by Richard Fox
“Thirty-four seconds.” Lafayette felt his feet melting against the deck. His shields’ strength flashed red as they began to fail. A timer popped up and a choice lay before him.
He had enough power to jump away from the sun in the next several seconds and give Torni only a fraction of the sun’s power she needed to destroy the swarm coming for Earth, or he could redirect his jump energy reserves to the shields.
Lafayette didn’t hesitate. He tapped the fusion core to power the shields and sealed his fate.
The portal would remain open just long enough to accomplish the mission.
Lafayette tore his restraints away and got a step away from the command chair, ripping his leg away from the melting foot. His broken leg touched he deck and slid out from under him as it went slick with molten metal.
Lafayette’s hands hit the ground to arrest his fall. His fingers fused together almost instantly.
He looked up at the wormhole, the rage of the star around the edges. He thought of the Karigole village on Nibiru, where he’d seen children playing, his mother caring for newborns.
“I will not be the last,” he said.
The wormhole collapsed and the flare annihilated the Scipio.
****
Torni’s IR bud started beeping, the sound growing faster and louder as she felt the jump engine in her arms start to hum. She flipped a switch on a control panel and a sphere of Tikari shielding popped up around her, throwing up a ring of dust as the shield pressed against the lunar surface.
A wormhole formed a few meters above her, so wide she could barely see the void between the portal and the moon’s surface. She shifted the jump engine from side to side and found the white portal followed the movements.
+Here we go.+ She braced herself against the ground.
Blinding light burst around the edges of the portal. The raw heat from the sun instantly scorched the surface beyond her shielding to black, molten glass. She tried to shift the portal to the side, but it was as stubborn as a stuck door. She put all her strength into the push and managed to move it a few inches.
In the space beyond the Earth and her satellites, the solar flare streaked out and closed the distance on the approaching Xaros swarm in seconds. The awesome heat and raw plasma burst the drones apart like balloons, destroying hundreds of thousands in seconds. None could maneuver fast enough to escape the sun’s fury as the portal shifted and dragged the flare aside.
Torni felt the ground beneath her fuse to her feet and burning heat shot up her legs. Her omnium body was tough, but not strong enough to withstand the abuse seeping through the moon’s crust. She had to direct the flare for only a few more seconds…
The ripples of light danced over the shield. The portal began shrinking and a strange oscillation coursed through the jump engine.
The engine exploded with a flash of red light, its energy trapped and slamming against the side of the shields, bursting through them like a levy finally giving way to a flood.
The portal vanished and the last of the solar flare stretched into space and faded away.
Where Torni had stood, only a small circle of blasted rock remained in a sea of black glass.
CHAPTER 27
Valdar lowered his hands from his helmet. The trailing edge of the flare that had erupted from the dark side of the moon continued through the void, dissipating to nothing within seconds.
The captain looked to his XO, who shrugged. The bridge crew glanced at each other, then turned their attention to Geller.
“Don’t look at me!” the ensign squeaked. “I have no idea why…what’s going on with the Crucible?”
A wormhole grew in the center of the great crown of thorns. Geller looked over his control panels, then to the Levin. The engineer just shook his head.
“Captain, a wormhole just formed…but our jump engines are in standby,” Geller said.
“Then who’s coming through?” Valdar tapped a panel and entered a hushed conversation.
Geller tapped into a camera feed from one of the forward point defense batteries and zoomed in on the Crucible. Ships emerged from the wormhole, ships unlike any Geller had ever seen.
Sea-green warships shaped like mountain peaks and bristling with rail guns poured into real space. Geller counted two dozen before the last one appeared. Tiny arrow-shaped fighters poured out of the warships in orderly lines.
“I render appropriate greetings,” came over the IR in toneless words. “This is Septon Jarilla of the Ruhaald. We are here to fight Xaros.”
Geller didn’t join the rest of the bridge as they erupted with cheers. He kept his eyes locked on the screen, and frowned as more ships emerged from the wormhole.
