Battle For Earth

by Daniela A. Wolfe

  “Shit!” my sister proclaimed staring at the two Qharr corpses with wide eyes. “Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

  I pursed my lips then held the weapon out to my sister. “Take it.”

  She shook her head and reached out to push it away. “I wouldn’t even know how to use it.”

  “It’s simple, just point and shoot,” I muttered. “In a hallway full of Qharr guards it matter how well you can aim.”

  “What about you? You obviously know how to use this thing. It will be better if you took it,” she replied her hands shaking as looking up at me with her jaw hanging open.

  I grabbed my sisters hand and forced her to take then pistol then silently moved across the room and grabbed the Qharr’s discarded phase rifle from the ground. It was huge, and much too heavy for an ordinary human to carry, but I was no ordinary. “One thing about being joined with a K’teth symbiote is that I can use Qharr tech.”

  My sister nodded then tucked the phase pistol into her waist band. “What now, Jeff? I really hope you have a plan.”

  I pursed my lips and glanced down at my chest where my knife wound was gushing like a sieve. ‘You gonna take care of that?’ I thought at Khala.

  ‘Already working on it,’ she replied.

  I shuddered a bit as my breast started to tingle then I held my hand out to Becca. “Yeah, we’re gonna get the hell out of here, but first I need to call our ride.”

  She stared at my open palm and seemed to hesitate for just a brief moment. She suddenly nodded then reached over and gripped my hand tightly. “Well, I guess we better hurry then.”

  I felt a huge grin stretch across my face as I led my sister out of the room and into the hallway. As we ran I realized that in a very odd way I felt as if a part of me that I didn’t even know was missing had returned. I had my sister again.

  

  We didn’t even make it ten meters before a group of three Qharr soldiers stopped us right in our tracks. “Ah, hell,” I cursed, stepped in front of my sister as the gray-skins opened fire. I raised my newly acquired phase rifle and returned fire killing the first two guards with four quick pulls of the trigger.

  A wide-eyed Becca ducked out from behind me and opened fire with shaking hands. Most of her shots splattered harmlessly against the wall, but after half a dozen shots a bolt hit the third guard. The blast wasn’t enough to fell the bastard, but I took care of him with a blast from my rifle.

  “Damned gray-skins,” I cursed slinging the rifle over my shoulder.

  “God, how often do you do this sort of stuff?” my sister shuddered and slipping the phase pistol back into her waist band.

  I shrugged and let a sheepish grin slip onto my face, “Technically, I only joined the resistance about a month ago, so… I guess this would only be my third time.”

  “My bro–” he stopped abruptly and stared at my chest then corrected herself. “Sister the rebel. You’ve only done this twice before? God, I’d have thought you’d been doing it a lot longer by the way you fight.”

  “Yeah, well that has more to do with Khala, my symbiote, than anything else,” I shrugged again then glanced about the hallway. “Refresh my memory where’s the nearest computer terminal?”

  My sister swallow hard and ran her hand through her hair. “Um, there’s one down that way toward the kitchen.” S pointed down a side corridor.

  “Right,” I smacked my forehead, “the one across from the men’s shower room.”

  “Come on,” I added looking around. “We need to get going before more guards show up.”

  Becca bit her lip then trailed me as I took off down the corridor. I had to hold myself back to keep myself from out pacing my sister, but even so she seemed to be moving at a snail’s pace. I kept glancing back only to find that I had to slow down for her to catch up. It was partly due to my K’teth-enhanced speed, but my sister was obviously unaccustomed to running at such a hard pace and it showed. Finally, we reached the computer terminal and I came to such an abrupt halt in front of it that my sister, unable to put on the breaks, came careening into me.

  After we untangled ourselves from one another, I glanced down at the terminal and scratched the back of my head as I tried to decipher all the foreign characters arrayed across its surface. ‘You think you could help me out?’ I thought at Khala.

  The symbiote didn’t respond, but suddenly all the Qharr symbols on the screen disappeared and were replaced with English words. “Damn, that is freaking cool!” I yelled out loud grinning at my sister.

