Battle For Earth

by Daniela A. Wolfe

  I turned the ship in what I believed was Lily’s general direction and stifled a gasp as I took in the scene displayed in front of me. Our other ship had been blown to pieces and all that was left was a big heap of flaming resin and metal. A patrol ship was hovering in the air above the wreckage and opened fire taking us by surprise.

  “God, Lily…” I sobbed fighting away tears as I did my best to avoid the blasts. I hadn’t really gotten a very good handle on the controls so it mostly just careened through the air like a crazed psailf.

  “BASTARDS!” Kaya screamed slamming her fist against the weapons console then opened fire. The ship’s cannons stuttered spewing out clouds of molten dirt which splattered to the ground falling well short of the intended target. She pressed down on the trigger a second time, which seemed to do the trick the cannons stuttered as before, but this time a deluge of phase bolts erupted out slamming into the enemy ship.

  The patrol vessel veered away, but not before taking several direct hits to its nose. Kaya screamed mashing down on the controls a final time, the patrol ship burst into flames before it plummeted to the ground erupting into a fiery inferno that was so strong it even shook our new ride which was hovering a good distance away.

  My hands were shaking as I brought the ship down, it lurched and slammed into the ground with jarring force, but I managed to get it down safely. I didn’t even bother shutting the engine down before leaping out of my seat and out of the room. All I could think about was finding Lily, I knew there wasn’t much chance she was still alive, but I had to know either way. I heard footsteps in the hall behind me, but I didn’t look back.

  “Lexa wait!” Becca called after me and I slowed just enough for her to catch up. “You might still need me to open the exit hatch.”

  I nodded, and forced myself to go slow enough that my sister could keep up. It only took a few seconds to reach the ladder, but each of those moments were pure agony. Rebecca climbed up and inserted the key. I was right on her tail and I barely allowed her enough time to climb out the hatch before pushing past her.

  The place was a mess, and there was wreckage at least twenty meters out in every direction. There were even a few brush fires which had been ignited by the burning debris. “Lily!” I screamed cupping my hands around my mouth.

  There was no response, not that I was really expecting one, but I had to try. I jumped from atop the ship, leaping almost ten meters in a single bound, and barely skirted a small brush fire. I felt the heat from the flames, but I was so intent on finding Lily that I didn’t care. I was running toward the wreck without paying any mind to my surroundings which is why I didn’t notice the gray skin until he was almost on top of me.

  I leapt sideways and barely avoided crashing into him. He was pretty quick on his feet particularly for an un-bonded Qharr, fortunately I happened to be a lot faster. I leapt up striking him with a powerful roundhouse kick that sent the bastard reeling under the force of my blow. Before he could recover I smashed my fist into the side of his head and the other into the side of his chest. He fell to the ground and when he tried to crawl back up I kicked him as hard as I could in the side of the head.

  Before I could check for signs of life I felt a hand on my shoulder and I spun around to find myself facing another hunter. He slammed his massive paw into my throat and lifted me up from the ground. I gripped my hands around his fingers, there was a sick crunch from one of his hands and he dropped me like a sack of a potatoes. I fell to the ground rolling and was back on my feet in time to block the blows from his unbroken hand.

  I pretty well had the upper hand, but when I heard Becca’s screams I decided that play time was over. I pulled my new pistols from their holster and opened fire. The beams made short work of him and before his body even hit the ground I took off in the direction of my sister’s voice. I didn’t have far to go and when I found her, an unusually rotund Qharr had one meaty hand clenched around her shoulder and the other held a pistol against her temple. “Put your weapons down, slave, or this one dies.”

  I glowered at him, but did as he demanded slowly setting the pistols down on the ground at my feet. “Okay,” I said speaking with a calm and even voice. “Now set her free.”

  “No, I know what you are human. You bonded humans are just as dangerous as the edant k’teth. If I let this one go, I’ll be dead before I can blink. Better to wait until the Inquisitors come,” he replied.

