by Ivan Kal
“Commodore, the d-wave will be recharged in twenty seconds,” Jones informed her.
Aiko felt relieved. That would allow them some reprieve from the Val’ayash missiles.
“Commodore,” came a new voice from her side, and she turned to look at Ethan D-001. “May I suggest that we keep one charge in reserve? And I would recommend our changing course to this heading.” He waved a hand and sent the new heading to her screen. “If you would allow me control over the second d-wave charge, I believe that I can be of assistance.”
Aiko looked at what he had sent her incredulously. It was an insane heading, and she was about to tell him that when she realized what he wanted to do. She thought about it for a moment, and then agreed. “Navigation, alter our heading. Weapons, transfer control of the d-wave to the Dragon.”
Jones looked at her for a moment as if he was going to say something, but he decided against it. Aiko continued looking at the screens and the battle. The Fury’s powerful lasers were hitting the battleships now, scorching their hulls even as missiles came in a steady flow. The salvos now fired by both sides were small enough for both sides’ point defense to take care of with greater ease, but in the chaos, some still passed through.
Aiko watched as the Fury altered course, turning directly at one of Val’ayash battleships, the course having it pass just near the battleship. The other surviving battleship was more damaged, and so Aiko gave out new orders.
“All ships: focus fire on the damaged battleship!” Aiko said just as the battleships opened fire with their plasma weapons, and a few moments later her ships did the same. Aiko had a moment of satisfaction from seeing that at least one of their weapons was equally matched.
One last wave of missiles neared the Fury and Aiko saw the d-wave activate, disintegrating them all. Both sides had almost certainly depleted their missile supplies. Now it was a simple slugging match, and Aiko had the largest ship.
Fire from the enemy had been focused on the Fury, but as the two battleships and their sole surviving battlecruiser neared point-blank range, their beams switched targets. Seeing how little damage they were doing to the Fury, the battleships’ beam weapons focused on the Chimborazo, and with each strike bore deep into the Atlas-class carrier. The UTS ships’ plasma and lasers fired back, scorching the damaged battleship, but the enemy fire proved too destructive. A beam of purple light stuck the Chimborazo and pierced right through the ship, and instantly the carrier lost power as a single explosion rocked the ship, leaving it dead in space.
But then the fighters came in for another attack. Targeting the injured battleship, the Wraiths and Eagles came in with their laser turrets, adding their fire to that of the Fury and the Everest. The battleship’s point defense, damaged as it was, still took down many fighters, as there were now no missiles to protect them.
Right then the Everest fired its rail-guns, and the massive slabs of metal flew ahead and smashed into the battleship’s hull, which had already been weakened by plasma and lasers. The battleship’s hull cracked open, and it could no longer take the combined firepower.
The Val’ayash battleships buckled and then exploded, sending debris in every direction. Aiko saw the other battleship try to veer off as the Fury, Everest, and Prometheus switched their fire to it, to get out of range as its shields flared, but somehow still held. But then it was too late—the two massive ships closed the range, the Fury just nearly missing the battleship. That had been the idea, however; in the single moment when the two ships had been passing next to each other, Fury’s d-wave activated. An instantaneous wave of disintegration flashed around the super carrier and the battleship, which was just four hundred kilometers away. As the wave caught the Val’ayash battleship, it disintegrated. Broken down to its base components, it disappeared from the holo as if it were never there. Nothing remaining to ever even suggest that it had existed.
The remaining battlecruiser burned hard, veering off and getting out of range. Its drives were damaged, but at the speeds her force was moving it was gaining distance fast. Aiko ordered the Everest to turn and take it out, as the battlecruiser was already near death, and the Everest was her fastest ship at the moment. The Fury, even undamaged, was far slower, and the Prometheus had taken some damage to its drives. Everest retrieved its fighters and then followed the battlecruiser.
Aiko watched on the holo as the Everest shot its lasers at the Val’ayash vessel, and then it sent its fighters ahead, resupplied, to finish it off. The fighters came in on an attack run and their missiles hammered into the unprotected ship, destroying it.
Aiko released a sigh of relief and closed her eyes. They had won—and the cheering around her started.
“Commodore!” came a voice, startling her and everyone else around her. She looked at the holo and immediately saw the reason for the fear she heard in the voice. A ship appeared next to the Everest—the Val’ayash light cruiser. From near-point-blank range it opened fire before the Everest could react, and three beams of purple light stabbed into the carrier, blowing right through the ship and taking it apart in mere seconds.
Aiko saw the fighters rushing back to avenge their ship, but the light cruiser remained there only for a few moments before it disappeared again into FTL. Aiko closed her eyes and gave a silent prayer for the fallen in this battle. But when she opened her eyes, she gave orders for her ships to stick close in formation. She didn’t know if the light cruiser was going to stay in system, but she knew that it wouldn’t be able to take on her remaining ships together, if they decided to come in for another attack run.
