading her rifle. Charlie did the
same, as did the General. Then the tank operator jumped in, landing on top of
Waverly and Charlie and knocking them both into the sand.
“Then who’s driving the tank?” Charlie
asked, spitting sand from his mouth. Almost in answer to his question, the tank
exploded. Charlie cowered his head, though they were already in relative safety
inside the crater.
“There was an RPG,” Amy explained to
Charlie unnecessarily. “I was out of ammo.” She shrugged.
“Other tanks advance!” General Waverly said
into her radio. She then looked to the soldiers with her in the crater. “That
tank debris is now our only cover from here to that hallway.” Her voice was
stern and steady. Confident despite everything. “We don’t know what we’re
likely to find in there, but it’s gotta be less hellish than what’s out here. So
let’s crawl ourselves out of these nebulous hells and get to that hallway!”
The soldiers in the crater with them all
cheered and Charlie could only count three now left from his squad, not
including himself and Amy. The rest must have either gotten separated or taken
out. Their names started coming back to him, but he tried desperately to
silence that part of his head. He didn’t have time to pause for grief.
The one was named Dom. He wasn’t there in
the crater with them. Where was Adam too? Andrew? All dead?
“Let’s move,” the general yelled and
Charlie followed her lead as they all clawed their way out of the crater. Other
soldiers were already joining them from the line, firing up at the mountain
top. It seemed the other tanks were closer too, closing the noose on the Blazkor
forces on the hilltop.
Charlie fired off some three round bursts,
then charged for the nearest debris he could find.
Cowering behind it as shots went off in his
direction, he looked up to see an automated machine gun turret shooting down at
him from the side of the hill. Looking behind him he saw Amy heading for a
different piece of debris, her rifle on her shoulder and a pistol in her hands.
She took out a soldier moving in on them, and then fired some shots at the
turret to distract it.
Charlie started to move while firing shots
at the one turret as he went. He spotted General Waverly join him, and together
they fired on the turret taking it out with their combined shots. They were
almost to the hallway.
“Are there any more gun emplacements,”
Waverly asked, and Amy had her rifle out again.
“I’m looking.”
Suddenly sand shifted near them, and sure
enough another turret came out right over Waverly and Charlie. Charlie screamed
a warning and tried to raise his rifle to shoot it, but Waverly covered him
with her body. The turret released a stream of bullets, lighting up with a loud
crackling whirr, and it ripped her body to shreds with its fire.
“No!” Charlie screamed, shooting his rifle
over her as she continued to take shot after shot. HE was supposed to protect
HER! That was his job!
He had just failed his only job.
Both his and Amy’s shots took out the
turret, but the General was gone in his arms, limp and past dead. He dropped
her form in horror, wanting to throw up. Her blood was damp on his armour. He
hadn’t even heard her last words. Had she even gotten a chance to say any?
Someone tackled Charlie, and Amy fell with
him into the open crater that led into the hallway of the enemy base. They hit
the ground hard with a thud, Amy on top of him, her face steel in stern
determination to keep him alive. Charlie pressed his finger to the comm in his
ear. “Any soldiers nearby, head for that opening. All available men and women
head for that hallway while it’s still open.”
Getting up right alongside Amy, they both
brought up their guns, spotting two Blazkor men frozen in surprise and shock at
their sudden invasion. Amy and Charlie blasted them away. Another Hymalious
forces soldier dropped into the hallway, a woman from a different squad.
There was only one way into the base from
where they were, the other way was closed off with debris. It was either
forward or out. Three Blazkor men came around the distant corner and raised
their guns. Charlie took cover behind an ammo crate, and the soldiers fired
shots in their direction. Charlie fired back and Amy rushed forward, keeping
low and firing with her pistol. She got to another crate, and set up her rifle,
using the crate as a prop to steady her aim. Firing two shots she was able to
take two of them down. Charlie clipped the last guy, and following her leap
frog formation he moved past her to take cover behind a large box of what
looked like food supplies.
To Charlie’s left, he noticed a corridor
branching off that he hadn’t seen before. It looked empty and dark.
Amy beaconed for the other woman to join
them in formation.
“Janet Miles,” the butch woman with dirty
blonde hair tied up in a ponytail said her name, holding a similar model rifle
to the one Charlie had. She hit a switch on the side to activate a flashlight.
Charlie didn’t even know he could do that, finding the same switch on his gun. “Medic
for the 32nd infantry division.”
There was shooting from the hole behind
them, and two more Hymalious soldiers fell from the battle above. All three in
the tunnel turned to look. The one man who had jumped through the hole had spiky
hair, and must have lost his helmet in the fighting. The other soldier was
limp.
“We made it buddy,” the spiky haired
soldier said to his partner, sweat dripping from his forehead. “I told you we’d
make it through that shit.” He laid his partner on the ground.
“Dude,” Medic Miles said, approaching the
man slowly. “I think your buddy’s dead.”
“Naw man,” the soldier said pushing at his
friend and trying to get a reaction. “He took a pretty bad hit, but he’s gonna
be fine. You’re gonna be fine Rick, right?” Charlie pointed his light at the
body, and saw a bleeding flesh wound on the guy’s neck. The soldier spotted it
at the same time. “No man. No! Dammit man!”
“I’m sorry,” Janet Miles said to the man. A
Blazkor soldier dropped into the hole from above. Charlie already had his gun
pointed that way, and he blew the soldier away with one three round burst.
The spiky haired soldier flinched and
looked up from his friend at them. “The Blazkor were pushing their ranks
forward to close access to this entrance.” Almost as if to confirm the
soldier’s words, three more Blazkor dropped down almost right on top of the
man. Charlie shot one of the men, Janet shot the other, and from behind Charlie
Amy was able to get the third.
Grabbing the spiky haired soldier’s hand,
Janet pulled him away from under the hole as the Blazkor started to shoot down
at them.
“Chuck!” Amy yelled, and Charlie turned to
see the hallway they were about to head down was also filling with soldiers.
“Take cover!” Charlie yelled, getting
behind his food crate and assisting Amy to hold back their advance while Janet
and the other soldier did the best they could to cover the rear from outside.
Charlie tapped the comm in his ear,
broadcasting his voice on their radio frequency. “We’re being ambushed,” he
said, firing shots at a Blazkor man in the lead taking cover of his own. “We’ve
broken through their lines into their base, but they’ve got us surrounded.”
There were now eight Blazkor men, maybe
more, all swarming the hallway in front of them. Charlie tried to fire off
shots, but he couldn’t get a clear shot, ducking away to avoid getting hit. One
of the Blazkor men was getting a little too close for comfort.
“Fall back!” Amy called out, but he didn’t
need to hear it twice. Keeping his head down he retreated to behind her cover
as she fired at the advancing soldiers to keep them down.
Behind them he saw the two Hymalious
soldiers doing their best to cover the rear. They were being equally swarmed
from the hole in the ceiling as more Blazkor rebels dropped in on them. The
bodies were starting to pile up.
“Reloading!” Miles yelled, ejecting her
used cartridge and loading another.
“Me too,” the spiky haired soldier said,
firing his last shots and doing the same. Charlie fired the last of his clip at
the men coming in behind them, and then switched to his pistol, continuing to
try to cover the two soldiers as they reloaded. Beside him, Amy was trying to
keep her army of rebels at bay down the hallway, running out of shots in her
rifle and switching to her pistol as well.
“What are the odds someone will respond to
your call for help?” Amy muttered to Charlie between shots.
“In time?” Charlie asked, knowing that
theirs was up. His pistol ran out of shots, and four more Blazkor soldiers
dropped into the hallway from above. General Waverly would have known what to
do. Charlie remembered that dark side passage, but the Blazkor rebels had
already retaken that part of the hallway. Holstering his pistol he started
reloading his rifle though he was quite certain he wouldn’t finish before it was
too late. The rebels were almost right on top of them.
Shots from an assault rifle suddenly
erupted from the side corridor, taking down the Blazkor man closest to Charlie.
A muscular man, young, with brown hair buzzed short and cunning blue eyes
stepped from the corridor, emptying the rest of his rifle to take down three
more men on his side of the hallway. That was four down, and the other four
were moving to surround him.
Behind Charlie, the other two soldiers in
his new squad finally finished reloading and were able to hold back the coming
swarm of people from outside. One Blazkor man had almost made it over Medic
Miles’ cover, but the spiky haired one managed to get shots off and take the
man down. The rest of the Blazkor men coming from outside seemed to be trying
to make a defensive line.
Turning back to the seeming super soldier
who had come from the side, Charlie had finished reloading his gun and was
ready to help, only to find it unnecessary. The new soldier flipped his rifle
over, and broke it over the head of one Blazkor man, dropping him while kicking
out with his foot to strike a Blazkor man so hard he flew into a wall and
bounced back into the soldier’s fist. The young bad ass rolled over a crate as
the final two blazkor men tried to get a beat on him. One man fired off shots
but they missed.
The new guy closed the distance between
them, kicking the one soldier’s gun aside as he was about to pull the trigger.
The bad ass struck the Blazkor man in the face, then hooked his arm around the
second man’s gun. The second man pulled his trigger in panic, shooting the
first rebel by accident, and then the bad ass smacked the second rebel’s head
into the wall. The blazkor terrorist fell to his knees dazed, and the man
slammed his head into the crate he’d just jumped over, dropping the rebel to
the ground unconscious..
“Wow,” Amy said, with more than respect in
her voice, her rifle was lowered and she was just watching with her mouth open.
“Let me do the talking.” She whispered to Charlie, and her voice sounded
different than he’d ever heard it. He frowned at her.
Two more Blazkor men rounded the corner,
and the newly arrived bad ass pulled a pistol from the last rebel he’d beat up
before the man’s body even hit the ground, and used the pistol to take out the
two new rebels before they could react. Behind him, one of the men he had taken
out was stirring and starting to get up, still armed. Charlie raised his gun to
cover the man’s back, but more shots came from the side corridor and a woman
with shoulder length pale blonde hair stepped into the corridor. She seemed to
be wearing a bulky flight suit instead of the more general Hymalious military
colors the man wore.
“I got your back John,” she said to the
man, releasing her clip to check her remaining shots. Charlie could see Amy was
frowning now too, watching this new woman.
“Where’s mission critical?” John asked the
new woman, looking back down the dark corridor they’d both come from.
“I’m sure she’s right behind me,” the woman
said, peering with him down the corridor. John turned to address Charlie, as he
fired some shots off with his pistol to help Miles hold her line. The woman
with John called out into the darkness. “Yo dweeb? Nerd face? It’s safe to come
out! She’s probably just hiding.” The woman disappeared down the side corridor.
“I’m the one that called for help,” Charlie
told John. “Thanks. I’m Lieutenant…” suddenly Amy interrupted him.
“He’s Lieutenant Chuck,” Amy told the man.
“I’m Lieutenant Amy Beekler. Long range specialist sir. Top of my class at
Hymalious Academy and I still have the high score for the Academy sniping
challenge.” Charlie wondered if she was bragging.
She’d forgotten one important detail. “We
headed General Waverly’s protection detail,” Charlie filled John in.
“Is she with you?” John asked them, the
three of them taking cover behind a large weapons crate while more Blazkor men
came down from above. Both Miles and the other soldier fell back on their
position.
“She didn’t make it,” Charlie told John.
“Gave her life to save mine.” A shot ricochet off the wall near his head, and
he ducked a little lower. “It wasn’t exactly how I wanted things to go.”
John patted Charlie’s shoulder. “It’s not
your fault.” John looked down at Charlie’s name tag. “Is your last name Chuck?”
he asked, trying to read it on Charlie’s uniform.
“Cacheusky sir,” he said as John’s friend
rejoined them from the side corridor.
“Gesundheit,” She yelled at Charlie over
gunfire, taking cover behind a crate of her own. “I can’t find her. The geek
ran off who knows where.”
“Maybe because you keep calling her a
geek,” John said to his partner.
“Most people just call me Chuck,” Charlie
finished what he was saying, as John turned back to him.
“I’m Colonel John Adams and this is Ensign
Sara Mikkels,” he told them. “I’m taking command here.”
“Janet Miles,” the woman with them
reintroduced herself. “Combat Medic. Twenty Second infantry division.”
“Mark Adler,” the soldier with the spiky
hair said his name for the first time. “I’m a recruit private class from the
twenty fourth. Just filled one of their holes last week. Man was KIA. I was his
replacement. Now I think I’m the only one left.”
“You’re quite the mix,” John said to the
four of them. “How in the nebulous hells did you guys make it this far?”
Charlie wasn’t sure if that was a rhetorical question.
“What’s our play?” Sara asked the colonel,
ducking her head behind her cover as the Blazkor men shot at them from their
defensive line by the hole in the ceiling. “Want us to split up and search for
the mission critical?” she seemed reluctant to call the person a geek again,
and upset her friend.
John shook his head, and Charlie thought he
saw approval from Sara. Obviously the answer she was looking for. “Hopefully
Kat knows what she’s doing,” He looked down the hallway where he had just taken
out so many rebels. “We’re in too deep. Our priority is cutting off Suma Davi’s
and ending this war.”
