New Earth

by Randal Sloan

  “None of them were exactly willing to talk about their past, but it was obvious that they were hiding something. A group within them was the worst of all, a militant religious group; they claimed to have powers of the mind and used their abilities at such to maintain control of their Council. There was an incident and the Imperials and the aliens found themselves at war.

  “The Imperials have always claimed that they won and wiped out all of the aliens. The alien presence here shows us that obviously was not true and instead it appears that the humans just drove them underground. That was what the legends told us; over the centuries, stories were told by those who wandered within the caverns, stories of running across one of the aliens, but no one was ever able to completely believe them. No one could ever produce proof that it had really happened, plus the Imperials refused to allow them to talk about it.

  “The legend says these aliens have remained hidden underground and that at some undetermined time, they will rise from their underground lair to once more take their place upon this world. “

  She turned to look to her companions, “We have a saying. How does it go?”

  “‘… and the Children of the Night shall rise from under the world and take their rightful place over the Light,’” Missy told her.

  “Obviously, they’ve decided that it’s now the time to rise and take over the planet. It sure doesn’t look like the Imperials will stand in their way this time.”

  She shook her head. “From what we just saw, I’m not sure we can either. It’s like some kind of magic; I’m not sure even your technology will prevail.

  “We may all be doomed.”

  No one spoke for a moment, everyone thinking about what they’d just heard. Even the Marines were temporarily quiet, thinking about those events of the past. And to think they’d lived underground all this time with no one knowing they were there.

  Robert shook his head. “I might even have felt sorry for these guys, but they are the aggressors here. Your legend makes a lot of sense, but it’s only a legend. I’ll admit these guys may be more of a challenge than we were expecting, but I bet they still bleed just like the rest of us.”

  Now that he’d snapped out of it, he went on. “I’m not willing to give up just yet. What you call magic we may not understand, but it still must obey the basic laws of physics. Nothing that a powerful enough shield won’t stop. That, and we have something to shoot back with a little more pop to it than what your Imperials had.”

  As they watched, a large number of the Aerstone now swarmed the Imperial palace. At least the rest of them were using more conventional weapons. All of this allowed the Master Sergeant to build a more complete picture of what they really faced. He resumed their conversation, pulling up the map of the block.

  “It looks like only the five have those special powers, whatever they are. You see the rest are no different from any other soldier. Those weapons won’t cause us any problems. The biggest problem I see is their tremendous numbers. There’s an awful lot of them.

  “Unfortunately, that presents us with a different problem in our defense of Block 85. Counting the underground access, we have far too many access points. We intend to defend the main entrances, but based on what I just saw, I suspect when they figure out it’s not going to be as easy with us as with the Imperials, they’ll send an all out assault. There’s no way we can defend all the possible access points from them.”

  He shook his head at the shocked response of the three girls. “I’m not saying that we’re not going to try. But we need to plan for a fallback, a fallback that protects the ones that are here at all costs.

  “I won’t lie to you. I don’t know how long we can hold once we have to make that withdrawal. Not with the mind weapon those ninjas seem to have. Our only hope is to make it until the Princess gets here.”

  Missy at first had felt anger at his declaration that they would not be able to defend everything, as they’d given their defense over to the Marines, but as she watched the aliens swarm the palace, she quickly realized he was right. She also realized something else.

  “You’re right,” she told him, “but I now see we’ve also made a rather large mistake on our part.”

  She looked at her friends. “Since when do we Protectors allow someone else to do our job? Just because the Marines have taken over the overall defense doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing our part.”

  She pointed at the screen in front of them. “We still have time. It’s obvious that they intend to completely eliminate those in the Imperial palace before they move on us. We’ve got to activate the Protector network!”

  The three girls moved quickly after Missy’s proclamation. Activating the Protector network was mostly a low tech affair. After all, they had to hide their tech level from the Imperials, lest the Imperial leadership decide the Protector network was a threat that needed to be taken out. As long as they led the Imperials to believe they were no threat to their rule, they left them alone. So the call out to the Protectors was through a hardwired landline network.

  That’s where the low tech ended. A shipment of old Imperial militia body armor and helmets destined for destruction had been intercepted before they could be destroyed and Krissy had immediately upgraded the helmets with her tech. True, the body armor itself was very low tech and would provide limited protection against even the poor weapons the majority of the aliens were using, but it would have to be enough.

  Krissy’s upgrades to the helmets created a connected network that nearly rivaled that of the Marines. She didn’t have the communication equipment and the anti-jammer systems the Marines had, but she’d figured out a way to modify the local network in Block 85 to be nearly as hardened. Her modifications to the network nodes had equipped them with the ability to automatically switch frequencies until a usable channel was found.