“Set a course for Earth.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Captain Kane Reinhart sat in his mech-frame on board the Fury, inside one of its launch tubes, and waited. The fleet had settled in high Earth orbit and he, alongside with the troops brought from Senka, would soon be deployed to help the fighting on the ground. They had managed to get in contact with Earth’s command—the Val’ayash invasion had not been a worldwide operation. Instead, they had attacked only a few locations, attempting to gain access to the underground facilities deep inside the Earth’s crust. The fighting had been contained to those locations, with the Val’ayash keeping the fronts clear of reinforcements with the help of their fleet in orbit. But now that the fleet was no longer an issue, and the Val’ayash transports were fleeing the system. Aiko had decided against pursuing them as they still didn’t know if the Val’ayash light cruiser was lurking around. Now, the UTS army was able to begin a counter offensive and would reinforce the invaded areas. The Val’ayash had bombed the bigger military installations on the ground as well as major cities such as London, Berlin, New York, Tokyo, and Sydney, but most of the population had been evacuated underground or to the countryside the moment the Val’ayash had appeared in system. Earth had learned much from the Qash’vo’tar invasion, and so the casualties had been far less than they could’ve been; still, the number was in the millions.
Thankfully the military still had enough forces to engage them; most of their larger installations had been underground since before the Qash’vo’tar had been driven out. Earth had many facilities beneath the ground all over the world. Many of them were power-generating plants—stations with long, tube-like generators that tapped into the planet’s core to gather power. Others were military installations, and while most of the installations were connected by a series of tunnels and a tram system stretching across the planet, there was an enormous distance between them. One of the installations was far more important than the others, however: the facility which held the portal to Ethorria.
That facility was buried deep beneath the Alps. Both Vienna and Belgrade had access to that facility, and both cities had been the targets of the Val’ayash troops. Vienna’s facility had been under siege for days, but it was still holding. Belgrade’s had gone dark two days ago, and the army had lost contact with the portal facility hours ago.
Kane’s team was being assigned to help with the Belgrade operation. The army was a
lready on it and would be in position any moment. Kane and his team would provide backup and, in the case that the facility had fallen, spearhead the efforts to retake it.
“Everybody ready?” Kane asked over the mech-frame’s private comms.
“Ready,” Imari reported.
“Yes,” Erika said.
“Good. We are going in with a team of Dragons and five hundred troops from Senka, the biggest detachment. That should tell you how important this operation is. We need to retake the facility immediately, and if the Val’ayash have managed to push to the portal rather than simply cut communications, then we need to follow them through to Ethorria,” Kane said. “Our mech-frame team will be providing cover and support for the Dragons. We will be going down with Emma D-008, Anna D-007, Dario D-006, and Remi D-002. The rest of the Dragons will be going to the other locations.” Less than twenty Dragons had come with them to Sol, as only those who had gone through their last augmentations were truly considered Dragons.
“Who is in charge?” Erika asked.
“I will be in command, with Remi D-002 serving as my second. We will be going in strong and fast: shock and push through. Val’ayash are entrenched in the base of Avala Mountain and the entrance to the Belgrade facility. The army should be hitting them with artillery soon, as well as executing a frontal assault.”
The two acknowledged his words, and then they waited. A few minutes later, they received the go-ahead and they launched. The mech-frames left the Fury and moved in formation with two of Senka’s new assault transports, which were part of their team. Kane could see other transports, being escorted by fighters, already flying down toward the atmosphere and then disappearing in a flash of blue light.
His team did the same. They set a course and started their descent, then executed their blinks and came out into the atmosphere, announcing their arrival with a large boom of displaced air and a flash of blue light. They were already close to the ground, and so they flew down close to avoid any anti-air fire—if the Val’ayash had any—and proceeded toward their destination.
As they got closer, Kane could see flashes of light and explosions in the dark of the night. The assault had already started.
They reached their destination, and landed in a large stretch of cleared land inside a forest next to artillery guns and tanks waiting to go in. Kane was reminded that the Earth military hadn’t had the opportunity to upgrade their weaponry to magi-tech, as they had been trying to keep it a secret from the Qash’vo’tar and the Zhal.
The facility was beneath the mountain. Avala was a forest-covered mountain just next to the city, surrounded by suburbs and a few villages next to the urban sprawl. Thankfully all of those had been evacuated, or this operation would’ve been a lot harder.
As soon as they landed, the transport opened up, revealing four Dragons in their black-and-dark-blue armored suits. Kane didn’t know their capabilities, but they looked powerful. Behind them came troops each wearing a type of combat suit that Kane had never seen before, and behind them came out two tanks of an equally strange design.
Kane got a link request from Remi D-002 and he connected. Immediately, he heard her speaking with the officer in charge of this operation.
“—it’s not working! I hope you brought something better than what we have, because those shields are a real pain in our asses. They have the entire side of the mountain covered and every single one of our attempts to break through has failed.”
“We have brought enough fire power to break through. Have you had any communication with the forces in charge of the defense?” Kane heard Remi ask.