“Sara, Amy and I will take point,” he said,
pointing down the hallway, away from their only way out. Amy smiled at Charlie
in a way that made him frown again. “You three cover our rear.”
Charlie did as he was told, firing at the
Blazkor as John kept his head low and lead Sara towards the other end of the
hallway. At the fork, Charlie thought he saw John go right. Amy moved to follow
him.
“You think Sara and him are an item?” he
asked her as she passed him, and she shot him a look that told him with no
uncertainty to shut up. He smiled, and fired more shots at the Blazkor
terrorists to cover her retreat. He clipped someone successfully, and followed
behind her as he continued to shoot.
“Come on!” he called to the other two, and
they retreated back with him. It didn’t look like the Blazkor were much
interested in following them.
As Amy and he rounded the corner, he
dropped his cartridge to reload. The light from his gun danced along the dirt
walls of the hallway as he watched their backs. He had to trust the Colonel
knew where he was going.
*
Suma’s light traced along the smooth metal
of the strange spacecraft as she stepped in to the dark corridor of the ship.
Buried for what must have been thousands of years in the deep desert, her eyes
were now the first in all that time to look upon the ship’s brilliance.
And it all belonged to her.
“The bridge is this way,” she said to the
engineers that followed Belmont into the corridor behind her.
“How can you tell?” Belmont asked her,
joining by her side.
“The angles of all the panelling,” Suma
explained to her man, shining a light along the powered down computer screens
on the walls. Her light passed over a window, but through it the view was
obscured in darkness. “All the windows and doors and displays and designs are
angled to be pointing this way. Towards the front. I imagine the engine room
will be the opposite way to the back.”
One female engineer, younger and skinnier
than Suma, tried to rally the others. “We’ll head that way immediately,
Mother.”
“I need power,” Suma said. “And engines. Do
whatever it takes.”
The engineer nodded and they headed out,
Belmont gestured for two of his men to join them.
“Jack!” Suma called into Belmont’s men.
Tameka’s friend stepped forward, clearly trying to hide himself amongst the
rest and keep out of Suma’s way. “That’s not where I want you,” she told him,
caressing her hand down his chiselled jaw. “No,” she cooed into his ear. “I
want you front and center. I don’t know what kind of traps the makers of this
ship might have employed. You lead the way to the bridge and we’ll all be right
behind you.”
“Yes mother,” Jack said, his voice dead of
all emotion. Any will he’d had left to fight her was zapped from him. He was
broken. Just the way Suma liked him.
*
Gwen led the engineers through the
corridor, as the mother commanded. She’d been one of the head engineers with
Tameka on designing the Blazkor Mark 2 gunships. Now with Tammy turning
traitor, she was the one in charge. Or perhaps the other engineers had let her
step up. Better her head on the chopping block than theirs.
They passed what looked like doors leading
to crew quarters and mess halls and bathrooms. It would have been fascinating
to explore those places and how ancient Rommerians like them might have lived
over a thousand years ago.
But there was no time. Their mother had
given them a mission and they would complete it, even if it meant their very
lives. Gwen’s curiosity for this new find was almost clouded behind her prime
objective. Find the engine room.
“Come on,” she said, quickening her pace
and almost walking into a wall as the corridor turned left and her light was
pointed to the right. The silver metal walls reflected the light from their
flashlights, but it did little to penetrate the otherwise overwhelming
darkness. Almost as if the walls were absorbing the light even as they
glistened. Gwen had never seen so weird a metal before.
They would have to figure out how to get
the power back on. It would likely be in the same place they were headed now.
Making another right after following the
hallway for a bit longer, she suddenly found herself on the second floor
catwalk of a two story bay that could only be the engineering section. Large
machines sat undisturbed but surprisingly intact. The bay wasn’t as dark as the
rest of the ship, as one machine was still giving light. It was in the center
of the bay. She crossed the catwalk, signalling for the other engineers to fan
out.
The glowing machine was some sort of large
glass containment unit, within which a large crystal was suspended by wires. It
was the crystal that was giving off light.
“You think the ship is powered by crystal?”
an engineer asked her, an older man she thought his name was Mike or Mark or
Mick. Mitt? He’d joined her against the railing to look out at the machine.
Crystal power was a concept she’d never
heard of before. She also wasn’t sure if the glow it was giving implied enough
contained energy to power anything more than a watch. Its luminance could,
however, conceivably be a sign that it was emitting quite a large amount of
radiation that would soon likely kill them all. But the cloud in her mind
wouldn’t let her worry about such trivial things.
The crystal was snug in place, with electrodes
leading to wires that led to the top of the containment. Gwen followed the two
large cables from the top of the machine as they snaked their way along the
ceiling of the bay to a large machine in the back that was so large it
protruded to take up almost half the back half of the bay. First and second
stories.
“I think this is what we’re looking for,”
Gwen said to everyone, the older gentleman following dutifully behind her. “All
the machines in this place seem to be connected back to this big one here. If
we can figure how to get this thing on, we’ll be moving in the right
direction.”
The machine itself was large, box shaped,
opaque. Smooth silver with simple lines tracing down the front plate to a
circular what looked like some kind of injection tube. There was something
jutting out, with a handle.
“I think this device runs on some sort of
fuel rod,” Gwen said, reaching out and grabbing the handle with her hand. It
was only slightly larger than her fist, and when she turned it coolant ejected
from the edges in gas form.
“This one is probably spent,” she told the
people around her. “If we can find a dormant one somewhere, it might still hold
a charge.” Everyone was so distracted by what Gwen was doing, no one noticed
movement in one of the shadows. No one noticed one of the engineers go missing.
*
“It’s a bomb!” Tameka yelled at the strange
pale woman who had appeared in the large cave with her. She tilted herself best
she could so the woman could see it.
The woman seemed frozen in fear. “Go!” She
yelled at the woman. “You have to tell your people to fall back.” Tameka could
still remember her mother’s face as she’d watched her men tie the bomb to her.
As she’d said her last goodbyes to her own daughter and left the room with a
big smile on her face.
“She’s gonna bring this entire place down
on top of you,” Tameka tried to warn the girl. She seemed so young. Barely not
a teenager. “Please,” she said, trying to get the girl to understand. Did they
not speak the same language? Tameka only knew the one. ‘You have to go.” Tameka
was going to die. Nothing was going to change that now.
“No,” the girl said. Tameka raised an
eyebrow.
“I’m sorry?”
“No,” the girl said again, stepping into
the large cave and closing the distance between her and Tameka. “I th-think I
can f-fix this.”
“What?” Tameka asked, thoroughly confused.
“Like you think you can disarm a bomb?”
“Y-yeah,” the girl said leaning down for a
closer look. “Sh-sure.”
“ARE you sure?” Tameka asked, trying to crane
to see what the girl was doing. “Cause you don’t sound very sure.”
“I have a st-stutter problem,” the girl
explained, not at all reassuring Tameka.
“So you’ve disarmed a bomb before then?”
she asked looking for any hope to cling to. She was pretty sure she could see
the girl shake her head.
“I’ve seen a lot of f-fiction about p-people
disarming bombs though,” the girl said, stuttering through her words. It seemed
she hadn’t touched the bomb yet, taking time to study it first. At least that
implied some level of proficiency. “You always cut the red w-wire, right?”
They were definitely going to die.
“How much time is left?” Tameka asked the
girl.
“A minute fifty nine. F-fifty eight.” Less
than two minutes left to live.
“Look,” Tameka begged, “Please just go.
Just run now! Get as far as you can. Stop Suma’s plans before it’s too late.
And if you see a man named Jake… just tell him—“
The girl interrupted her. “Please don’t d-distract
me,” the girl said, giving Tameka an annoyed look. “This is kind of important.”
She made a face and got back to work.
“Right,” Tameka said. “No of course. I’M
sorry.” She was only trying to give her last words, it didn’t matter.
“Shh,” the girl shushed her again, and
placed a finger on Tameka’s very confused lips. “I’m Kat by the w-way.”
Tameka rolled her eyes. What was with this
girl? Was she even military? “Pleasure to meet you,” she said dripping with as
much irony as she could muster. “I’m Tameka.”
“Are those c-cave drawings up there art
from our ancient ancestors?” Kat asked, still examining the bomb.
“I’m sorry,” Tameka said. “I thought I
wasn’t supposed to distract you. Are the rules like different now? Did we bond
or something?”
Kat stopped what she was doing to look at
Tameka. “Well I mean SOME distraction would be nice,” the girl said, “keep my m-mind
off this ticking clock here. I mean I’m trying to focus but if I focus too h-hard
I’ll think about dying and get anxious and freeze and then we w-WILL die and
that would b-be bad so if you could just talk about something else. It’s at a
minute by the way.”
“Right. No,” Tameka said. “I get it.”
“I mean,” the girl continued. “I-if I’m
being honest I just didn’t wanna hear your story about your ex or wh-whatever.
I’ve got an eidetic memory and the last thing I needed was info about whatever
his n-name is floating around in there.”
“It was Jake by the way. You s-said it, so
now I know it. I’ll always kn-know it. For-forever. That’s how this works.” She
punched the side of her head with her fist. “It’s kinda l-like my head’s gunna
burst but like all the t-time.”
“Yeah,” Tameka said, almost wishing she
hadn’t said anything. “I get it. The cave drawings. Yeah they’re from hundreds
if not a thousand years ago.”
“Three thousand, but n-nice try.” Kat
corrected. “What do they say?”
“I don’t know,” Tameka said, getting fed
up. “I don’t speak cave.” She craned again to see the device. “How much time is
left?”
“Forty seconds,” Kat said with surprising
calm. “I really think we should f-focus now.” She gave Tameka another face, and
if Meka hadn’t been tied up she’d have punched the scrawny bitch.
“Fak,” Tameka swore. She was really
starting to sweat, and possibly hyperventilate a little. It was like she could
remember every mistake she ever felt bad about making in her life, all coming
back to her at once trying to give her a heart attack. “Okay look. Just do what
you said. Cut the red wire.” What was the worst that could happen?
“I lied,” she told Tameka. “They’re all
r-red wires.” Under her breath she continued, “Why would the bombmaker color
co-ordinate his wires? It would be like painting a big neon sign that said
please defuse me.”
“I think I’m starting to understand why you
showed up alone,” Tameka mumbled words of her own. “Do you have like any kind
of plan yet? I feel like our time is running out. Maybe it’s just me.”
“I think I can j-just remove the plastique
from the device,” Kat explained. “No explosive, no b-boom.”
“Okay,” Tameka said, that plan not sounding
completely crazy. “Why haven’t you done that yet.”
“W-well,” Kat continued, “I’m n-ninety
percent sure that would work, but there’s still the chance that there’s already
a cu-current running through the plastique, and when I touch it that will sever
the connection and blow us up. But b-based on my understanding of this design,
I’m n-ninety percent sure the current is what sets off the explosive.”
“Sounds like good enough odds to me,”
Tameka said, the woman’s logic checking out. “Just do it.”
“Ten seconds,” Kat told her. “Here I g-go.”
Kat reached into the device and grabbed something.
“Fak Fak Fak,” Tameka said quickly,
swearing repeatedly. “I thought I was ready to die but I’m not. I don’t wanna
die.” She shut her eyes tight as a tear rolled down her cheek.
“I already p-pulled it out,” the girl said, Tameka opening her eyes as Kat
showed her the ball of plastique she’d pulled from the device. “Oh and the
timer just hit zero. We’re still alive.”
Tameka breathed deeply letting the air
slowly out through her nose. They were alive.
“Do you want me to h-hug you?” Kat asked
awkwardly.
“Could you cut me loose?” Tameka asked
quickly. “I want you to do that. Could you do that for me, or do you just wanna
sit here for while?”
“Um right,” Kat said, tapping at her
pockets. “No. I d-don’t have anything.”
Tameka looked around them. “What about that
axe over there?”
“Ooo,” Kat said excitedly, getting to her
feet. “I’ve never used an axe before!” She crossed the cave and lifted the
large axe from the pile of tools. “I bet this w-would work.”
“Actually no,” Tameka corrected herself. “I
was wrong. Put down the axe. We’ll find something else.”
“No,” Kat reassured her. “This axe is g-good.
I got this.” She made a practice swing through the air.
“Seriously,” Tameka told Kat. “I think we
can find something else.” The girl got closer with the axe. “Stop, look, just
stay right there for a second.” She tried to inch her chair away. “I really
like my hands. They’re useful for a lot of things.”
“You wouldn’t be so interested in those
things if you l-learned about them from your f-father,” Kat said with a crinkle
of her nose. “Would you h-hold steady,”
“I wasn’t JUST talking about those things,”
Tameka said, still struggling to angle herself away from Kat. “I feel like
we’re just building a friendship here, but I swear to god Kat if you miss I
will never forgive you.”
Kat brandished the axe in front of her
face. “You r-really need to learn t-to just relax.” She brought the axe down on
Tameka’s bindings perfectly slicing between her hands to cut her free.
“Oh thank the nebulous gods,” Tameka said,
springing from her chair to hug her appendages dearly. “I’m still in one
piece.” She then threw her arms around Kat in excitement as the girl dropped
her axe. “You saved my life!”