  And the tech in the helmets — what she’d done to them would have amazed the Marines if they’d had time to look. Krissy had customized the software in ways that went way beyond what the Marines had, despite the fact their equipment was the most advanced the Galactics could produce. What was even more amazing was that she did it all without the implants the Galactics took for granted.

  Krissy would remain in the Marine control center to keep watch over the Protector’s defenses and provide the others with real time information. Sissy and Missy each took a group of Protectors and moved to their areas to defend at opposite ends of the block. They were ready.

  It was a good thing. It looked like the aliens were just about finished with the Imperial palace, which was now just a pile of rubble. Nothing living other than the aliens remained. Even as Krissy and her friends watched the view of the palace, the five that had initially led the attack gathered out in front again.

  As the group moved out in a direction back toward the center of the city, everyone knew where they were headed.

  Chapter 12

  The Battle For Block 85

  Master Sergeant Gibbons sent Jackson to carry a direct message to his Marine squad members. He didn’t want to risk it on an open channel even though he was certain no one could intercept it. Plus, he wanted the orders to have a more personal touch than just a broadcast. After all, what he was asking was quite different from their normal orders.

  The Marine’s strategy was simple. They had built reinforced positions that included barricades anchored to the street such that the enemy would be forced to channel into a small area where the Marines could concentrate their fire. Additional barricades protected their positions from the rear and sides and Galactic shield technology further protected them. Nothing should be able to possibly get through short of an armored vehicle, or perhaps those ‘psycho aliens’ as Jackson had dubbed the special psychic group. Still, he needed to warn the troops about them. They still weren’t sure about what they could do and they needed to be prepared just in case.

  Everyone knew that, no matter what, their defense on the perimeter must hold. Too many people were counting o
n them and the fall back positions were just not good enough.

  Jackson needed to visit each group of men at their assigned positions, so he started with the north end, speaking to the private he’d placed in charge along with the rest of the team. He spoke softly but clearly.

  “Jones, your team is responsible for protecting the street level entrance to the block on this end of the street. Second squad has the south end and we have others protecting the underground entrances.

  “As we expected, the aliens are heading this way after completely destroying the palace. Most of the aliens are general rabble and they don’t have weapons that will cause you any real problems. But you need to be careful of the ones in the robes. They have some kind of mental power that allows them to produce an explosive attack, so pay attention to where they are.

  “If they do attack your end of the block, I’ll send you reinforcements. We have plans in place to neutralize them, so hopefully you’ll just need to be able to withstand their initial assault. Your shields should be enough to protect you and you have your armor.

  “You must hold your position as long as possible. Your fallback position is just outside the entrance to the underground vault where our civilians are taking shelter. We have to hold there at all costs, because it looks like the aliens don’t intend to take any prisoners.

  He gave them a smile, but it wasn’t a sweet one. “We only have to hold until the Princess gets here. Sarge says she’s on the way.” Left unsaid was the unshakable belief that the Princess would handle everything.

  He repeated his message to the men assigned to the other end of the block. He could tell neither group was happy, mostly because they were being forced to stay in defensive positions instead of making it an offensive battle against the aliens. Imperial Marines believed in taking the battle to their enemy, using their speed and the tremendous power of their armor to cause terror in their enemies. Having the civilians to protect changed everything, so they understood. Still, they didn’t like it, complaining amongst themselves as soon as Jackson stepped away. But he knew they’d do their job.

  Finally, Jackson spoke to the two on overwatch. They were the ones in charge of the most powerful weapons the Marines had with them — the plasma cannons! He had slightly different instructions for them.

  “The aliens are on their way here. You need to be very careful of the aliens in the robes; they have a very powerful ability, some kind of psychic thing, and we’ve seen that will produce severe results, even, we suspect, against an armored Marine. However, you guys are the lucky ones. You get to specifically target that group.

  “They have some kind of psychic shield, but we have hopes that your weapons will be able to affect them. If nothing else, the Sarge thinks having to shield against your weapons will keep them busy, buying us the time that we need. We’ve seen what the others have and we can handle the rest of them, so that means you have the most important task of all.”

  Both men nodded. At first they’d been out of sorts when the Sarge had told them they couldn’t fight with the rest of the Marines, but now that they knew their assignments, they were quite happy. They were in charge of the big guns and Jackson had just given them a target they could shoot at.

  He repeated the same last words he’d given the others, with the same dark smile. “We only have to hold until the Princess gets here. The Sarge says she’s on the way.”

  If only it could have all been that simple.

  Rae led his group out of what was left of the Imperial palace. After training for his entire life, he had thought it would be glorious. Instead, he felt sadness and shame. Surely it didn’t have to be this way.

  Sure, he felt the excitement of being able to use his ability and a thrill when the palace gates exploded in front of him. After that, he had done his duty, removing the ones who’d stood in his way and using his ability to help shield the others.