  “Yeah,” a familiar voice said. “There’s just one problem with that. You really didn’t count on there being two of us.”

  Becca screamed, as violet blood splatter all over and her captor fell face-forward to the ground dead. She managed to free herself and jump out of the way before the body could collapse on her and I let out a high-pitched squeal as I recognized the slender form of Lily standing over the body with Kaya’s phase rifle in her arms. I rushed forward, flinging my arms around her waist and lifting up off her feet as I locked my lips around hers in kiss. She melted into my arms and it was only when I grew short of breath that I reluctantly allowed myself to set her back down.

  “How the hell did you survive that?” I threw my hands out at the wreckage.

  “The Qharr came flying in with guns blazing and took out my engines right off the bat. It was pretty close, but I got into one of the escape pods before they blew the ship completely to hell.” She winced rubbing her left temple. “Got jostled around pretty good though. They really don’t design those things to be launched so close to the ground.”

  “Scared the crap out of me when that ship rose up from the ground and…” she trailed off her eyes roving across the wreckage. “Blew the shit out of that patrol ship. I’m guessing that was you?”

  I nodded.

  “So, the array was in that ship, right?”

  I nodded again, but Becca spoke up before either of us could say a thing. “How exactly did those hunters survive?”

  “The two craft I took out launched escape pods. I don’t know about the third, I was still crawling out of my pod when that happened, but patrol craft are usually manned by at least three warriors so for all we know there could be more gray-skinned bastards crawling around.”

  “I think it’s time we leave. That Qharr seemed pretty certain the Inquisitors were on their way. I don’t suppose you have any experience piloting human craft, do you? The controls are a little weird for my tastes.”

  Becca and Lily both agreed and so we all retreated back into the ship. Unfortunately, Lily didn’t have any clue how to pilot it so I resumed my position at the helm. Takeoff was pretty rocky, but I did manage to get it back up in the air in one piece so there was that at least.

  Chapter Eight

  “Duvak,” I said under my breath glaring at the image of the destroyer in the view screen. I don’t know why, but I knew it was him.

  “Lily, you think you and Becca can open a radio link to that destroyer?”

  Lily nodded and a moment later the all-too-familiar visage of my former master appeared on screen. My breath caught in my throat and I thought my eyes might bulge out of my head when I realized that his hair was blue. At some point since our last meeting Duvak had been bonded with a K’teth symbiote. “This is High Inquisitor Duvak of the Ascendancy ship, Qellanas.”

  “So nice to see you again, Duvak.” I smiled. “How are things in the Ascendancy? Kill any innocents lately?”

  “You continue to test my patience, Jellfree.”

  Well at least he had finally come to accept that it really was me. Though, I couldn’t say whether or not that was a good thing.

  “Actually, it’s Lexa now,” I said trying my best to project an air of confidence. “In case you didn’t notice, I’ve got myself a sweet new ride.”

  “I have noticed, hu-man, my sensors show some unusual readings emanating from the vessel,” he said with a loud cough fingering his throat with his two middle fingers. “What is it you want?”

  “I just thought I’d drop you a line and tell you that I’m going t
o kill you. It seemed like the polite thing to do,” I said with a cheerful smile.

  I wasn’t exactly acting in character, but that was the point. I knew Duvak and if I could get him riled up enough, he’d get angry and hopefully make a mistake. “Say do you remember when you kill my parents? I think I might just return the favor. Your mother does live here on Earth doesn’t she? I’d kill your Dad too, but your Mom was such a whore I’d have to kill close to fifty puhk just to find the right one.”

  “Gend t’hal tokk!” Duvak screamed a moment before the display suddenly blinked off.

  “What was the hell was that about? If I didn’t know better I’d swear you were trying to piss him off! Fuck are you stupid?!” Kaya cursed glaring at me.

  “Duvak tends to makes mistakes when he’s angry,” I said calmly. “Besides the odds aren’t exactly in our favor to begin with. If pissing Duvak off gives us even slim chance at survival I’ll take it.”