“I p-pegged you for a hugger,” Kat said,
hugging her back stiffly and quickly letting go. “What’s wrong with your face?
Or do you just always look like that?”
It took a moment for Tameka to realize what
the girl was talking about, and that she hadn’t just asked why Tameka was
black. “I was beat up,” Tameka explained, not wanting to mention Jack again. “Struck
repeatedly. In the face. This is what violence looks like.”
“Does it hurt?” Kat asked
“Kind of everywhere,” Tameka replied
quickly with impatience. “My mother went that way,” she said, pointing down a
hallway and picking up Kat’s axe.
Kat pointed down a different hallway, one
Suma’s men had been excavating earlier. “The energy signature I’m looking for
is this way,” she said, checking a device she had on her to confirm. There was
a rumble in the distance, an explosion in the battle that Tameka was only too
aware could very well had been her a moment ago.
“Did you say your mother?” Kat asked.
“My mother is Suma Davi’s. She’s insane.
She’s genetically modified her soldiers to be fanatically devoted to her and
now she’s found some weapon in the desert she hopes to use against your
people.” Tameka crossed her arms, careful not to cut herself. “So which way do
we go?” she asked Kat, not ready to split up from the girl.
“My way,” Kat said as if it was obvious,
stepping away from Tameka to survey the room. She seemed very interested in the
drawings. “Just give me a minute,” Kat asked Tameka. “I might never get back
here.”
“Why don’t you just take a picture?” Tameka
asked the awkward genius. Kat gave her another of her infuriating looks. “The
eidetic memory. Right. I forgot. I don’t have one of those.” Tameka watched as
the girl started on one side of the large cave and worked her way along the
walls, slowly taking in each image.
“Do you understand any of this?” she asked
the younger, and much paler, girl.
Kat smiled. “I studied a little about our
deep desert ancestors for a few hours one day,” she explained to Tameka. “I was
researching for a paper at the library and w-went down this like rabbit hole.”
She pointed her flashlight at the first
drawing. “The paintings talk about us a-as if we were once a great space faring
r-race, that ruled over the entire galaxy.”
“You’re kidding me,” Tameka said,
disbelieving that the girl could be getting such details from the crude
drawings she was looking at. “They knew about galaxies?”
“What did you think that spiral meant?” Kat
asked her, the teen’s flashlight landing on a crude spiral painting.
“Okay,” Tameka said, still skeptical. “What
else it say?”
“There was a big war,” Kat continued,
tracing the light along the images. “We were exiled to this planet. Crash
landed in the deep desert. It talks about a great treasure buried in the sand.
The ship, and the technology with it.” Her light landed on something else.
Suddenly there was another distant
rumbling, only this one got louder. The whole cave began to quake from whatever
was happening outside.
“It’s my mother,” Tameka said, grabbing on
to Kat’s shoulder to steady herself. “We have to go now.”
“There’s a warning,” Kat yelled to Tameka.
“Something guards the ship. A great destroyer. An unstoppable killer.”
Tameka turned Kat forcefully. “That
probably died thousands of years ago. Let’s go.”
There was a loud noise from the corridor
they’d started running down and the two girls found it filling in with sand as
some great commotion occurred on the other side.
“We have to go around,” Tameka told Kat.
“Wait,” Kat said, raising her hand. “I
th-think I can blow a hole through this.”
“With what?” Tameka asked, suddenly
remembering the explosive she’d taken from the bomb. “Oh that’s a good idea.”
“Help me d-dig a hole for it in the wall,
and then w-we’ll have to p-pack it in tight or risk a further c-cave in.”
* *
“You have to pull your men and women back.”
David said, watching the same holographic display everyone else in the room was
watching. “You’re losing so many people.”
“We’re winning though,” the dark skinned
Councillor Mombatta said in his deep voice. “We’ve finally built a line they
can’t break, and we’re turning the center into a kill box.”
“But the casualties!” David insisted
watching more dots turn red.
“This is war!” Gilber said loudly. “This is
the second rebellion of the Blazkor. What did ye think it would look like,
Doctor?”
David looked to the mayor Maggie May
pleadingly. She was the one in charge. “I never asked for a war,” he said
quietly
“Neither did I,” Maggie May told him with an
unreadable look. “I’ve spent decades trying to make peace with the Blazkor. You
don’t think that hasn’t been tried time and again and again? Suma Davi’s
doesn’t want peace.”
Councillor Mombatta touched David’s
shoulder. “The Blazkor Nation was given the same offer Hymalious City gave my
nation of Corrta Angail,” he explained to the doctor. “The same one they gave
New Baijon. A new era of cooperation and collaboration to survive our global wide
extinction event. Unlike most nations, they refused. And have continued to
refuse.”
“But this is exactly what ye should
expect,” Gilber told Maggie May, “if yer gonna force me to take a civilian as a
first officer. It doesn’t matter who ye choose. No one is gonna give me the
experience and strategy I need to lead Project Rebirth.”
“What are you talking about?” David asked
Gilber. “I’m a doctor. I’m not qualified to lead anything.” Gilber gestured to
David as if he was only proving the point.
“It was a condition we put on General
Gilber,” Councillor Maggie May explained to the doctor, “to avoid over-militarizing
Project Rebirth we insisted he take on a civilian non-combat first officer.”
“As soon as I met ye,” the general
continued where she left off, “I knew ye were exactly what they were look’n
fer. A pansy lame ass sympathetic loser that spends more time worrying about
every little life he wants to save to even bother trying to conceptualize the
big picture.” David felt his stomach turn in knots.
“So I was always just a point to you,”
David finished his thought, “waiting to be made.”
“Ma’am,” one of the communication
technicians called to Maggie May from a console around the main holo-display.
“there’s something else rising from the sand.”
Everyone looked at the holo display, but
there was too much mess and chaos for the satellites to make out what it was. For
the time being it just looked like a sandy blur.
“This might not be the best time for this,”
Maggie May said to the general. To her people she called out, “Are we getting
any word on what it could be from our forces on location?”
“Nothing yet,” someone responded to her.
“Nothing concrete.”
“Ma’am,” a voice said, and it took a moment
for David to realize it had been his best friend Emma. She’d been watching
everything from the side, must have heard all about Gilber’s plans for him.
“With all do respect ma’am, David is the most qualified, capable Rommerian I
know. He’s everything the general said he is, and more. Compassionate,
dedicated, unrelenting. He’s the best friend a person could have, and I owe him
my very life. There is no one more qualified to help lead your project. Even if
it isn’t his field.”
David was touched. All his years with Emma,
and he’d never heard her say that many good things about him in all those years
combined.
“My partner,” David told the mayor, “Doctor
Zacahry Pross, is at this very moment working on a way to counteract and
reverse the genetic modification that Suma has subjected her people to. It will
cure the genetic defect that’s making her people sick and save potentially
thousands of lives. He’s the best doctor I know and my time would be best spent
by his side finishing his work.”
“Reports are coming in of a large metallic
craft,” a technician called out from a console. “Immune to small arms fire.
It’s currently hovering over the sand. That’s all I can glean so far.”
“Suma’s secret weapon,” Gilber mumbled to
Maggie May so quietly David almost didn’t hear him. “We have one of those too.”
Councilwoman Maggie May crossed her arms.
“The Rebirth isn’t a weapon,” she argued with Gilber.
“But it has weapons,” Gilber countered.
“Why not reveal it now? Bring this rebellion to a swift end, and accelerate the
timetable on Operation Reveal.”
“For one thing,” Maggie May said, “they’re
running on a skeleton crew up there. There is no hierarchy of authority. Plus
there’s all the power concerns.”
“They’d just need the engines to get them
in orbit,” Gilber argued. “Our forces are being pushed to their limits. We need
an edge. Tell them to turn on the lights, and bring the ship around the moon.
I’ll take John’s G32 and meet them in orbit. He left it in the hangar.”
David could tell the mayor was coming
around on the plan. “Take David with you,” she ordered the general, and David’s
mouth opened to complain.
“Absolutely not,” Gilber complained first.
David couldn’t agree more. “I’m telling
you,” he explained to Maggie May. “Despite what Emma told you, I’m not your
guy.”
“Oh thanks,” Emma said, “So I said all that
for nothing?” She grabbed the mayor’s arm. “I stick by it. All of it. And I
think I should go too. I wanna see this project for myself.”
“She’s right,” the mayor told the General.
“Can you fit three in your fighter?”
“It’s a one man fighter,” Gilber insisted.
“But sure, why not? They can squeeze in behind my chair as long as they can
hold on and don’t get in my way.”
“Then I give you the go ahead on your
plan,” Maggie May finally confirmed. “Leave now. We’ll contact the Rebirth and
tell them to prepare for your arrival.”
“You should know I hate flying,” David told
the General as he and Emma matched Gilber’s quick pace out of the war room.
“Then this should go great,” Gilber
mumbled, placing a fresh cigar in his mouth and lighting it all without missing
a step.
* *
Tania pulled back on her stick and the
throttle all at once. A Mark 2 gunship firing its railgun ahead of her fighter
just missed as she quickly changed speeds. Seeing a Mark 1 closing from the
right, she hit the throttle again as the Mark 2 gunner recalibrated and fired a
second shot.
Tania danced her fighter past the canopy of
the Mark 1 and the Mark 2’s shot went right through the Mark 1’s hull.
“Risky move,” Tania’s sister’s voice came
in through the radio.
“Yeah well,” Tania muttered into hers. “We’re
overwhelmingly outnumbered and running out of ammunition. A little risk might
be necessary.” She spun her craft to avoid fire from another gunship. “Not that
you should follow my example sis.” The last thing she needed to see was her
sister exploding in some ill attempt to emulate her recklessness.
A shot streaked up from the ground passing
through the hull of a gunship that had a beat on her. It exploded as the tank
that shot it took aim at something else.
“This is flight two to ground,” she said
into her radio. “Thanks for the assist.”
She brought her fighter up and over the
gunships to try and reform on her sister’s wing.
“You seeing this?” Thalia said into the
radio and Tania looked all over for her sister’s fighter. Which direction was
she in? Instead of spotting Thalia, Tania more easily spotted what her sister
had likely caught sight of. A large silver metal egg shaped craft seemed to be
rising like a shiny mound from the sand underneath a formation of their tanks.
“What is that?” Tania asked into the radio.
The large craft seemed to have blue jet streams of plasma shooting from small
thrusters on the under side of the oblong egg shaped ship. “Some kind of new
Blazkor tech?”
“How many missiles you got left?” Thalia
asked through the radio. Tania looked at her readout, and saw the blinking
empty gauge.
“I came early again,” Tania mumbled.
“Sorry.” Finally she saw her sister, as Thalia formed up on her wing.
“I hear some guys find that a turn on,” her
sister said into the radio. “I’ve got two missiles left. Cover me.”
Thalia took lead in the formation, and
Tania followed her as their two birds swooped in on the new craft. If the new
Blazkor ship had any kind of weapons, it didn’t seem to have fired any yet.
“Payloads away,” Thalia’s voice came in
over the radio and Tania watched the two missiles streak through the air to
impact against the metal of the strange unknown aircraft. Both explosions
dissipated leaving not even a mark on the ship.
”Negative on damage,” Tania confirmed for
her sister. She switched the channel on her radio. “Control. This is flight
two. The Blazkor have a new variable in play.”
“Flight two, this is Hymalious City
control. We read you. Can you provide a description of the new variable?” It
was a woman’s voice.
“Roger that,” Tania said, bringing her
craft in a lazy circle around the new ship. “To be honest, Control, it sort of
looks like a flying metal vibrator. We need immediate air support.”
Flight two,” said Control through the
radio. “I’m to confirm that reinforcements are on the way. Can you run that past
us again? Did you say a flying vibrator?”
“Yes ma’am,” Tania confirmed. “I’ve got one
just like it. Like one of those short travel ones that just hit the spot.,
short but stubby like a vibrating egg. Has engines in the back but it doesn’t
seem to have ignited them yet. It’s just rising so far.”
“There’s a bomber flight coming in, they
are thirty seconds out.” Hymalious didn’t have any bombers in their flight
squadron. None that were space faring. That meant it was probably one of the
novice flight divisions, mostly used for routine runs. Not the sort of pilots
Tania would feel comfortable having her back. Though she supposed it would be
nice for the gunships to have a few more targets to shoot at.
* *
Kat stepped out into the sandy crater where
once the large metal craft must have lain buried. It was now soaring above her
head, even as tanks around the crater and adjacent mountain fired their cannons
up at it. The impacts of the shots seemed to have little effect. The Blazkor
gunships were joining in some kind of formation with the large craft, firing
down at Hymalious forces with their formidable firepower.
“My mother’s in that ship,” Tameka said
with frustration as she followed Kat through the hole they’d blasted in the
sand.
“D-don’t worry,” Kat reassured her.
“You don’t get it,” Tameka yelled at Kat.
“My mother’s insane. She’s got an army of men that have been genetically
modified to follow her every whim. We were the only ones that could stop her
and now we’re too late.”