  “What?” she asked peering over my shoulder.

  “It’s just Khala, she made it so that I could see all these characters on the screen in English,” I replied tapping on the area of the console screen labeled ‘Com System’. The screen flashed and a message appeared across its surface indicating that I was an ‘unrecognized user’.

  “Dammit!” I cursed pounding my fist against the wall. I knew the Qharr would eventually wise up to the fact that there was a human who could use Qharr tech running around, but I hadn’t expect them to devise a way to keep me out so quickly. ‘Any suggestions?’ I asked Khala closing my eyes and massaged my nose, but whatever chance she might have had to answer was lost when another pair of Qharr guard’s appeared on the other side of the hallway.

  “Bastard’s don’t know when to give up!” I yelled then turned to meet the gray-skins as they opened fire. “Well,” I shrugged as I knocked my sister out of the path of the phase bursts. “It’s a good thing the guards here haven’t figured out that I’m joined with a K’teth.”

  I reached for the phase rifle which I had left leaning against the wall, but a stray phase bolt hit it igniting the power cell. There was a loud pop and I felt a surge of energy as Khala absorbed the resultant energy. To their credit this new pair of guards did stop firing once it became apparent that their weapons weren’t doing me any harm. I took off down the hallway and they did too screaming at the top of their lungs. The first, a slender Qharr female pounced and caught me unaware with a fist across the face. Unable to brace myself in time, my head snapped back and I tumbled down onto my back.

  Both guards were on me in a second and for a moment I thought they had me, but fortunately I managed to roll away before they managed to get a good grip on me. I swung my fist at the male hitting him in the gut then leapt back to my feet and kicked the female as hard as I could in the chest as she tried to stand back to her feet. She fell to the ground and I turned to face the male as he regained his footing.

  “You’re strong for a hu-man!” he breathed circling me warily.

  “You have no idea,” I grinned then flung my fist at his face and watched in grim satisfaction as he teetered on his feet then collapsed to the ground. The female yelled at the top of her lungs and charged me, and slammed into my shoulder with enough force to send me reeling sideways and caused me to land breast first. I gasped and staggered back to my feet gritting my teeth against the pain in my chest as I rounded on the female.

  She brought her arm up to block my fist as I swung it in a sweeping blow that would have hit her in the chest. It impacted her arm instead and there was a sick crack as her bone snapped. She howled and grabbed at her arm. I took advantage of the momentary distraction and pressed the attack planting blow after her blow. She staggered back then I screamed at the top of my lungs, jumped up and fling my fist into the side of her head.

  She fell back and I turned away before her body hit the floor. I walked back to the console, but my lip as I looked down at the message displayed on the screen requesting the biometrics of an authorized user. I glanced down at the floor where the female was laying unconscious and noticed the Inquisitor rank insignia emblazoned across her flat naked chest and realized I had what I needed right there. Inquisitor was a special rank which was basically the Qharr equivalent to military police and if anyone had access to the comm system she probably would.

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  I sighed then moved across
the hallway, grabbed hold of the female Inquisitor’s unconscious body and dragged her across the floor to the computer console.

  I bit my lip, grunted then glanced back at my sister. “Help me would you?”

  It wasn’t that I couldn’t lift the Qharr woman by myself, but she was a lot bigger than me and it was just too damned awkward to prop her up by myself. My sister nodded and slipped a hand under the female’s armpit. Finally, we got her positioned so that her hand was touching the screen and the words ‘User recognized. Opening Comm System’ scrolled across the screen.

  I tapped my fingers against the console testing to see if I could manipulate the controls. The console responded and I opened a channel. I typed the following three words into the console Qharr, ‘Khala d’eg pokk’ which meant ‘Khala run up hill’ in English. Jaysen and I had put our heads together to work up a code which we could use to communicate should Kaya, Farris and I needed a quick way to escape the compound. To any of the Qharr who might have been listening the message would have sounded like complete nonsense, but to Jaysen the message would tell her we were in trouble and that we needed a pick up on the roof.