“Nothing, the damn aliens have the entire mountain secured. If any survived, they are hiding deeper in the facility,” the man said.
Kane knew that that was unlikely. If the Val’ayash had managed to break through the entrance, they had most certainly moved deeper in. Belgrade’s facility had been a materials-refining factory, so its defense contingent hadn’t been as large as it was in some other locations.
“All right, I need you told pause your fire. We will go in and punch through the shield. You will then come in and clean up,” Remi said.
The man looked skeptically at Remi and the troops behind her. He glanced at the mech-frames and then back to her. “If you say that you can get through, then go for it. We have been trying for the last hour,” the man said, and then turned around and started issuing orders.
Remi turned to look at Kane’s mech-frame. “I’m going to have the tanks in front. Your mech-frames should provide fire from behind them,” Remi said.
“Will the two tanks be enough to take down the shields?” Kane asked.
“They are magi-tech tanks. They have enough power to get through, although I fear that it will drain their power cells. We will get only one shot at this—I don’t know if the shield will stay down for long.”
“All right, as soon as the shield is down, I’ll take my mech-frames inside and start shooting things up, and you should follow closely behind.”
“Agreed, Captain.” She nodded and then cut the comm.
The tanks started moving through the forest until they got to the wide road leading to the tunnel which led to the facility. Kane and his mech-frames walked behind them, and soon enough they could see the massive tunnel opening in the side of the mountain. Barriers had been placed all around it with devices glowing softly in the dark.
Almost immediately the Val’ayash opened fire—beams of purple light left the turrets they had placed to defend the entrance and they stopped just a few meters in front of the two tanks as they encountered the magic shields.
The tanks stopped and their strange two-pronged turret swiveled to target the center of the shield. Kane noticed that the turrets had no barrels; instead, he felt magic being gathered as the spellscripts on the two-pronged turret started to glow. A moment later, dark-red energy flashed to life, filling in the space between the two prongs. It churned there for a few seconds, and then both tanks fired.
The night turned red as beams of intense power flashed forward, impacting the shield and holding on it. The shield flickered from yellow to dark orange, and then it collapsed. The beams continued for a moment, blowing apart the barriers and causing everything around them to melt. Then the beams stopped and Kane could see the two lines of melted asphalt from the tanks to the barriers, as well as the red-hot glow of the destruction they had wrought on the Val’ayash troops.
He immediately turned on his thrusters and flew over the tanks, flying toward the barriers. He landed Leviathan amidst the destruction with Artemis and Orion close behind him.
The surviving Val’ayash started firing their weapons at his mech-frame, but its kotarium-built hull held. He used the mind spell to move his mech-frame and target his two forearm-mounted plasma turrets, and then he opened fire. Yellowish plasma filled the night, burning the Val’ayash troops with every shot. There were at least a few hundred of them, and as he and his other mech-frames fired, they focused on single targets who were attempting to retreat.
“Imari, take down the turrets,” Kane ordered. “Erika, get those generators!”
Imari focused her fire and took down the remaining turrets, while Erika flew into the air and took care of the shield generators to prevent them from bringing the shield back on-line. Then more weapons fire joined his as the Dragons blinked in. He saw the four blink from area to area to unleash death and destruction. Their armor didn’t carry any additional weapons except for the spellslingers, and Kane saw rapid fired magic-bolts flying and burning the Val’ayash shields down, followed by Dragons blinking in close and cutting them down with what looked like blades made of dark-red light, similar to the beams that the tanks had fired. Each swipe went right through a Val’ayash soldier.
Kane couldn’t help but be amazed at their skill. He flew into the air, joining Erika, and together they cleared out the remaining soldiers and their defensive structures. Kane flew to the massive tunnel opening in the mountain and saw that one of
the two tram platforms was missing—probably being used by the Val’ayash to get deeper underground. He turned and saw that Remi had secured the area with the troops from Senka, who had just arrived.
He opened a channel to her. “We need to follow them down,” Kane said.
Remi blinked over and looked at the platform. “That won’t hold many of us,” she commented.
She was right; they couldn’t take many troops with them. “We will take my mech-frames and your Dragons. The rest can go on foot through the tunnel.”
“It will take them hours just to get to the next station,” Remi said.
“I know, but we have no choice,” Kane said. The facility was deep, and the portal room even further. The tram could go incredibly fast, enough so that they could reach the portal room in hours. Going on foot would take the soldiers days if the next station was empty.
“I agree; perhaps the Val’ayash have only gotten to the next station. If so, there will be another platform there.”
“Perhaps,” Kane said, then opened the channel to the rest of his team, including the Dragons, and ordered them all on the platform.
They didn’t have any time to waste.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The three mech-frames and the four Dragons boarded the platform. The platform closed up, making it something like a large box. It was large enough that the mech-frames could stand upright inside. It had to be, as it was mostly used to ferry processed materials to and from the processing plant.
Kane felt the acceleration, but a few moments later the magi-tech nullification fields kicked in and he felt nothing. The platform increased in speed, hurtling downward into the ground.