“Not qu-quite yet,” Kat said, pulling out
her radio. “This is Katherine Pross to Hymalious forces. I need a p-pick up.”
She looked at Tameka while waiting for a reply. “You should know we have d-doctors
just now working on a way to reverse those genetic m-modifications. It’s been
making her soldiers sick.”
“Who the hell is this?” came one voice over
the radio.
“I have superseding orders involving a
Kathrine Pross,” said another voice, “She’s mission critical and we’re to give her
anything she needs.”
“Air transport for t-two,” Kat said into
her radio.
Above her there were repeated explosions as
missiles streaked across the sky to strike against the new enemy bogey. Bombers
similar to the model John had been flying her in earlier streaked past, three
turning right and three turning left as they swooped past the large silver ship
and came around for another run.”
“This is flight leader to bomber leader,
you’re wasting your shots,” said a female voice through the clearly chaotic
radio signals. A gunship flanking the new craft fired off with its powerful
canon, taking out one of the bombers.
“We lost five,” A voice said through the
radio.
Flight leader’s voice came in again. It was
the same voice of the pilot that had escorted Kat and John into the hangar what
must have been less than an hour ago. “Target the gunships. They’re currently
the bigger threats.”
“Six?” came the voice of bomber leader.
“I’m told one of us needs to pick up a couple VPs from the ground.” A VP was
valuable person. They were talking about her. The bombers were probably the
only air capable vehicles in the area able of carrying passengers.
“Your doctors,” Tameka said to Kat,
“they’re working on a cure for the disease that has been spreading through my
mother’s men?”
Kat nodded. “It’s a genetic defect b-based
on modifications at the genetic level. Not only would it cure the disease, but
would also likely reverse any mind control alterations she might have done to your
people.”
“So you could fix Jack,” Tameka said,
almost more to herself.
Flight leader’s voice came in again. “The
rest of you four form up on us. Bomber leader, you’re now flight three, through
six. Bomber six, you’re now Transport one.”
“Roger Ma’am,” the bomber leader
respectfully handed her the command. “You have point.”
A thought suddenly popped into Kat’s head
and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t shake it. Finally she asked
Tameka, “Was Jack the one that did that to your face?”
Tameka was at Kat’s side, listening to the
radio and watching everything unfurl in the skies. At Kat’s question, her attention
shifted faster than Kat could blink. “If we can help him, it’s the least I can
do. He’s the only friend I’ve ever had.” There was a distant shot of artillery
from late arriving artillery trucks that streaked across the sky and impacted
into the hull of the ship above them. Tameka cowered at the sound and raining
fire.
“The real question is,” Tameka asked, “do you
really wanna head into that chaos just for me?”
“For
you?” Kat repeated, confused. “Oh you m-mean all that drama you were just
talking about? I don’t care about that.” Kat lifted her tablet device and
showed Tameka an assisted reality overlay of the large indescript craft with
the satellite search data for her missing element. “The readings I’m l-looking
for are on b-board that ship. I need to get up there and collect the element
b-before the Blazkor destroy it somehow. It’s the only applicable re-reading
I’ve found on this entire planet.”
“I couldn’t c-care less about your mother
or your b-boyfriend whose name I can still remember is Jack,” Kat repeated. “I
thought that was obvious.”
“You’re a people person,” Tameka told Kat,
something Kat found hard to believe. “Anyone ever tell you that?”
“N-no,” Kat answered honestly.
“Transport one to mission critical,” came a
voice over the comm. “Where are you?”
“Transport one this is Kat,” Kat said into
the radio. “I mean m-mission critical. We’re underneath the unidentified flying
object. In the crater it just launched from.”
“Transport one to flight leader,” the voice
said into the radio.
Tameka smacked Kat on the shoulder. “I
think you just made him shit himself.”
Transport one’s young male voice continued,
“I don’t think retrieval of mission critical is very feasible at this
particular junction.”
“Transport one this is flight leader,” came
the confident female voice of one of the G32s she could see flying with the
bombers. They were currently keeping out of range of the gunships. There seemed
to be eight Blazkor gunships left, and at least three of them were sporting
Mark 2 canons. Though the machine gun turrets were more than strong enough to
rip through the armour of those bombers, something Kat remembered experiencing
first hand.
“Grow a pair and man up,” Flight leader
continued, and both Kat and Tameka looked at the radio with surprise. “My
sister and I have been in this mess for nearly an hour.”
“So you’re all just really mean then,”
Tameka commented under her breath. “Tell me now, Kat. Did I pick the wrong
side?”
“Here’s what we’re going to do for you,”
Flight leader continued. “Flights three through six will make another run on
those gunships. Flight three through five will release their payloads, but
flight six will hold onto their payload. You’ll fly over the unidentified bogey
and six will release their payload at the gunships on the other side. Transport
one will follow in behind, and fly underneath while flight three through six
fly over. Flight one and two will have your wing, and as you land we’ll fly
interference for any remaining gunships.”
“Flight two, roger that.”
“This is flight three confirming orders.”
“Flight Four is a go.”
“Flight Five rogers.”
“Flight six is ready.”
There was a pause. “Transport one doesn’t
think this will work. But we’re in position.”
“Flight leader to transport one,” the voice
interrupted. “I will say this one last time. Don’t be such a baby. Squadron
execute orders.”
Kat could watch it all from where she and
Tameka stood, as the bombers swooped in and released their payloads. The attack
took out two gunships, the debris from which rained down not too far from where
they were standing and Tameka threw her arms over Kat to protect her. The
bombers soared over the metallic bogey and disappeared from view for a moment
before dropping down on the other side and taking out a third gunship.
The G32’s flew in underneath, veering up
and firing with their machine guns at the gunships as the last bomber in
formation came in to land a good ten paces from where Tameka and Kat now
cowered.
The bomber’s cargo ramp lowered, and the
young kid whose voice she’d heard on the radio stumbled down the ramp. Tameka
released Kat who straightened as the boy no older than her beckoned for them.
When he recognized Tameka’s colors, he pointed his pistol at her.
“We have to go now Ma’am,” he told Kat.
“We’re not in a safe zone.” With the battle for the hill still raging right
beside the crater, Kat found his words to be a bit of an understatement.
Kat approached the ramp, but Tameka stood
her ground and raised her hands. Kat hadn’t realized how her people would treat
the woman. She was wearing an admittedly informal Blazkor uniform, with the
dark brown on light beige. She was also the daughter of the fiercest Blazkor
leader in two generations. It was possible some people might recognize her
face.
“She’s with me,” Kat told the kid, and to
Kat’s surprise he handed her his pistol.
“Alright Ma’am, lets go.”
Kat held the gun between her thumb and
index finger, unsure what exactly she was supposed to do with it. She was
pretty sure John wouldn’t have allowed her to be handed a gun. But John wasn’t
there. All this boy knew was that she out ranked him.
“Have you ever fired a pistol before?”
Tameka asked, joining Kat on the ramp.
Kat shook her head. “Not once. Is it hard?”
Tameka took the gun from her, hit a switch on the side, and slid it into her
waistband. Kat frowned, knowing she’d
just blown her chance to be a bad ass. Why couldn’t she have just acted
natural?
Tameka offered her the axe. “You were
pretty good with it,” Tameka suggested, but Kat just frowned at her.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I’m not much of a
fighter anyway.”
“We’re lifting off,” the young kid said,
taking the co-pilot’s seat beside a young girl who didn’t seem any older than
him or Kat. Tameka was the oldest person in that bomber and Kat didn’t think it
was by much.
The ramp behind them closed with a hiss
that made Kat jump and turn.
“Alright,” the pilot said in a squeaky
voice. “Where are we taking you two?”
Kat hit a few buttons on her tablet display
and then showed the two bomber crew the same readings she’d just shown Tameka.
“You need to get us inside that ship. It’s not Blazkor in design. It belonged
to our ancient ancestors. And it contains a rare element I need.” She wondered
how much she should tell them. Wasn’t the project Rebirth classified? Probably
best she not even mention it.
The young kid swallowed heavily and hit a
button on his radio. “Flight leader, this is Transport One…”
*
“I guess we ain’t goin back that way,” the
spiky haired Private Mark Adler said, watching as the sand rose further and
further away from them. John and his makeshift squad had only just made it
aboard the ship as it had started to take off. Now the sand was far below them,
and John covered his eyes as a tank fired to hit the ship nearby. They barely
even felt the shockwave.
A panel near the open hatchway fluttered to
life, and John slapped it, closing the hatch and sealing the vacuum.
“Come on,” John said, raising his pistol in
front of him. “We’ve got a job to do.”
He started off towards the back of the
ship.
“How does he know that’s the right way?”
Amy asked Sara as the two followed close behind him.
“I don’t,” he told her. “I just didn’t
think we should split up.” Despite power seemingly slowly coming on throughout
the ship, the main lights still hadn’t come back and the atmosphere was
disconcerting to say the least.
“I second that,” Sara said, letting Amy and
Charlie go ahead of her to watch the rear with Mark and Janet. “Anything back
here? Come on, keep up.” John heard Sara mutter, encouraging them in the rear
to move faster.
“Control this is Lt. Charlie Cacheusky,”
Charlie said into his radio. There was no response. “Control, we have
infiltrated the enemy ship. Do you copy?”
“The metal of the hull must be blocking our
radio signals,” Amy suggested to Charlie. They were truly on their own.
At the front of the line, John hit the end
of the corridor and took a left.
*
“Main engines are powering on now,” said
Gwen’s voice through the radio. Suma had found the bridge, and the displays
were only just flickering to life. The bridge was round, with a large viewscreen
at the front that was still dark.
“Where are the lights?” Suma asked into the
radio, fed up with the eerie darkness that seemed to suffocate them.
“The power will slowly restore throughout
the ship,” Gwen affirmed through the radio. “Essential systems first. Lights
will probably be the last thing to turn on.”
“There’s something else,” the female voice
continued. Suma raised her eyebrow at Belmont who only gave a victorious smile
back. He was right of course, she shouldn’t be so critical of her people when
things were going so much better than she could have hoped.
“Go on,” Suma said.
“I don’t think this ship will be capable of
leaving the atmosphere,” the voice explained slowly, afraid of how Suma might
respond. So that meant their primary target was impossible. It was fine. She
had a back-up.
“We’ll go to plan B,” Suma said, her head
spinning with how she could do the most damage with her new toy. “Jack, you’re
a pilot. Be a dear and find me the navigation controls. It’s got to be one of
these screens.” She traced her hand along his shoulder and he set off, studying
the displays of each console in search for what he was looking for. “I’m going
to need you to set a course for Hymalious City.”
* *
As Tameka watched, the ancient craft they
were approaching seemed to morph before her eyes. Long silver wings extended
from the sides of the craft, and engines on the backs of those wings ignited
with blue plasma as the ship lurched forward.
“Tell me we can keep up,” Tameka said to
the pilot. The young girl had long brown hair that almost covered her face, and
she was so small her feet could barely reach the rudder.
None of that seemed to bother her, however,
as the young pilot nodded and pushed her throttle to max. “You’re damned right
we can,” she said with a fierceness Tameka had to admire.
“Uh Gillian?” the co-pilot said, pointing
to what seemed to be the last Mark two gunship left defending the ancient
Rommerian ship. It fired a shot from its slow tracking cannon, and the deadly
streak of light soared just over their canopy. That had been too close.
“We still have m-missiles on this thing
right?” Kat asked Gillian with excitement.
“I fired a volley,” Gillian confirmed for
her, “But there’s a couple more strapped back there.”
“It’s okay,” Kat said, moving to the back
of the ship and grabbing one of the large canisters from the wall. “I’ve d-done
this before.” Tameka was impressed, and opened the missile tube for Kat to
slide the warhead in.
“Warhead is armed,” Tameka confirmed as she
closed the hatch on the tube.
“Targeting,” the co-pilot said, bringing up
the targeting computer overlay. The gunship fired another shot, and this one
Gillian couldn’t dodge. The bomber was too sluggish, the shot was too dead on.
It was heading straight for their cockpit. Tameka had only a split second to
realize they were all dead.
And suddenly, to the relief of everyone in
the cockpit, a G32 swooped in between the gunship and the bomber taking the
brunt of the shot to her wing.
“I’ve been hit,” a woman’s voice said over
the radio as the G32 careened off into the sand. “I’m going down.”
“Tania!” roared flight leader.
“Payload away,” Gillian growled into the
radio as she pulled the trigger on her yoke. The missile Kat had just loaded
launched from the right side of the bomber, streaking across the sky and
impacting with the final Mark 2 gunship creating a brilliant explosion.
Everyone in the bomber cheered, and Tameka
gave Kat another hug. Letting go, they rejoined the pilot in the cockpit as the
bomber slowly came up alongside the ancient ship.
“Here’s a silly question,” Tameka asked as
they got closer. “How do we get inside?”
“I have an i-idea about th-that,” Kat said,
working away on her tablet. “The harmless radiation the element is giving off de-decreases
ever so slightly for everything it-it has to pass through. If I increase the
sensitivity of the se-sensor I should be able to map the le-layout of the
ship.”