  I knelt down to snatch the phase pistol out of the Inquisitor’s hands then turned back to her and held my hand out to my sister with a huge grin on my face, “It’s done! Now let’s go find my friends and get the hell out of here!”

  She nodded and took my hand then once again we went tearing down the hallway.

  

  “Kai!” I yelled after having taken care of the Qharr guards outside the kitchen door then flew inside with my sister–who was panting heavily and dripping with sweat from her attempts to keep up with me–in tow. “It’s time to leave.”

  Everyone in the kitchen stopped what they were doing and abruptly turned to stare at Becca and me with wide eyes. Kaya set down the knife she’d been holding and stared at me with a single eyebrow crooked and the barest hint of a smile. “I take it that alarm that’s been blaring over the intercom is your work.”

  I nodded and glanced at my sister before turning back to Kaya. “More or less, you ready to get out of here?”

  “Fuck yeah!” She ran a hand through her hair and glancing back at old Creg and the other women in the room. “Nice meeting you guys, but I’ve been itching to get out of this damn place since I got here so… later!”

  Kaya bolted for the door and I glanced around the room and grinned. “Creg it was nice seeing you again. Oh and blondie,” I said turning to look Merida in the eyes. “You have a nice rack. Can you really blame me for staring?”

  Merida folded her arms across her chest and glared at me, but neither she nor any of the other occupants of the room said a word as Kaya, Becca and I all fled away from the kitchen.

  “Okay,” Kaya panted running up beside me. “What the hell happened?”

  I sighed, “Jerem tried to rape me… Now he’s dead.”

  “Shit… are you okay?”

  “Fine, he didn’t get very far,” I shuddered then burst forward putting on the speed as we turned a corner. “Now come on it’s time to find Farris.”

  

  “Damn there are a lot of guards,” I cursed peeking through the door to the manufacturing area of the compound where Farris had been assigned. I don’t really know what I was expecting, the factory took up the largest area of the compound and there were more slaves working there than in any other area, but it went far beyond that. Factories did tend to have a high number of slave revolts which wasn’t that surprising considering that the working conditions were absolutely terrible which in turn meant there were more guards assigned to that area per slave than any other.

  I grimaced and glanced at Kaya who was clutching at the pistol which my sister had long since relinquished when it became apparent that Kaya was the better shot.

  “You have any ideas?” I asked Kaya running a hand through my hair and let out a long sigh.

  Kaya shook her head and pursed her lips. “I have no freaking idea and I gotta say I really don’t like our odds.”

  “Dammit, well we can’t just leave Farris,” I breathed closing my eyes then glanced back at the door. “I’m going in…” I trailed off gripping at my phase pistol and leapt through the doorway. I swung my weapon around taking out the pair guards who were standing near the door then fired off another few shots hitting the next few who were supervising a portion of the assembly line nearest to the door.

  It had been ten years since I’d entered the manufacturing area of the compound, but nothing seemed to have changed. The assembly lines were so long that they never seemed to end, and the machines, like all Qharr tech, were massive insectine assemblage that extended all the way up the ceiling and down the entire length of the room. Within the compound they manufactured parts to Qharr ships which were then shipped to a Qharr base were they would be inspected and assembled by the expert (and more trustworthy) hands of Qharr technicians.

  “MATTHEW FARRIS!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “You ready to get the hell out of here?!”

  All the humans within the manufacturing facility turned to me, but no one stepped forward. Which wasn’t surprising considering that a group of nearly half a dozen guards came tearing across the room toward me.

  “Shit,” I cursed under my breath and raised my pistol. The gray-skins opened fire pelting me with blast after blast and I returned fire even as Khala absorbed energy from each of the individual bolts. I took down three soldiers before they remaining three were on top of me. I dropped my phase pistol and swung my fist at the foremost of the three.