  “Shit, you’re insane, you know that?” Farris grimaced running a hand through his mop of platinum hair.

  “I learned from the best. Kai, get ready to open fire.” I clamped my hands down on the controls slowing the ship’s movement to a crawl. As I expected the destroyer, wasn’t prepared for this move, and zoomed past, but not before Kaya managed to land a few shots. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any damage and it soon became obvious our weapons were too outdated to do any real damage.

  “Lily, there isn’t anything you can do about boosting weapons strength, is there?!” I asked over my shoulder doing my best to avoid the destroyers’ phase fire, but it was getting harder by the minute and several shots had already grazed us.

  “Not really sure, I-I don’t know anything about this ship.” she called back over her shoulders.

  “On second thought,” she added a moment later. “Most human phase weapons work more or less the same way. I might be able to boost power output to the phase dischargers so that we could fire more powerful shots, but assuming I’m right and it does work we’ll probably burn them out after so many firings. After that we won’t have any weapons.”

  “How many blasts?”

  “Hard to say, best guess is as many as a dozen, but probably less than half that,” she called back.

  “Do it, it’s our best chance. We’ll just have to make those shots count.”

  I dodged another barrage of blasts, but several got through making the whole ship shake. Things were getting pretty dicey and it was getting harder and harder to avoid the other ship’s weapons fire. Sooner or later they were going to land a shot which would do real damage and I wouldn’t be able to keep us aloft.

  “There! That should do it!” Lily called over her shoulder again.

  “Alright, help Kaya find a target. I’m sure Dyssa or Khala will be able to suggest a good one.”

  The ship shook as a barrage of phase canon blasts slammed into the stern and I gritted my teeth and fought the controls.

  “We lost the bow starboard thruster!” Lily’s voice called out.

  ‘You people really do need to stop stating the obvious.’

  I ignored Khala’s unwelcome commentary and I let out a series of curses as the ship rocked again and again.

  I heard Dyssa speaking, no doubt making recommendations on where to target the destroyer, but since I was so busy evading the enemy fire her words didn’t really register. However, it _did_ register when Kaya opened fire, especially when her blasts passed through their shields. She got a full eight shots out before the phase cannons burnt out and the whole ship shook from the resulting explosion.

  The comm line opened again and Duvak’s ugly mug appeared arrayed across the screen. “You may have managed to bring down my weapons, but my sensor readings show yours are down as well. Don’t think you’ve managed to get the better of us.” His image faded away after making the pronouncement and I sent my hands zooming across the control interface. The ship lurched forward, but missing one of its thrusters as it was, I could barely keep it aloft let alone maintain an escape route.

  “I really don’t like the sound of that.” Becca shuddered and turned back to me with mouth gaping open just a moment later.

  The ship rocked and I pounded a hand against the console as it suddenly lurched forward.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Lily offered up the explanation, but I certainly wasn’t happy to hear it. “They’ve got a tractor on us.”

  “Fuck,” Farris cursed between gritted teeth. “We’re so screwed.”

  “Yeah, it’s not going to be easy fending off a ship-full of gray skins particularly when one of them is Edant K’teth,” Kaya agreed.

  “It could be worse,” Rayland said. “At least we were able to disable their weapons.”

  “The fuck?” Farris rounded on him. “You really think that’s gonna do a damn bit of good, if they board the ship we’re all freaking screwed.”

  “What if we use the leap drive? I mean it worked once before.” Kaya gritted her teeth and glanced at Farris with a sidelong glance.

  “No, we almost didn’t survive it the last time and we really don’t know if we even have a drive with functioning coils. We can’t outrun them and unless someone has an anti-matter bomb up their sleeves, I doubt we can disable their shields. Well, not unless we blow the ship to smithereens. Besides we couldn’t even get the coils to spin if they were functional. Tractors have a way of interfering with them. They only have a partial lock. If we can force ourselves loose we can set down ship and confront them!” Lily said throwing her hands up in the air.