Silver ships, each several miles long, emerged behind the Ruhaald. Their hulls were corkscrew shaped, the edges burning with red light. Geller cocked his head to the side. Why did this new arrival seem familiar?
“The Naroosha arrive,” a smooth voice said over an open channel. “Ambassador Ibarra sends her warm greetings.”
“Geller,” Valdar said.
The ensign wracked his brain, then reached down next to his knee and pulled out a roughly bound photo album. He flipped through the pages, most filled with images of Toth cruisers, some with alien vessels, pictures taken from orbit around the world Nibiru.
“Geller!”
The book fell to the deck as the ensign sat bolt upright.
“Sir?”
“Set course to Japan,” Valdar seethed with annoyance. “Take us over the North Pole. We’ll rendezvous with the Vorpal there.”
Geller took in a breath to voice a concern, but the twitch in Valdar’s cheek told him to hold his thought until later.
“Captain, do we want to wait for these Naroosha and Ruhaald?” Ericcson asked.
“They’ll catch up,” Valdar said with a shake of his head.
At Geller’s feet, the book had fallen open to a picture of a corkscrew-shaped silver vessel.
****
Durand rubbed her back against her Eagle’s seat, trying and failing to scratch an itch between her shoulder blades. Dark storm clouds whipped past her canopy as she glanced at a clock on her HUD. She’d been in her flight suit for God knew how many hours and she didn’t want to think about the combined funk of adrenaline, sweat and body odor waiting for her when this day ever ended.
“The storms on this planet are a joke,” said Manfred, one of her Dotok pilots, over the IR. “The razor hail on Takeni, now that was an experience.”
“The last time razor hail struck our village was when we were children.” Lothar clicked his beak in annoyance. “Stop trying to impress our hosts.”
Durand rolled her eyes and checked their distant waypoint as she and her squadron cut over storm driven waves.
“I remember watching it from the windows and surviving off tubers for months because all the crops died…not you,” Manfred snapped.
Durand broke through the clouds and into a rainstorm raging over the Pacific Ocean.
She lowered her fighters to a dozen yards off the white-topped waves roiling across the water. A half-dozen Eagle fighters and two Condor bombers formed a formation behind her lead. She scanned the skies for drones and found nothing.
“All right, all of you, cut the chitchat.” Durand checked her inertial navigation system, then tapped a screen to add a new waypoint. She banked to the right and leveled out, streaks of rain washing over her canopy.
Her squadron had the curve of the Earth between them and the Xaros arch working its way across the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. The Xaros might have detected their descent so charging down the straight-line path from their arrival was a poor tactical choice.
“Fighters from the Breitenfeld and the Vorpal will launch a coordinated assault on the arch in…three minutes. Eagles, keep the Condors safe and tidy until their missiles hit home, we all understand?” Durand asked.
“I assume there’s a valid reason why we can’t just hit this thing from orbit with the ship�
�s main gun?” asked Nag, one of the two Condor pilots.
“Have you ever seen what a rail cannon strike can do to a city?”
“We had to fly over what was left of Hong Kong during training. A lesson in loyalty…and punishment,” said Glue, the weapons officer on Nag’s Condor.
“One missed shot from orbit and the defenders holed up in the mountains will pay the price. Valdar won’t risk that—yet—but he’ll strike from orbit if we fail.” Durand looked toward the sky and found nothing but the blue-gray cloud ceiling and more rain.
“Where is the Dotok squadron…” She tensed as dark objects appeared through the cloud layer.
“Those aren’t our fighters. That’s not them,” Manfred said.
“Are you sure?” Glue asked.
“I’ve flown Gladius single-seaters since I’ve had feathers on my clee’tik. I know what they look like!”
“Merde.” Durand pulled her nose up and hit the afterburners. Pads around her core and thighs squeezed to keep the blood in her head as she accelerated to the storm.