Tameka watched Kat type lines of code,
programming the necessary modifications into her readout. Meka was impressed
with how smart the young teen was. She was laying down code so fast, Tameka
could barely keep up. When she activated the code, her display lit up so the
entire ship looked green.
“The variances are too narrow,” Tameka told
Kat, reaching in to type over her. “You’re gonna need an algorithm that can go
through and accentuate the variances, here.” She modified a few lines of Kat’s
coding, and following along Kat made some modifications of her own. When they
activated the code, it worked like a charm, and the ship became like see
through, and they were able to make out every room and door, and even people.
“That’s the bridge,” Tameka said, pointing
to a room near the front. There was a hatch to it by the wing. She couldn’t see
it out the windshield, but she could see it clear as day on Kat’s display. The
edges must have been seamless on the hull. “There’s about ten people in that
room. I can guarantee you one of them is my mother.”
Kat looked around the cockpit, and Tameka
wondered if she was taking in what tools and supplies she had available. “I
think I c-can cobble together a magnetic lockpick to force that hatch open,”
she said at last.
“A magnetic lockpick?” Tameka repeated,
consistently surprised at how fast the girl’s mind worked.
“It’ll l-look more like a ha-handle,” she
clarified. “Twist it, and the magnets in-inside will force the mechanics of the
hatch to re-release.”
“Alright,” Meka nodded her head, so far
keeping up with the girl. “Let’s get to work then.”
* *
Tania punched her dashboard, her fighter’s
cockpit snuggled at an awkward angle in the sand. Her entire body hurt from the
force of the impact, but she tried to ignore the pain as she hit her radio.
“This is flight two to leader,” Tania said
though she wasn’t sure if her sister could hear her. The radio was probably
quite as busted as everything else. “I survived impact.” She said, getting only
a buzzing in return.
Opening her cockpit, she pulled herself
from the straps of her chair and stood up. The ground battle was still waging
nearby, as it seemed she wasn’t more than a short jog from friendly Hymalious
forces. With the arrival of artillery trucks, it looked like they were now
having little trouble bombarding the Blazkor lines from a safe distance. It
wouldn’t be long before their ground forces would wipe out the remaining
terrorist threat on the ground. All that remained to fear was the new threat in
the skies.
But that was no longer Tania’s problem.
Setting off at a brisk pace, she began her run across the sand.
* *
*
“You’re stepping on my toe,” David
complained, as he was squeezed in tightly beside Emma.
“This wouldn’t be a problem if you’d just
let me be big spoon,” Emma chastised David impatiently. They were both squeezed
behind Gilber’s chair as the general soared their fighter straight into the
sky.
“But I’m taller than you,” David still
complained. “Shouldn’t I be big spoon?”
“Admit it,” Emma said to him. “You just
don’t want to be emasculated.”
“Would ye two stop back there,” Gilber
muttered as he worked the controls. “I’m about to switch from atmospheric jets
to the plasma drive. This can get a little tricky.”
“Sorry,” Emma said, putting her hand over
David’s mouth. “David doesn’t like flying. He gets antsy.”
David pulled his mouth away from her hand.
“You stepped on MY toe.”
“Cause you were encroaching on my side,”
Emma argued. Through the cockpit David could see the atmosphere give way to the
purple-blue swirls of their surrounding nebula.
“You ever wonder what’s out there?” David
asked. “Beyond the nebula?” He knew scientists had theories. Millions of stars,
just like theirs. With planets, many of which could contain life just like
theirs. They’d sent through probes, sure. But no one had seen it.
Emma gave him a sidelong glance. “That’s
kinda the whole point of this,” she said as if it was obvious. “Why we’re
building this thing. So we can cross the nebula and finally see what’s out
there.”
“There it is,” Gilber pointed to the moon,
and they all followed his finger.
“I’ve seen the moon,” David muttered. “I
see it every night in fact.”
“No,” Emma said, grabbing his arm. “There.”
From behind the moon there seemed to be some kind of massive metallic marvel
rising into view. It must have been massive, considering its distance, to be
visible to the eye from there.
It was bulky, made up of large metal
compartments, five in total. The middle one was the largest, and then the ones
stacked above and below it were slightly smaller. It was almost like a large
straight metal croissant, standing up in space. From the angle they were
watching it from, David could just see plumes of blue plasma from the back as
the large engines on the back of the massive ship pushed it slowly around the
moon.
“That’s our destination,” he said, hitting
the throttle to max. “Ye’d better hold on tight.”
* *
*
John silently signalled for his squad to
stop as he came to a large two story bay full of machinery. He shut off his
flashlight and his squad did the same. It didn’t seem any of the Blazkor had
noticed them, as they were all focused on the different machines in the bay,
sporting flashlights of their own. Two of them were on the catwalks nearby
while four more had found a way down. None of the men and women there seemed
armed.
“Everyone hold your fire,” John told his
squad, not about to murder unarmed mechanics in cold blood. “Just follow my
lead.” He turned on his flash light again and raised his stolen pistol to point
it at the engineer closest to him.
“Freeze,” He said to the older man.
“Hymalious forces are onboard!” The man
yelled to the others in the bay.
“I said freeze,” John repeated. “We have
you outnumbered and out gunned. Surrender now and none of you will be harmed.”
The woman behind the man picked up a wrench
and came at John. “God dammit,” John said again. “I said freeze!” It was like
they were brainwashed, with no sense of self preservation.
John dodged the man, spinning past him and holstering
his gun as he grabbed the wrench the woman was holding. He kicked out behind
him, knocking the old man into the wall near his squad. “Stay down,” John told
the man. Twisting with the wrench, John flipped the woman over the railing of
the catwalk onto the first floor below.
“He said stay down!” Private Adler with the
spiky hair said as the man got up and came at him. Mark Adler kicked the man in
the groin and knocked him in the face with the butt of his gun. “What’s wrong
with these people? Don’t they see that we are the ones with the guns?”
Three more engineers were already climbing
ladders to confront them.
“I don’t think so,” John said moving to
intercept them.
“It’s too late to stop us,” the engineer
he’d flipped over the railing yelled up at him. It seemed she wasn’t too hurt
from her fall. “We’ve already given mother everything she wanted to deal your
people a devastating blow.” Suddenly lights flickered on in the bay
illuminating everything in brilliant light. As the luminance splashed the woman’s
face she laughed. “I’ve even created light!”
But no one’s attention was on her anymore,
despite her enthusiasm. There was something else in the room with them, some
kind of metallic creature made of material that looked similar to that of the
ship’s hull. It was slender, almost like a metallic skeleton, with thin wiry
arms. One arm ended in a long sharp and scary looking clawed hand. The other
seemed to be a gun of some kind where its hand should have been.
The creature was behind the female engineer
as she gloated, and she was the only one who couldn’t see it as everyone
watched in horror.
“What are you…” the woman started to say
and the creature closed the distance from her in only two large strides,
thrusting its clawed hand through her back and out her front, holding her very
heart in its grasp.
“Oh my god!” Private Adler exclaimed
loudly. “Did you all see that?”
“Nebulous hells,” Sara muttered, and Amy
screamed loudly. Charlie gagged. It seemed the three engineers across the
catwalk had finally focused on something other than John’s squad.
The creature screamed up at them, a loud
shrill shriek that penetrated their ears and made Lt. Charlie and Private Mark Adler
cover their heads with their hands. It dropped the woman’s heart on the floor
and stepped on it, screaming again up at them before raising its gun arm and
firing at the catwalk closer to the three engineers.
The creature’s weapon fired some kind of ball
of energy that exploded on impact with the catwalk, collapsing the far end and
taking one of the Blazkor engineers with it. The other two turned and ran past
John for the exit as he stood calmly, pulling his gun from its holster.
“Weapons hot,” he said to his squad and
they all opened fire with every weapon they had, spreading out along the
catwalk to get good shots. “Light it up.”
* *
“We’re about twenty minutes out from
Hymalious city,” Jack told Suma, and she clapped her hands in success.
“We’ll deal them a blow they’ll never
forget.” She said, dancing across the room to Belmont and grabbing his radio.
“Gwen. This is mother. Can I get any more power?”
One of the engineer’s radios flickered on
long enough for Suma to hear screams and gunshots and something that sounded
less than Rommerian. Then there was silence again on the still dark bridge.
She frowned to Belmont. “Take two men and
check it out,” she told him, and he nodded to her, gesturing for two of his
men. The three left the bridge.
“Mother,” one of the soldiers said, stumbling
suddenly to lean against the wall. He was looking a little pale. “I don’t feel
so good.”
“Pull yourself together soldier,” she told
him. “It won’t be much longer now before we finish our mission.”
* *
John emptied his last clip, having only
taken three from the soldiers he’d taken out. Looking across the catwalk he
could see Charlie, Janet, and Mark firing their assault rifles on full auto at
the creature and they weren’t even making a dent on it. Sara only had a pistol
like John but she was focusing all her shots on the creature’s head. Amy shot
with her sniper rifle, and her shot dinged off its head far more effectively
but still without leaving a mark.
The mostly robotic creature screamed up at
them and fired with its gun arm.
“Watch out!” Charlie yelled, grabbing Sara
and covering her. He took the creature’s blast to the side and was blown from
the catwalk into the hallway they’d just come from. Amy retreated with Sara to
check him out as John crossed the catwalk to join Mark and Janet.
“What the hell did you do that for?” John
heard Sara berate Charlie. “I was gunna dodge it.”
John could see Charlie cough. “I just
didn’t want to see another superior officer go down on my watch.”
Amy hit him. “General Waverly wasn’t your
fault,” she insisted. “She wouldn’t want to see you throw your life away.”
Sara looked at John from the hallway. “He’s
hurt bad.”
John nodded to her. “Fall back,” he said,
and Janet retreated with Sara to help get Charlie to his feet. John stopped
Mark before he could leave too. “You have any grenades with you?”
Private Adler pulled one from his vest.
“You sure this’ll even stop it?”
John took the grenade. “It’ll at least slow
him down.” John turned to face the creature as the private joined the others in
the hallway. He was surpised to find the creature had already jumped the height
of the bay to be with him on the catwalk.
“You know what this is?” He asked, pulling
the pin from the grenade. The creature shrieked in his face and slashed at him
with its claws. He dodged below the clawed hand and landed multiple punches on
its exoskeleton exterior. Each punch seemed to hurt his hand more than the
creature. His one hand still grasped the grenade tightly. Having not released
the lever yet, it hadn’t begun to count down.
The creature swiped low at John, and he
jumped over the creatures arm, planting a foot on the railing and pushing off
to spin behind the creature and strike it in the back of its head with his
fist. As his feet hit the catwalk, he kicked out with them, going for the
creature’s knees but even those were harder than the strongest cement.
The creature turned its upper body around
without even moving its legs, and it grabbed John by the throat, screaming into
his face with its loud shriek. It had a large blue-glowing mouth that seemed to
dislocate with every scream, and John shoved the grenade into the creature’s wide
open mouth, releasing the lever.
The creature seemed at least somewhat
surprised, and threw him into the wall of the bay, close to the exit. He struck
the wall so hard it knocked his breath away and his vision swooned. This thing
was fast, and stronger than anything he’d come across.
The creature pulled the grenade from its
mouth and held the grenade over its head triumphantly. The shriek it let off
was enough for even John to have to cover his ears, even as he scrambled to his
feet.
The creature shook the grenade in its
clutch, clearly unsure of what the thing did, and the grenade exploded in its
hand, sending the creature across the bay into heavy machinery. The blast was
also strong enough to hit John and launch him through the doorway and into the
hallway where he painfully landed amongst the rest of his squad.
“Are you okay?” Amy asked, from where she
was helping to support Charlie.
John groaned and tried to find his voice.
“How’s Lieutenant Charlie?”
“He took quite the flesh wound,” Medic
Janet Miles gave John a quick status report, while supporting Charlie on his
other side, “but besides a nasty burn scar, he’ll live if we can get him some
real medical attention fast.”
There was a scream from the engineering bay
as Sara helped John to his feet.
“We should get out of here,” John told his
squad.
“Yeah I’m with you,” Sara said, offering
John the same support Amy and Janet were giving Charlie. He shrugged her off,
and set off at a jog to lead the group around the corner. The hallway behind
them slowly lit up. It seemed the lights were still struggling to come on,
starting at the back and really slowly working their way forward. He surged
with his squad through the hallway and around a corner into yet another dark
corridor.
On the other end of the hallway, Sara’s
flashlight landed on a muscular man in Blazkor colors as he stepped through a
hatchway flanked by two soldiers. This man seemed to be some kind of commander.
His men were armed, and John’s squad were all out of ammo.
“So you’ve been the one causing my mother
so much trouble,” the large commander said, recognizing that John was unarmed
and throwing his pistol casually aside. His two men threw their guns away too
and he looked at them with disapproval.
“I’m sorry,” the one man said. “I thought—“
“I was going to take the big guy,” the
commander said. “You two were supposed to shoot the rest.
“Now!” Sara yelled, charging across the corridor
at the enemy. John ran past her, and the commander came straight for him,
swinging a punch right at his head. John hooked the large man’s arm with his
own, and then twisted his body to elbow the man with his other. The large man’s
nose broke and bled but he didn’t even flinch. Instead the commander kneed John
hard and as John doubled over the man slammed John’s face into the wall.