  Several phase bolts splattered against my back and I knew, without looking, that Kaya had opened fire with the underpowered pistol. “Farris dammit!” I yelled kicking another of the Qharr, who happened to be the only male of the trio, across the chest. “Would you get the hell out here?!”

  The first gray-skin punched me in the shoulder, locked her hand around my throat, and lifted me up off the ground all within the blink of an eye. I reached up to claw at her hands, but before I could force them open she slammed me down to the ground with what was likely her full strength. I felt my bones creak just as they did when I’d been slammed against the wall, but the pain was well within my tolerance. I kicked her across the chest and was about to shove her aside when a familiar (and oh so annoying) voice proclaimed. “Let go of her dammit!”

  “Spl’k hu-man!” the Qharr female spat out in a gravelly baritone voice just before she suddenly collapsed on top of me. I pushed her off then sprang back to my feet to find that Rayland and Farris were both battling the two remaining guards. Each held a long metal bar and were having a pretty hard time fending off the gray-skins’ advances. I snatched the bar from out of Rayland’s hand then slammed it into the guard which he’d been battling. I made short work of him then joined Farris as he battled the third. I swung the bar and hit her across the chest as hard as I could. She went flying back and I turned to Farris with an appreciative smile. “Thanks for the help.”

  “What and I don’t get any credit?” Rayland asked as I threw the bar back at him then snatch my pistol back from the ground. He snatched the bar out of the air and I sighed. “Thanks, Ray, but your help really wasn’t necessary.”

  He shook his head and grinned at me. “Whatever you say. Maybe you could explain to me how you happen to be impervious to phase fire and why you’re so strong?”

  I rolled my eyes and let a long exaggerated sigh escape my lips. “Maybe another time. Look it’s been nice, but I think it’s time for my friends and I get to going.”

  “Sure.” He grinned his eyes lingering on my breasts and it was only then that I realized that the phase bolts had burned a hole in my shirt and exposed my nipple.

  “Dammed boobs,” I cursed under my breath then slipped my hand over the hole to hide the exposed flesh.

  “Well, this is goodbye then,” I added feeling my cheeks burn as I grabbed Farris by his shoulder and motioned for Kaya and Becca to leave.
/>
  “Not goodbye,” he beamed trailing us as we moved for the door. I glanced over my shoulder and swallow hard as I caught sight of a group of guards led by a towering blue-haired Qharr who towered over his fellow Qharr standing at well over eight feet tall. It looked as if Het’ma’s Corrector had finally showed his face.

  “Dammit,” I cursed. “Rayland get the hell away from us! A bunch of rebels is about the last group of people you’d want to associate yourself.”

  “I’m coming,” he insisted following us as we fled out the door. “I know about the biometric key!”

  “Dammit! Just who the hell are you?” I cursed. “You better not slow us down.”

  “You contact Jaysen?” Kaya asked glancing back over her shoulder as a phase bolt shot past her head.

  “Yeah,” I nodded firing my own weapon over my shoulder at our pursuers trying my best not to hit the corrector so that I didn’t provide him with any additional energy. “I told her to pick us up on the roof.”

  “Right,” Kaya nodded. “With that funky code you two worked out.”

  “The roof?” My sister panted. “You know there’s only one way up there. We’ll be trapped for sure.”

  “Trust me,” I replied stepping in front of a phase bolt before it could hit her. “We know what we’re doing…”

  

  The Qharr chased us through the corridors and it was all I could do to keep the others going. I didn’t have any trouble keeping the pace, but the others were struggling and I didn’t know how long they could keep up. There was only so much I could do, especially since I was the only one of our number capable of fending off Corrector Taevok and it was very necessary to do so. Once already he’d put on a burst of sudden K’teth-enhanced speed and appeared behind us.

  “The fucker just won’t give up.” I happened to glance over my shoulder and watched him run at us and gritted my teeth as he drew closer and closer.

  ‘Khala if there are any special abilities we might be able use to take him out, I’m all ears. ‘

  ‘None’