A half-dozen Xaros drones dropped through the clouds. Durand opened fire with her gauss cannon and shattered a drone then cut her afterburners and rolled to the side as scarlet beams stabbed through the air around her.
She sped past a pair of drones and looped around to fall onto their tails.
A bolt of lightning exploded across the sky with a thunderclap. The sudden flash blinded Durand and sent her Eagle tumbling into a dive.
Durand blinked hard, fighting to clear her vision. Her ears rang like a bell. She felt the pull of her restrains shifting against her chest as her fighter flew out of control.
“Altitude. Altitude,” sounded faintly in her ears.
The corner of Durand’s vision came back and she got a glimpse of her wild control panel. She pulled her stick back and to the left and opened the throttle. She flew for several seconds...and didn’t slam into the ocean.
Soon after, her eyesight returned to almost normal and she looked around and saw her squadron below her. A dozen Dotok fighters formed three even lines stacked over the Condors.
“Gall? Can you hear me?” Glue asked.
“Gall here, returning to formation. Weather shook me up,” she said.
“This is sword leader Bar’en. I remember this…Gall,” said a voice with a heavy Dotok accent.
Of all the assholes in the galaxy, Durand shook her head. Durand had nearly killed Bar’en’s wife by accident when the Breitenfeld first arrived to aid the Dotok on Takeni. The other pilot had not taken it well and nearly had his jaw broken by Glue when he assaulted Durand.
“We are nineteen seconds behind schedule,” Bar’en said. “Accelerating to attack speed now.” He said something in the whirrs and clicks of the Dotok language, then he and his fighters sped forward, pushed by blue flames from their engines.
“What did he say—at the end?” Durand took her place at the head of the formation and clicked her jaw to clear out her ears.
“A traditional Dotok saying for luck before battle,” Lothar said quickly.
“No,” Manfred clicked in annoyance, “it roughly translated to ‘see if these hairless mammals can fly worth a damn.’”
“I know what he said, Manfred!”
The brothers switched to Dotok and engaged in a heated debate.
Durand rolled her eyes.
A dark shape rose over the horizon, nestled in red clouds. Yellow bursts of light echoed through the clouds. Durand made out drones and Dotok fighters in a massive scrum above the Xaros construct.
The spikes beneath the arch jabbed bloodred beams into the mountains beneath it. Durand remembered the video saved by Commander Albrecht, the Breitenfeld’s original wing commander, remembered watching the Xaros use the same tool to wipe out city after city the first time they invaded the Earth.
“I guess that’s it,” Nag said.
“Priority target is the ventral weapons,” Gall said. “Eagles, charge rail guns and prepare to fire.”
Durand cut her speed and flipped a switch on the side of her cockpit, charging the capacitor that powered the rail gun built into her fighter’s fuselage. An icon blinked green seconds later.
“Target is the long spike, third from the right,” Durand said. “Condors, go for missile launch.”
Denethrite-tipped missiles streaked forward, each guided over IR beams.
Durand brought her targeting reticule over the spike and flipped the safety off her rail gun trigger. Her thumb tapped against the trigger, waiting for the missiles to get just close enough to the arch. The rail gun shells would travel significantly faster than the missiles…and if she timed the launch right, they could hit the Xaros with more incoming munitions than their point defense could handle.
“On my mark…fire!” Durand’s Eagle rocked back as a snap of light exploded from the rail gun and staccato cracks of a dozen shells shattering the sound barrier echoed around her. Burning trails of air marked the shells’ passing. The skies around the arch lit up as fighters and bombers surrounding the Xaros construct opened fire.
A sheet of red energy struck out from a spike tip and swept across the sky, obliterating two Dotok fighters. A pair of explosions erupted well short of their target.
“Contact lost. No hit!” Glue announced.
“Fire again. Fly them nap of the Earth and come in from below.” Durand leaned forward as several spikes glowed red with cracks, then fell away from the arch. Three spikes bent their tips together, and a blazing ingot of light formed at the apex.