John dropped and watched as Sara got past
the largest man to body check one of the soldiers into the side of the corridor.
As she bounced off him, she kicked at the second man, knocking him into the
opposing wall and knocking her back into the first guy who fell back into the
wall again. She elbowed the first soldier in the face, knocking his head off
the wall, and from that hit she bounced forward to punch out the second soldier
with one strong punch to the face. Already disoriented, both soldiers went
down.
Amy and Janet led Charlie around the
Blazkor commander as he crouched down over John and punched him in the face. “Go!”
John yelled to Sara as she and Mark hurried Charlie and his support through the
hatch into the next section of the ship.
The commander’s fist came down again, but
this time John managed to bring up his arms to block it. He grabbed the
commander’s hand and placed his other on the commander’s face, pushing him and
applying pressure to the man’s neck. The man growled as they strained against
each other.
“Is this the best Hymalious city could
send?” the large man spit the words out angrily as he struggled with John. “Is
there no one who can give me a real challenge?”
He screamed suddenly, and let go of John to
climb off the man and turn. On his back, John could see four bloody claw marks.
The large metallic creature stood in
defiance over the Blazkor commander, screaming its shrill shriek in his face.
“I think you’ve met your match,” John
muttered, as he scrambled for where Sara was waiting by the hatchway. Looking
back he saw the commander take a swing for the creature and it impaled the
man’s face with its long claws straight through his eyes. The commander
twitched, and was then thrown around like a ragdoll as the creature tried to
free its hand.
Throwing the commander’s body aside, the
creature came straight for John and he rose to meet it. Slashing down with its
claws John swiftly dodged to the side and hit the creature with a kick and two
punches. The creature brought its arm up again and knocked John off his feet
straight up into the ceiling and back down onto the floor where he splayed out,
losing consciousness.
As the creature loomed over him, he felt
Sara’s strong grip on his leg, and she pulled him through the hatchway, hitting
a panel in the wall to close the hatch as the creature came in to get them. The
smooth metal hatch closed with a woosh, but the creatures sharp claws pierced
straight through. One came close to impaling John in the stomach.
He whistled as the claws retracted from the
wall. “That was close,” he managed to say. There was a pounding on the hatch as
it seemed the creature was trying to break through with its blaster.
“We should go,” he told his squad. “I don’t
think this will hold him for long.”
* *
*
“General,” a stern looking middle aged man
said, approaching them in the large landing bay. It was similar in size to the
one Emma had been working in at Prime Central. Fighters were strapped against
one wall where engineers were working away maintaining them. Gilber had landed
their fighter right in the center of the bay and even now engineers were taxiing
it to join the others. The hangar doors that had opened to let them in were
already closed to allow the atmosphere to return and the crews to continue
their work.
“Welcome to the Rebirth,” the man told
them, and Emma suddenly recognized him.
“You were in the interrogation room with
the mayor,” Emma remembered the stern man’s disapproving look. “Your name was
Eggie right?”
“That’s Lazerus Englebert to you,” the man
said snidely.
“Are you the one in charge here?” Gilber
asked, his voice rough as he lit another of his characteristic cigars.
“I’m still head engineer for now,” he told
the general, giving one of the same disapproving looks to Emma that she
remembered him giving her the last time they’d met. “Which mean’s I’m the one
in charge, yes.”
“Not anymore you’re not,” General Gilber
said gruffly, and the man seemed to squirm in his tight uniform. Emma wondered
if he’d ran to change into it when he’d heard the mayor had sent someone. “I
want a status report, and I want the Rebirth under immediate combat alert.”
“How big is this ship?” David asked as he
and Emma followed behind the two men into the ships tight metal corridor. The
hallways of the Rebirth had metal grating for floor that clanged under their
feet. The walls were clumsily cobbled together bulkheads that jutted out in weird
places in an uneven design. They were painted mostly blue above, and brown
below.
“It’s about the size of Hymalious city,”
Emma answered for David, remembering her time looking over the blueprints. “In
length anyway. At full capacity it will be able to hold about two hundred and
fifty thousand people. That includes a crew manifest of about five hundred. Two
thousand if you include maintenance staff.”
They came to a lift, and the Englebert hit
a button to call the elevator.
“We’ve been pushing the engines as hard as
they can go to get us to orbit over Rommeria,” the engineer gave Gilber his
status report. “It’s the generator. It’s already being pushed to the limits
with the strain of general ship services. The engines have almost drained the
capacitors dry.”
“We just need ta get in orbit,” Gilber
muttered as the elevator arrived.
Englebert beaconed for them to get on, and
he followed quickly behind. He hit a button that was near the bottom of the
list and the elevator jerked as they started to descend.
“I thought the bridge was at the top,”
Gilber said to the engineer.
Englebert nodded. “It’s not actually
functional yet,” he admitted to them. “We’re currently running operations from
engineering.” He explained.
“Oh goodie,” Emma said with excitement,
that was exactly the place she wanted to see most.
The bulky metal maintenance elevator shuddered
to a stop and the doors opened for them to step out into another hallway.
“This way,” Englebert said, leading them
along as their feet clanked against the metal flooring. It was barely ten steps
before the corridor gave way to a large engineering bay that expanded way above
their heads. There were machines of all shapes and sizes along the walls of the
section, like the life support filters and the centralized computer matrix.
Some machines were so large they had ladders to help the engineers scurry
around as they worked.
All the machines were built to connect to a
large glowing fusion generator in the center of the room.
“This is the most efficient power generator
we have ever constructed,” Englebert told them gesturing to the same fusion
generator that had caught Emma’s eye. Suddenly there was a strange deep
electronic groan from the machine and all the lights went off. Englebert
activated a flashlight. “And now it’s out of power.”
“How is that possible?” Gilber asked,
getting close to the engineer and taking his light.
“The engines were draining more than the
generator could output,” Englebert tried to explain, pulling out another
flashlight. Emma wondered how many of those he had. “We have a capacitor for
that, but the capacitor has been drained now. It’ll take about an hour to
recharge. The life support will last till then.”
“I just managed to get us in position over
the planet,” one engineer called out from where he’d been manually controlling
the engines. “I used the last of it to slow us down before we entered
atmosphere.”
“Trust me,” Englebert told them. “If that
happened it would be bad.”
“So now we just sit here in the dark?”
David asked them. “What use is that?”
“Be happy we weren’t still on the
elevator,” the head engineer told Emma’s friend.
“Why?” David asked. “You mean when the
power went out? What would have happened?”
“Nothing good,” Emma told him, not wanting
to go into detail on how they’d have been trapped. He had bad enough
claustrophobia as it was.
“Can we shoot?” Gilber asked Englebert. “Do
the guns still work, Eggie?”
“Just like a military man,” David said with
a sigh. “always concerned about his guns.”
“In case ye’ve forgotten, Doctor,” Gilber
said angrily, “We still got a situation down there.”
“No,” Englebert answered the question.
“There’s no way we can get the guns online before the power comes back.
Emma shook her head. “Well that’s just not
true,” she said, and Englebert shot her another disapproving look. “The guns
themselves are mechanical right? If we can get enough power to the targeting
computer, we can align the artillery cannons with the target and initiate the
firing sequence before it all shuts down again. Right?”
Gilber smiled and gave Englebert a shove.
“You know this is why she’s replacing ye, right?”
“That’s all fine,” the head engineer said,
pulling on his uniform in indignation. “But where are we going to get the power
from?”
Emma had to think for a moment. “How long
can we last on this ship without life support?”
* *
*
Tameka stepped out onto the wing of the
ship, the wind blasting in her face threatening to push her off, but she
struggled against it to keep her footing. The smooth bright shining silver of
the ship held little traction under her boot. It would be almost too easy to
slip.
“Widen your stance,” she said to Kat who
got off the bomber behind her.
“All my solar gods,” Kat muttered, grabbing
onto Tameka for support. Tameka grabbed at the radio the co-pilot had handed
her, and squeezed the talk button. Her other hand still held her axe. “Keep
circling around the ship,” she said to the pilot Gillian.
“I’ll signal you when we’re ready to be
picked up,” she tried to assure the pilot, though she wasn’t sure herself if that
was a signal that would ever come. The bomber launched from the wing, soaring
down and away as it powered the engines.
“Roger that,” Gillian’s voice could barely
be heard through the hand radio.
“Come on,” Tameka said to Kat who seemed
far too distracted watching the desert whip past. She had been about to say not
to look down, but Kat had just thrown that rule right out the window.
“THIS IS EXHILERATING,” Kat screamed to
Tameka.
“I THINK I’M AF-AFRAID OF HEIGHTS.” Now
really wasn’t the time to figure that out.
“Everyone’s afraid of heights,” Tameka
assured her nerdy friend loudly as the two shuffled their way across the wing.
“Just try not to think about it.”
They made it to the side of the ancient
spaceship, and Kat pulled her tablet from a compartment in her bulky military
jacket, again provided by the co-pilot of the bomber. She looked at it to try
to confirm the location of the door, but the tablet slipped from her hands and
the wind carried it away into the horizon.
“I PR-PROBABLY SHOULDA HELD ONTO THAT
BETTER,” Kat yelled at Tameka sheepishly.
Tameka rolled her eyes. “You can still find
the door, right?” she asked very concerned.
“I TH-THINK IT’S HERE,” Kat yelled, placing
her hand on the smooth side of the craft. “Ooo it’s c-cold.” She quickly pulled
her hand away.
Kat reached into her jacket and pulled out
the device they’d quickly cobbled together with spare parts. It was round at
the base with a handle that jutted straight out. Tameka grabbed the mag-lock
from Kat before she dropped it too.
“I’ll do it,” Meka said, reaching forward
to press the base of the device against where Kat had just touched. The device
gripped on tight to the hull. “I think the magnets have grip.”
“You have to turn the handle,” Kat
explained close to Tameka’s ear, her voice apparently getting a little rasp.
“I know how it works,” Tameka grumbled. “I
built the thing with you.”
“No,” Kat insisted. “I just m-meant it’s
gonna take a lot of f-force to—“
“Which of us do you think is stronger
here,” Tameka asked Kat with annoyance. She turned the handle on the device and
it made a ‘shuck’ sound.
“It’s locked,” Kat said with a little too
much excitement.
“Here goes,” Tameka said, turning the
handle back and the hatch hissed at the suddenly visible seams. The whole door
pushed out at them and then opened, one of Suma’s men getting blown out the
hatch from the explosive decompression. Tameka pushed Kat to one side as she
thrust herself to the other, and the man just narrowly avoided hitting them as
he flew out into the desert.
Tameka grasped hard onto the hinge of the
open hatch, and tried to pull herself inside with one hand, while her other
hand held tight to her axe. As she was halfway inside she saw another of Suma’s
men coming at her, and she buried her axe in his chest. He was sucked out the
hatch past her into the wind.
With her now free hand, Tameka helped Kat
onto the bridge of the ancient ship, and hit a nearby panel to close the hatch
behind them.
“That was insane,” Kat said loudly. “What
we just d-did was insane! We shouldn’t have d-done that.”
Tameka ignored Kat, as her attention was
solely on her mother. “Tammy,” Suma spoke her name with glee, and a shiver went
down her spine. “You survived the bomb, I’m so glad you could be here for
this.”
“You’re crazy,” Tameka said, surveying her
surroundings. The bridge was dark, with computer consoles jutting out of the
floor, one of which Jack seemed to be working at. He wasn’t looking at her, and
she wondered if that was deliberate. Besides him and Suma there were three
others on the bridge. They were all armed, but one was doubled over in a corner
throwing up on his boots. She shot one of the other ones and pulled Kat behind
cover.
“Oh,” Kat said in surprise as Tameka
dropped with her behind a computer console. “Are we sh-shooting again?”
“Don’t kill her!” Tameka was surprised to
hear her mother yell as the only abled bodied soldier left began to open fire.
“Let Jack do it instead.” Oh no, of course, that was just like her mother.
“Jack,” Kat repeated the name.
“Shut up,” Tameka muttered.
“Isn’t Jack your friend?” Kat asked, and
Jack’s hands came down to grab Tameka by the collar. She dropped her pistol as
he lifted her high into the air and threw her across the bridge into a
bulkhead. She felt her back crack and she collapsed to the floor hard, her
whole body hurting in so many familiar ways.
Across the bridge Kat had grabbed Tameka’s
gun. Raising it, she squeezed the trigger and shot the only remaining armed
soldier Suma had left with her. “I just k-killed a guy!” she said excitedly, stopping
in her tracks and lowering her gun. “Solar gods, I j-just killed a guy. I’ve
never k-killed before. N-now guilt is setting in. I think th-this is guilt.
It’s like hard to breathe?” She looked up at Suma. “Did he ha-have a name?
Wait, d-don’t tell me. I’ll remember it for-forever.”
“Why’d you come back, Meka?” Jack asked
solemnly as he slowly approached her.
“I came back for you,” Tameka said, laying
it on as thick as she could. “I couldn’t leave you to my mother’s mercy. I
couldn’t let her lead you to death.”