  “That such a good idea? That destroyer probably has a crew of several hundred Qharr. Do you really think we withstand that many?”

  Lily’s eyes sparkled as a sly grin stretched across her face. “We activate the shield, sit outside the ship, and pick the bastards off one by one. They won’t stand a chance. ”

  “Didn’t that stiff say that the shields were unstable? Seems like a pretty stupid fucking idea to me. ”

  “Shut up, Farris! ” Kaya, Lily and I all yelled at one.

  Lily shook her head and bit her lip. “He’s right, but we really don’t have a lot of choices. Matthis said they were unstable, not non-operational, if we can use them for even a short time before they destabilize we should be able to make this work.”

  “Do it.” I let out a long sigh and turned to the rest of the crew. “Get buckled in, this going to be a bumpy ride.”

  I slammed my hands down on the controls and sent the ship, lurching sideways, but had no effect other than a whole lot of shaking and groaning. I tried again, twisting my fingers around in the opposite direction this time I could actually feel the ship lurch forward, but I didn’t quite manage break free. The third time, my hands twisted and contorted across the console making complex gestures that didn’t seem to do too much good, at first. Then we broke free, and I felt the ship begin to lurch toward the ground. I tried to correct it, but only just barely managed it in time to come to a rather abrupt and rocky landing.

  I shook my head and pushed myself up from my seat. The others were still disoriented from the landing, but I couldn’t spare the time. Lily was on her feet a moment later and I placed my hands on her shoulders and locked gazes with her. “Get the shields up as soon as you can.”

  The others started to stir and I looked around the room. “Meet me outside as soon as you are recovered. The sooner we get out there, the better chance we have at heading them off.”

  

  “Lily! ” I called out over my shoulder. “How’s the shield doing?”

  “It’s holding steady!” She called back after peaking down at the little handheld clenched in her hands. It wasn’t one of her usual devices, it was actually a piece of diagnostic equipment which we’d found inside the ship.

  I clenched my fists and watched the empty field between the two ships in nervous anticipation. After our landing the destroyer had followed our example and set down a few dozen meters away. Whoever wa
s behind the helm must have been pretty talented. Landing a ship that size was challenging to say the least, but it took a lot more skill to bring it down as close as they had. Destroyers weren’t exactly renowned for their maneuverability.

  Pretty soon, a mass of gray bodies came pouring out from the destroyer. At first it was easy, we picked them off one by one, but as more Qharr came tearing across the divide between the ships it became apparent that there were too many warriors to take on.

  Rain from dull gray clouds came crashing down against our shield with audible splashes. Phase fire slammed into our barrier from the opposing forces instantly vaporizing the beads of water trickling down the sides of the shield. I probably would have found the sight beautiful if the brights splotches of light weren’t bringing impending doom.

  Even with my enhanced senses it was difficult to see, each splattering of light made it harder to see, and the rain definitely wasn’t helping at all. Lily and I managed to hit more than a few targets, but I got the sense that the others were just firing off shots blindly. Of the un-bonded members of our crew Vakrexid seemed to be the only one that was doing any good, aiming his tangler with pin-point precision, but he was only one being and since his weapon was non-lethal a few of his targets were freed by their co-patriots. I never would have guessed that the doctor would have so much success, but given that he was a member of a genetically engineered species, it wasn’t that surprising that we would possess superior reflexes and eye sight.

  Finally, they got close enough that I could begin to make out individual faces. Duvak was leading the charge, and even though he was dwarfed by those who he was leading into battle his presence was the one that filled me with the most dread. Despite his diminutive stature, he was the perfect ideal of a Qharr, he was a skilled warrior who lived and breathed the ideals of his people and their code of honor. Worst of all, Duvak never gave up. When he put his mind on something he would pursue it at all cost and until recently I’d never seen him fail.