“Pull up! Pull up!” Durand raised her nose and fired her afterburners. She soared upward, evading a wave of murderous energy that lashed out from the arch. She strained against the acceleration to look over her shoulder and saw her entire squadron behind her.
“Breitenfeld, this is Gall.” She leveled out and looked down on the Xaros killing machine. Explosions from dying fighters and disintegrating drones cut through the sky. “I don’t know if we’ve got the firepower to kill this thing. We’ll make another attack run from above, may have better luck.”
“Gall, this is Valdar. Stand by for the next assault wave.”
“Say again? I thought we have every available asset on this attack.”
“You’ve got Ruhaald fighters coming in. Do not—I repeat—do not engage them.”
A lightning-fast shape tore past Durand’s cockpit. Another zipped past on her other side. She looked down and saw dozens of arrow-tipped fighters smaller than her Eagle closing on the arch.
The sky darkened around her. Hundreds of the angular fighters filled the air, all arrayed in neat wedges of nine craft. The Ruhaald ships banked to their left and formed into a single line, all diving toward the arch.
They unleashed a torrent of thin laser beams against the arch’s upper slope. The beams hit without any obvious effect at first…then the Xaros armor cracked and burst outward.
The lead Ruhaald fighter performed a precise attack on the Xaros, then pulled up and flew into the storm clouds. The next fighter in line repeated the same attack and maneuver.
“They must be drones,” Manfred said. “Nothing natural can fly so perfectly.”
“They’re here. They’re helping. I don’t really care what they are,” Durand said.
One side of the construct dipped to the ocean. The entire arch slid toward the sea as explosions peppered its surface. A spike broke against a mountaintop as the arch lost altitude.
Durand smiled as it fell into the dark waters and broke apart as the construct burned away.
“Breitenfeld…target destroyed. We’re—” A drone tore past Durand’s cockpit. Dozens more zoomed past, all heading to the southeast, and none showed any interest in killing her.
“This is Valdar. Return to the ship. Now!”
CHAPTER 28
Elias stuck his arm around a corner and blasted at a pack of drones. He looked the opposite direction and fired bursts of rounds from his rotary cannon and a drone diving down from the to
p of an apartment building. His rounds tore through the drone and the glass windows behind it.
Daggers of glass rained down on Bodel, who didn’t seem to notice as he destroyed a drone picking through the lobby of the same apartment building.
Elias ducked away as a beam smashed through the corner where he’d been firing. He lowered a shoulder, dove through the window of a coffee shop and rolled to a knee, taking out the last three drones with aimed shots.
One drone skipped out of his line of fire. Its stalks twitched, then it shot around a corner.
“Did that one just retreat?” Bodel asked.
Elias touched the mask hanging from his neck.
“Think we got noticed?” Elias asked.
“I think you got noticed.” Bodel lifted up his forearm cannon and fished out a malformed bullet that had jammed in a barrel.
A shadow passed overhead. Elias looked up and saw a swarm of Xaros drones passing across the sun. The drones spiraled into three tendrils reaching for the ground. One snaked toward Camelback Mountain, one angled away into the city, and the third came right toward the Iron Hearts.
“I ever tell you your plans suck?” Bodel asked. “Next time, I come up with the good ideas.”
“You can try.” Elias checked his battery charge. “I can’t get a q-shell out, you?”
Bodel stomped his heel against the road and drilled his anchor through the concrete.
Elias bashed down the wall of the coffee shop and cleared a path to a wide service elevator. He ripped the doors away and found a quadrium-shielded hatch leading to the tunnels beneath the city streets.
A sonic boom from Bodel’s rail cannon shattered every glass window of the surrounding buildings. Bodel raised his anchor and ran for Elias, charging through glass and sidestepping more than one disabled drone.
“That was my last one,” Bodel said as he slid to a stop at the hatch and jumped down.
Elias followed and shut the hatch behind them. The aegis plating lining the tunnel and the hatch would slow the Xaros down for a few minutes, but it wouldn’t keep the drones away.