“Well you assumed right,” Suma monologued
from the front of the bridge. “This ship is on a crash course for Hymalious
City. You think if we crash it right into Prime Central Station we’ll create a
fireball large enough to kill over a hundred thousand people?”
“And you with it?” Tameka asked, again
surprised.
“If I have to,” Suma admitted to Tameka,
who wondered if her mother might still hope that there was time for one of the
few remaining flanking gunships to pick her up.
“You have to help me stop her,” Tameka
begged Jack desperately.
Sweat was accumulating over Jack’s brow as Tameka
could tell he was struggling to resist. “I can’t,” he insisted, “she’s in my
head.”
“I hope this wasn’t your whole plan,” Suma
gloated gleefully. “You didn’t really expect this to work did you?” she
laughed. “He’s genetically programmed to be impossibly loyal to the woman he
loves. Now pull your gun and kill her Jack. I tire of this.”
“She’s right,” Jack said, unholstering his
pistol stiffly and pointing it at Tameka’s head. “I have to obey the woman I
love,” His finger began to squeeze the trigger Tameka could see the struggle
going on in his eyes. “The only thing is,” he said to Tameka, each word coming
out slow and laboured. “I… don’t… love… her.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Tameka yelled.
“Shoot my mother!”
With a scream of effort, Jack turned the
gun from Tameka to Suma and fired on her, just clipping her shoulder.
“Ahh,” he struggled, dropping the gun and
stumbling to his knees. He was breathing heavily as if that was the hardest
thing he’d ever had to do. ”What have I done, Meka?”
“You did good, Jack” Tameka assured him,
grabbing the pistol. “You did good.” She was about to point her gun in Suma’s
direction when a group of Hymalious soldiers stormed the bridge, one wounded
man being supported by two women. None of them were armed.
“Kat!” the most muscular man of the group
said Kat’s name in surprise. It looked like he had gone through quite a lot.
“John!” Kat said in return. She also seemed
to recognize the woman by John’s side in a bulky flight suit. “Sara!”
“Geekface,” the woman said snarkly with a
nod. “What have you been up to?”
“I was almost b-blown up a few times,” she
admitted to them, “scaled the wing of an an-ancient Rommerian spacecraft, and
g-got in a firefight w-with the leader of th-the Blazkor terrorists.” She
looked to the one she’d called John. “How’ve you b-been?”
“About the same,” John said curtly. Sara
reached out and took Kat’s gun.
“I’ll take that,” Sara told her, checking
the chamber.
“Why do people keep t-taking things from
me?” Kat complained. There was a nearby explosion and everyone turned to see
where Suma had shot one of the computer consoles. She’d stolen a rifle from the
sick soldier in the corner.
“Just stop,” Tameka said, raising her gun
at her mother. “You’re far outnumbered now.”
“I’ve destroyed the navigation console,”
Suma spat back at her daughter. “You can’t stop this ship from reaching its
destination, even if you kill me.”
“That still sounds pretty worth it,” Sara
said, raising her gun.
There was a shriek from the hallway, and
the yet unnamed soldiers with John and Sara moved away from the hatch.
“I forgot to mention we we’re being
followed by something,” John told the group on the bridge, backing away as a
large and very scary looking metallic creature stepped through the open
hatchway onto the bridge. It released a shrill deafening shriek, matched only
by a loud scream from Kat, and the creature slashed at John with large claws.
The military man dodged the creatures arm, and kicked off it to throw himself
back into the wall of the bridge.
Both Sara and Tameka fired upon the
creature with their guns, Tameka crossing the bridge to get closer to John.
Even her mother was firing at it with her assault rifle, though she paused to
let Tameka pass.
“It’s the unstoppable de-destroyer!” Kat
yelled in fear, backing away from the creature and putting a computer console
between them. “The paintings on the cave w-warned of this thing! I-It’s gonna
k-kill us all!”
“Hold onto something!” Tameka yelled as it
loomed over John. She reached the wall he was pressed against and hit her hand
on the same panel she’d touched earlier. The hatch to the wing of the ship
hissed, and blew open with a second explosive decompression. The creature was
sucked through the hole and careened across the wing to roll off into the sandy
desert below.
“Or not,” Kat said loudly, holding tight to
the computer console she was closest to.
“Help me,” came a voice near Suma, and the
sick soldier who had been puking out his guts was now holding desperately to
her.
“I know what’s wrong with him,” John yelled
to Suma over the rushing wind being sucked out the hatch. “We have doctors
working on a cure right now that can save your men. Just surrender now, and
we’ll even let you live. Life imprisonment, but you’ll live.”
Suma raised her rifle and shot her man in
the head. A number of people on the bridge screamed, including one of the
soldiers with spiky hair. “Why would I need you to save my men?” she asked John
as if he was dumb. “They mean nothing to me.” She stopped struggling and let
the rushing vacuum suck her from the bridge of the ship onto the wing.
“She’s mad,” John said, and Tameka watched
with him as her mother managed to get her footing on the wing of the plane.
“Welcome to my nightmare,” Tameka told him,
breathing deeply as she tried to steel herself for what she was about to do
next. “I’m going after her. I can’t let my mother get away again.”
“I’m coming with you,” John told her,
giving her a reassuring nod. He didn’t know anything about her, but he had her
back. At least there was one Hymalious native she’d met who was a decent
person.
Across the bridge, Kat started towards
them, but Sara grabbed her by the shoulder and held her in place. “Oh no you
don’t,” Sara said roughly. “You’re not leaving my side again, pipsqueak. Now
figure out which of these panels can connect me with Hymalious City control.”
John peeked his head out the hatch, only to
cower away as Suma fired shots in their direction. As the wind buffeted her,
her accuracy was limited at best.
“Tammy!” she called out to Tameka, knowing
she’d be there. “This hasn’t gone exactly as I planned,” her mother continued.
“But it sure has been fun!” She fired again, her shots going wild.
“You said she’s your mother?” John asked
with a raised eyebrow.
“It’s been rough,” Tameka told him,
stepping past him onto the wing of the ship. The wind buffeted at her, and she
leaned forward to keep from being thrown off to her death.
“There’s no way out,” she yelled to her
mother. “This is the end of the line for you.” Tameka rushed forward as fast as
she could, and sure enough the wind lifted her feet off the wing but not before
she could tackle herself into her mother.
They both soared across the wing, striking
across it hard and almost pitching over the very tip. Tameka struggled to her
feet alongside her mother, and Suma grappled her in an effort to push her off
the edge.
“Stop!” Tameka insisted, struggling to keep
her balance. She punched her mother across the jaw and her mother stepped back
impressed.
“I have to admit,” Suma said over the
howling winds. “I underestimated your strength. I’m proud of you.” Tameka felt
sick. “I should have tried harder to bend you to my will.”
“It was never going to happen,” Tameka told
her mother.
“I gave you life girl,” her mother said.
“And you done nothing but get in the way of my plans at every turn.”
“I’m
not going to let anyone else die because of you.”
“You’re wrong,” Suma told Tameka with a
smile as John stepped up behind her. “My death will just be the first of many.”
With that she stepped off the wing and was carried away into the desert.
“No!” Tameka yelled after her, and John
grabbed her to keep her from going off the wing after her mother.
“Come on,” he yelled at her, leading her
back to the hatch.
* *
David felt his stomach lift into his throat
as his feet left the floor and the gravity gave way throughout the ship. “I was
gonna ask where the gravity came from,” he admitted to Emma. “But I guess now I
know. Life support.”
“Actually Kat designed the simulated
gravity field,” Emma told David with excitement. He DID remember the science
fair project, but couldn’t have imagined the government would make it
practical. “It works by sending out a negative charge through the floor of the
ship which interacts with the positive charge of our bodies to keep us to the
floor.”
David got a headache just trying to follow
what she was saying. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Just try not to think about it too hard,”
Emma told him. “You’ll give yourself a headache.” She knew him too well.
“I’m getting a targeting solution now,” one
engineer said quickly, clearly trying desperately to hold tight to the console
he was working at.
“Fire,” Gilber yelled at his man.
“He means commence firing sequence,” Emma
corrected him. “You don’t just want to fire once, right. You want to keep the
guns firing even when we lose power again.”
“Yes,” Gilber muttered, not interested in
the details. “What she just said. Obviously.”
“Activating firing sequence,” there was a
dull echo through the hull as David supposed all the guns were firing in
unison. As everyone listened awkwardly, the console the man had just been
working went dead. “All power gone.”
* *
“I can’t figure this out,” John heard Kat
say as he rejoined them on the bridge. He gave Tameka a hand to help her inside.
Kat was working at one of the panels. “But you should be able to use your
radios while that hatch is open.”
John hit the comm in his ear. “Colonel
Adams to control,” he said. “We’ve taken the Blazkor ship. Suma is presumed
KIA, but we can’t seem to regain control of its navigation.”
“Colonel Adams this is control,”
Councilwoman Maggie May’s voice came through his comm, to his relief. “That
ship is minutes from being over Hymalious City. We have to stop it before it
reaches us, or the damage will be catastrophic.” Tameka was holding up her hand
held radio for the rest to hear.
“We
have no control from here,” John told them. “But we might be able to do some
damage in engineering.”
“There’s no time,” Maggie May said through
the radio. “I’ve already approved orbital bombardment. It’s underway as we
speak. You have to abandon ship now.”
A young woman’s voice came on the radio
next. “Transport 1 is still here,” she said. “I’m coming up on the wing now.”
“Gillian!” Tameka said into her radio. “Am
I glad to hear your voice.”
John noticed Kat give him a look and he
tapped his ear again. “Command, I’d ask you to delay bombardment. We need to
extract the mission critical element. It should only take two minutes max.”
“There’s no time for that,” Maggie May’s
voice said through the radio. “You have to get on that bomber now!”
John could see it in Kat’s eyes, and before
he could react she was off for the ship hallway.
“I can’t let them blow it up!” she screamed
as Tameka grabbed her and tried valiantly to hold the teen back. “They can’t
destroy it! I need it! You have to let me get it!”
“You don’t have a choice,” Sara said to the
girl, helping Tameka pull Kat away from the hatch leading deeper into the ship
and towards the hatch onto the wing.
“No!” Kat screamed as they pulled her
through onto the wing. John could still hear her screams through the rushing
winds. “My precious element! I love you ELEMENT! I WILL COME BACK FOR YOU!”
Tameka’s seeming friend with similar black skin and Blazkor uniform colors went
after them, nodding at John as he went. John had no idea who the man was, but
at this point everyone was welcome.
“Go go,” John waved through Mark, and the
two girls supporting Charlie.
“Come on,” Janet said to Charlie as they
lifted him through the hatch. “You’re going to make it.”
“Colonel,” Charlie said, grabbing for
John’s hand. “Thanks. You got us all out.”
“Not yet,” he told Charlie patting the
soldier on the back. “Go!”
He was the last one off the bridge. John
crossed the wing as Charlie was being helped on board and strapped to one of
the walls of the cargo hold. John looked up, and could see distant streaks of
red light making their way through the atmosphere.
He got on board the bomber, and hit the
valve to close the ramp. “Launch,” he told the pilot, getting into the
co-pilot’s seat to the dismay of a young man who had seemed about to take the
same seat.
“Engines are still cycling,” the young
surprisingly tiny teen pilot said while working the controls. John forgot that
they’d crewed most their bombers with trainees fresh out of academy. “They have
to cool a bit more before I can warm them up.”
“There’s no time for that,” John said, his
hands furiously working across the familiar controls. “I’m going to release the
landing clamps I just need you to hold her level.”
A hand grasped the chair behind him as Sara
and Kat’s new black skinned friend Tameka joined John and Gillian in the front
and grabbed tight to their chairs. “Everyone!” Tameka called back to the people
in the back. “Hold on to something.”
There was a click as the landing clamps
released and a strange sense of weightlessness as the wing beneath them seemed
to drift alongside them for a second. Then their bomber started to get caught
in the drag and tilted upwards as it slid slowly off the wing.
As it tilted upward they could see the
bombardment from space coming right at them, a number of the fiery beams
streaking through the atmosphere looked concerningly large and it took John a
moment to realize they were right on top of them.
“ALL MY SOLAR GODS!” Gillian beside him
swore at the top of her lungs. The men and women behind John started making
involuntary sounds of their own.
“Oh shit!” Tameka blurted out, and the
first artillery shell from space exploded against the wing of the ship, nearly
striking them and shuddering their bomber from the impact.
“We’re going OVER!” Sara yelled as their
bomber pitched backwards and off the side of the wing as hundreds of streaking
shots rained down around them, exploding against the ship heavily and creating
large fireballs with rolling shockwaves. Other shots rained into the sand
exploding up massive tufts of sand that rained over them.
Everyone in the bomber screamed at full
volume and John was pushed back into his seat as they continued to fall
backwards.
“WATCH OUT!” John yelled as a fireball came
straight at their wing.
“IT’S COMING RIGHT FOR US!” Sara yelled at
them.
“I c-can’t look,” Kat was heard in the
back.