  He couldn’t believe how easy it had been to take the palace. All his life he had been taught that the Imperials were evil and he had no doubt that was true to some extent. He knew the soldiers that fought against them would have killed him if they could and he had no real qualms at killing them. After all it was war. Kill or be killed.

  But then the others of his kind had rushed into the palace, killing anything that moved. Surely that was wrong. Had his people not withdrawn from the Dark Council for that very reason, fleeing to this planet on the edge of the other galactic arm? No, they had refused to accept that their people were destined to become mere robots and ordained as the destroyers of all life in the galaxy, so he didn’t like the fact his people had killed just as indiscriminately.

  He kept his thoughts to himself, burying them as deeply as possible, for it was likely his Master would sense them otherwise. Unfortunately, he couldn’t hide his discomfort and he knew the Master would know that much. Worse, he couldn’t help but wonder if the Master hadn’t made a mistake. There had to be a better way!

  Nevertheless, his orders were clear. For now, he could only do his duty. He was to lead his team to the section of the city called Block 85, where the Galactics were holed up. They were to eliminate them as well, something he expected wouldn’t be quite as easy as the palace had been.

  Still he didn’t expect to find what he found when he reached the entrance to the block. Despite their orders, some of the others had rushed ahead to attack the Galactic positions. They were being massacred!

  Mentally concentrating, Rae quickly threw up a shield across the entrance, blocking the fire from the Galactics. It looked like his people had already suffered a number of casualties. At least he could help with that.

  “Gather your injured and stay back out of the way,” he told them angrily. “Your orders were to wait for us.”

  Motioning to his team, he prepared to lead the way. They would take care of these Galactics and get home in time for dinner. Increasing the strength of his shields, he started forward, projecting his psychic force in front of them. He was sick of all this fighting and just wanted to be done with it.

  His attack was blocked, forcing him to come to a stop. They had some kind of shield! He couldn’t believe it.

  “Stay close,” he told his team. “We’re going to have to find a way past whatever technology these Galactics have and take the fight directly to them. It won’t be easy, but I’m sure we can prevail.” He started to move forward again.

  That’s when they discovered just how badly they’d misjudged these Galactics. Fire exploded all around them! Rae staggered, his shields barely holding.

  “Pull back!” he yelled, but it came out as a near croak. It didn’t matter, his team was already falling back. Never had they seen anything like this before.

  Finally, he was able to catch his breath, relaxing the shields back to normal for a moment, but still he was staggered by it all.

  What in the world was that?

  The battle had finally reached the Marine’s positions. They knew they had a strong defensive position and so they weren’t worried in the least, despite the message Jackson had brought them.

  Still irritated that they were forced to remain in a passive defensive position, the Marines wasted no time opening up on the aliens that attempted to break through the barriers they had erected at the entrance to the block. The poor aliens had no idea what they were facing and their initial attack was decimated. What little amount of fire made it through all the Marines defenses was ineffective against the Marine armor.

  Placed in charge of his team by Jackson, Jones quickly became bored. “It’s too easy,” he said to the man next to him, “— like picking off fish in a barrel.”

  Carson just nodded. They’d faced harder obstacles in training than what these aliens had brought. “Bring it on,” he answered him.

  The team remained protected by the Empire’s shield technology for which the aliens had no answer. The attackers had no defense against the superior firepower the Marines could bring to bear. Not a single alien came even close to making i
t through the barriers.

  Then everything changed. The special team the Sarge had described in his warning message reached the north entrance to the block. Suddenly, their weapon fire was no longer effective, their shots blocked by some kind of shield, despite the fact the new aliens appeared to not be wearing any kind of shield tech or armor. Just those flimsy robes.

  The strange warriors started to advance, but that was when the two Marines on overwatch opened up with their plasma cannons. Warned by the Sarge to hold their fire until the strange alien team appeared, the two marines each fired his plasma cannon at the alien position. An explosion flared brilliantly at the point of impact as a pair of the most dreaded weapons of the Empire fired off a burst. Surely that weapon would take them out!

  Unbelievably, when their eyes could adjust to see, the aliens were still there. Jones couldn’t believe it! How could they possibly have survived that?

  At least their advance had stopped. The gunners held their fire since it was ineffective, but any time the aliens tried to move, they again opened fire. For the Marine overwatch, protected by their shields, even the aliens with the mental weapons could not break through.

  It appeared the two groups were in a stalemate. Unfortunately, the aliens continued to gather outside the block. Eventually, they would reach a critical mass and would charge the Marine position, using their numbers to overwhelm the defenses.

  Even if they remained safe in their armor, for the aliens unlikely had anything that could penetrate it, the Marines would not be able to protect their civilians and would fail in their primary purpose.

  Watching with the Sarge, Jackson knew it was going to be close. Where are you, Princess?