“I HAVE TO LOOK!” Gillian said beside John,
in a state of hysteria. She yanked her yoke to the left and the bomber went
into a spin on its tail, the streak of light just missing them to impact into
the sand and cover them in a mushroom cloud of dust.
“Bring the nose down,” John ordered
Gillian, and she pushed it forward with all her weight. Everyone in the bomber
with her, trying hard as they could not to fall backward, were suddenly thrust
forward.
The bomber soared out from mushroom cloud
of sand and glided along an air current to slide underneath the ancient ship.
“Use the ship as cover,” John told Gillian, and she did her best to hold her
bomber in place.
John noticed Gillian glance at the altitude
gauge. “Yeah,” John agreed with the words she didn’t say. “It’s not good.” They
were falling too fast.
The rain of fire still continued outside as
Tameka pointed at the computer display for the engines. “You’ve still got
another four minutes on that cycle,” she told them. “If you reset the system,
won’t it skip cooling and start heating up again.”
“I don’t think we have time even for that,”
John said as the gauge continued to drop.
“Except that it won’t take too long to heat
up if they’re still warm, right?” Tameka asked the group.
“Its military protocol to always allow the
engines a full cycle session before powering them back on again,” Gillian spoke
the rules like she was reciting it directly from a textbook.
“Fak the rules,” Sara swore at the trainee
pilot. “Restart the damn system.”
Tameka reached past them to work on the
computer.
“You’re losing cover,” Tameka’s dark
skinned friend pointed from behind them. Sara reached over Tameka and Gillian
from John’s side of the cockpit and yanked back on the yoke. Everyone screamed
as the ship tilted back again and a shot exploded into the sand right in from
of them.
“Focus on the skies,” Sara ordered the
trainee. “She’ll worry about the computer and your co-pilot will worry about
the engines.”
“I did it,” Tameka said. “The engines are
heating up. We have to wait until they hit a certain temperature before they
can ignite.”
“We’re at two hundred meters,” John warned
the group. “One hundred and fifty meters. One hundred meters.”
“I think that’s enough time,” Tameka said
though it had only been a few seconds, reaching past Gillian and John to work
the controls. “I’m igniting the engines.”
“That’s a good idea,” Sara said quickly.
“Failure to ignite,” Tameka yelled, holding
herself desperately at the controls as the bomber tilted more and more back.
“Second attempt.” Everyone in the cockpit started screaming again. “WE HAVE
IGNITION! EIGHT PERCENT THRUST!”
The bomber jostled and lurched and shook as
it struggled against gravity.
“Forty meters,” John continued. “Twenty
Five meters. Twenty Meters.”
“FOURTEEN PERCENT THRUST!” Tameka continued
to yell over the screaming of the people behind her and Gillian in front of
her.
The ancient ship soared over and past them
as their bomber began its ascent straight up.
“Take us that way,” Sara ordered Gillian
pointing away from the ancient ship.
“Twenty two percent thrust,” Tameka told
them.
“WATCH OUT!” John yelled at Gillian as a fiery
streak came straight at them. Everyone continued to scream as Gillian yanked on
her yoke.
“LEFT!” Sara yelled in case Gillian didn’t
know where it was coming from.
“I SEE IT!” Gillian yelled back, kicking on
the rudder as she spun and just barely avoiding the shot. As it struck the
sand, the shockwave and ploom of sand that shot up rocked their bomber and gave
them additional lift. It also took their flight path wildly off course.
“RIGHT!” Sara yelled a direction again as
another streak came at them.
“I see it,” Gillian said again, confidently
fighting against her out of control bomber. Again the flaming streak only just
missed them and exploded into a sand dune.
“LEFT!” Tameka yelled.
“Shit!” Gillian swore, and this time she
pulled back the throttle and yanked the yoke so hard that the bomber spun
upside down. “I DIDN’T SEE THAT ONE!”
John and Gillian were the only ones
strapped into their chairs. Everyone else was thrown screaming onto the roof of
the bomber.
“We have forty percent thrust,” John said,
taking over Tameka’s duties. He pointed to a position in the sky between a
number of shots. “That’s your opening, Turn us point twelve degrees and punch
it.”
Gillian yanked her yoke hard to the left
and the fighter spun right-side up again. Everyone dropped hard, and Gillian
punched the throttle to max. Tameka was thrown back into the hold of the ship,
though Sara managed to hold tight to John’s chair.
“We’re clear of the bombardment zone,” John
said at last as Gillian soared them past the last streaking shot in their view.
“Bring us around,” Sara ordered her, and
she did what the ensign said.
Tameka and Kat joined them in the cockpit
with Tameka’s dark skinned Blazkor friend, and together they all watched as the
heavy bombardment continued to rain from the skies, striking with devastating
force against the top of the ancient craft. Each hit seemed to do minimal
damage, but at the same time each hit seemed to drop the ancient ship lower and
lower to the ground. Finally one shot hit the nose of the craft so hard it
pitched straight down and smashed heavily into the desert, sand exploding up
into the sky as the large craft skidded along the desert floor, leaving a large
trench shaped crater in its wake.
John breathed a sigh of relief. He could
see the lights of Hymalious City just off in the distance. That had gotten far
too close. Behind him, a number of his squad cheered at their success. Even
Gillian seemed to be laughing with relief.
“You think my element is still intact?” Kat
asked and everyone ignored her.
“Turn us back around,” Tameka said to them,
the only one besides Kat with other things on her mind. “We can still go back
and try to find my mother. We have to make sure she’s dead.”
“She’s dead,” John promised Tameka. “No one
could have survived that fall.”
* *
*
“You sure we should be drivin’ out this
far?” Shlem yelled to his brother Kerl, always the mastermind behind their dumb
schemes. This one had to take the cake though. They’d been driving for days
into the desert. If their vehicle broke down out there, it would take them
weeks to walk to any kind of civilization. Weeks more than their supplies would
last. “What the hell you think we’re gunna find out here? Ever’one knows there
ain’t no thing in them deep desert.”
“Didn’t ye hear?” Kerl asked, leaning down
from the sun roof he was standing in, “Turns out that was a lie. Military’s
been hover’n round these parts fer days now n’ that means salvage.” They had a
huge truck behind them empty, just waiting to be filled with all kinds of
precious metals. Maybe this time Kerl’s idea would work out after all.
“Hey what’s that?” Shlem yelled up to his
brother, spotting a small black dot in the distance moving quickly across a
sand dune. Kerl raised up his binoculars to see what it was, but Shlem didn’t
wait for his brother. He grabbed a pair of his own and tried to get a closer
look.
“It’s like some kind of person made of
metal,” Kerl said from above. “Ye think we could salvage him?”
Shlem’s big brother was right, it did look
like some kind of person made of metal. Or at least his skeleton. The thing lifted
its head back and gave out a fearsome shriek that made Shelm and his brother
cover their ears.
“It’s head’n away from us,” Shlem said,
putting the petal to the metal. “How’s bout we just let that one go.”
“Smart thinkin’ little brother,” Kerl
yelled down to him. “Maybe I lets you come up with the schemes next time.”
* *
*
The power was back, along with the gravity,
and Gilber had David shown to living quarters while the chaos in engineering
was resolved. They were nice enough living arrangements, a little quaint which
was about what he was used to. The door entered into the living room, a small
narrow space with a couch, empty book case, and large screen display. From
there, there was a small kitchen to David’s right, a small bathroom straight
ahead, and a bedroom to his left across from a fairly decent sized closet. The
bedroom had a surprisingly comfortable looking mattress.
David supposed once he hung a few of his
posters around, got some plants in there, it wouldn’t be so bad a place to
live. There wasn’t any sand.
The door opened and Emma came in,
immediately throwing her arms around a stunned David.
“Can you believe this place?” she asked
him, letting him go and flopping on his couch. “Comfy. And check your fridge.”
David did, and to his surprise it was
stocked. With foods he’d never even seen before, only ever heard about for how
expensive and rare they were.
“They’ve got Hydroponics going. I mean not
completely. You don’t wanna see what happened to the tomatoes. Apparently Eggie
said they were infested with bugs. Like everywhere.” She laughed.
“So you two are friends now,” David said.
“What?” Emma said. “Pass me one of those
apples. No he still hates me. I was just imagining him biting into one of those
tomatoes.”
“Ah,” David said. Emma bit into the apple
he’d thrown her, and it crunched satisfyingly. David kinda wanted one now.
“These are part of the Beta crop,” Emma
continued, her mouth full of food. “Just enough to feed maybe two hundred
mouths which, lucky for us, is about all that’s on here right now. I’ve been
talking to people. They’ve been showing me how some of this shit works. Baby,
this is some good shit I’m talking about. You really have to see it.”
“Emma,” David said her name.
“There’s a medbay,” she told him. “You
should see the size of this medbay. And it could all belong to you and Doctor
Pross. I mean it’ll all be his, but with you as first officer you could work
there whenever you wanted. You could order yourself to work there.”
Emma sat up on the couch. “You could order
me to not be late for lunch!”
“Emma,” David repeated, shaking his head.
She stretched out along the couch and made
a pose with her head resting on her elbow. “Where would you like me commander,”
she said in her best attempt at a sultry voice.
“Emma,” David repeated again, rolling his
eyes. “I don’t think I’m going to take the position.”
“No!” Emma yelled, getting off the couch.
“No!” She stomped across the room to David. “You can’t do that.”
“I’m not their guy,” David insisted, and
Emma started poking him hard in his chest.
“You don’t get to walk out on me,” she
yelled at him as he raised up his arms to defend himself. “We’re – in – this –
together!”
“Ow,” he complained. “Ow. Emma Stop! I’m
not a leader. Please stop, that hurts.”
“You wanna know what hurts?” Emma asked him
pushing him into the kitchen. “Imagine being taken away from your family, from
your entire world and forced to work on something you’d never get to see
complete. Imagine being surrounded by unfamiliar hostile faces every day of the
rest of your life, being forever alone.”
“You’re talking about your mother,” David
blurted out loud like an idiot.
“It killed her, David.”
“Emma—“ David started to say.
“You’re my world, David,” Emma interrupted.
“And I don’t know if I can do this without you.” Her voice cracked and she
looked away from him, likely to hide her tears. He was sixteen years old when
he first met Emma. She’d been thirteen and living on the streets for months
already by then. Struggling to eat, begging for money on street corners with
her brother. He remembered giving her money, and sitting to talk with her while
his mother had gone into the bank. His family had been rich, living in a house
quite a lot larger than his.
He’d been surprised back then at the
instant connection he felt with her, and when she told him her story, he’d
begged his mom to adopt her and her brother. Emma had thought it ridiculous,
but David’s family were kind people who treated David like an adult. When he
wanted something he usually got it.
They’d grown up side by side ever since.
Almost like brother and sister. And in all that time he’d never seen her cry.
Not even living on the street.
“I’m sorry,” David said. “I didn’t realize
this meant so much to you.”
“Don’t listen to Gilber,” Emma told David.
“He’s bullshit. Everything he says is bullshit. He doesn’t know you like I do.
You’re the perfect person for the job.”
She stepped so close to him that he could
feel her breath on his face. They touched foreheads.
“This project is going to fail,” Emma told
David in a whisper. “They aren’t going to figure out the power crisis, and
that’s just the first of a hundred things that are going to go wrong. They need
us.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” David
complained.
“Shh,” Emma whispered. “I don’t know what
I’m doing either. But we’ve got this. We can do this. We’re the only ones,” she
shook her head against him. “The only ones who can save our entire race from
extinction. It’s just you. And it’s just me. It’s us. We’re a team and we can
do anything as long as we believe in each other.”
“I’ve always believed in you,” David told
her, matching her volume.
“And I believe in you,” Emma whispered
back, grabbing his hand in hers. “So we going to do this?” She balled her hand
into a fist.
They fist bumped.
Next Time on Adrift Homeless Act 2 Project Rebirth
Just because the Blazkor second rebellion has broken, doesn't mean there isn't still lots to be done. There's a ship to fix, and a crew still must be formed to man it. People will need to be uprooted from their homes and forced to live in an unfamiliar environment. Bureaucracy will have to be tended to. And there are more threats still to come.
Just because the Blazkor second rebellion has broken, doesn't mean there isn't still lots to be done. There's a ship to fix, and a crew still must be formed to man it. People will need to be uprooted from their homes and forced to live in an unfamiliar environment. Bureaucracy will have to be tended to. And there are more threats still to come.
Next Month on patreon.com/99geek The Aldonn Chronicles Ch 5
The largest meeting of Thieves from across Capsin is to be held as Lee begins to move forward with all out war on the Mage Council. Aldonn, Edward, Frankie, and Penelope all want to stop war from breaking out, but quickly they become little more than part of the festivities. This is the epic climax to the first Act of The Aldonn Chronicles and will mark the end of the first of three parts that will make up Season One of 99% Geek.
The largest meeting of Thieves from across Capsin is to be held as Lee begins to move forward with all out war on the Mage Council. Aldonn, Edward, Frankie, and Penelope all want to stop war from breaking out, but quickly they become little more than part of the festivities. This is the epic climax to the first Act of The Aldonn Chronicles and will mark the end of the first of three parts that will make up Season One of 99% Geek.
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