by Jesse Wilson
The energy flowed through him and made him scream in pain. He fell to the ground, and his body struggled to keep its shape as every cell in his body conducted the energy.
Garmonbozia threw that spear and impaled Narbosaurus in the throat. The second that spear left the hand, another energy spear appeared in its hand just as fast. The machine marched forward, moving in for the kill, when suddenly a more familiar sound filled the air.
The military had arrived in the form of the Air Force. Airplanes flew overhead, but they did nothing for now. Unlike the alien fighters, the Americans weren’t on any side but their own.
A low-flying trio of bombers flew over the battle, and as soon as they did, they all dropped napalm onto both of the combatants. Immediately, they and everything in the area were consumed by smoke and fire. Neither of them could be seen anymore or even heard.
Ulrix was watching the battle carefully; it was not going well. When the Earthlings showed up, he could only twitch.
“Sir, we can’t scan past all the fire. We don’t know what’s going on,” someone said to Ulrix and he just grumbled.
“Damn Americans, always messing things up with their displays of power,” he said, referring to something that no one else on board had any idea of what he might have been referring to.
“Okay, we need to come up with a better plan. Everything we can throw at this weapon can be countered. Any ideas?” Ulrix asked the crew, but the one thing he knew not to do was to let the crew run the ship. He hated resorting to this.
Lucky for him, everyone on his ship seemed to be just as clueless or afraid to speak up. Suddenly, the Dolomite commander popped up on the viewing screen. “Garmonbozia cannot be defeated. We should leave Earth to its fate,” she said and Ulrix squinted at the insectoid.
“We came here for them; we’re not leaving. We either win or we die here. Earth didn’t ask for any of this. We are obligated to help. Recall the fighters, and ready the main cannons on all the ships. We are going to end this or die trying,” he replied to her and she chittered in frustration; the screen went black. The Nuridian commander was just about to give the order to fire the main cannons when suddenly his viewing screen came on again; it was Shax, the Yolomite Captain.
“This weapon is not able to be beaten, but perhaps we can find a way to end this madness,” he said to him. Ulrix was tired of the games.
“Spit it out already, hairball, we don’t have all day,” Ulrix said to him in frustration. Shax was not amused, but ignored the insult.
“Garmonbozia was designed to have a pilot in dire situations. If we are going to win here, we need to give this ship a captain,” he replied to him. Ulrix had no idea how to do that or what it even meant, and so stared blankly into the screen.
“We need to get started on a plan; you have a man on the ground, right? Contact him and get him up to speed,” Shax said again and the screen went black.
“I don’t even know what that means. Give the weapon a pilot? How in the snoz are we going to do that?” he asked himself and fell into his captain’s chair again. An alarm went off in the ship.
“Sir, the weapon is targeting us. We should move out of the way or something, maybe?” an officer said with fear growing in his voice.
“Oh snoz, evasive actions. Why did you wait for me to make the call? Get us out of here,” Ulrix replied in a hurry.
Garmonbozia, covered in napalm fire and smoke, stood to its full height. It saw all the pests returning to the bigger ships and knew what it had to do. Two energy spears appeared in its hands and it threw them. The Nuridian ship narrowly avoided an attack, but the Dolomite ship beside it acted too slowly and was impaled by the second spear straight through the middle.
The ship started to burst into flames before it crashed into the ground. Another two spears appeared in its hands. Just before it threw them, Narbosaurus rose from the fire with the spear that pierced its throat and thrust it through the back of the machine until it broke through the other side.
The machine doubled over and thrust the ends of the spears into the ground in order to support itself. The alien beast moved around to the front of the machine and extended its arms, wrapping around the spears to pull them free of its grasp. As soon as he did this, it fell face first into the ground.
Immediately, Narbosaurus slammed the ends of both spears into the back of this machine’s head. As soon as he did this, the golden body stopped moving.
Chapter Fifty-Five
The American fighter jets, no sooner than what seemed to be the killing blow on Garmonbozia was struck, opened fire on the monster standing above the fallen body. Taken by surprise, the missiles exploded on the black hide on impact, and Narbosaurus roared and winced in genuine surprise.
The humans and he had a deal, and here they were, betraying him, or attempting to at least. Black wings sprouted out of his back. He leapt into the air, and as he did, his whole form shifted into a long, slender black serpentine dragon from the massive saurian form it had in about a second.
The massive sky dragon furiously returned fire against the insect-like aircraft. The fighter jets twisted and turned at supersonic speeds as they climbed into the air in frantic escape, but it was no use. Narbosaurus knocked them all out of the sky with one wide, arcing blast of green energy.
The jets exploded and their metal carcasses fell to the earth; there was no sign of any who might have escaped. Despite the battle only taking ten seconds, the distraction was all the machine needed to recover from the damage.
Garmonbozia spears reverted back into energy and flowed into its body. With one violent twitch, the machine began to push itself up once more. Its yellow armor was still on fire, but that flame wasn’t going out. Instead, it was spreading all over its body, and where the fire burned, the yellow coating was replaced by a deep red.
In seconds, Garmonbozia was standing, but it was on fire from head to toe. It raised its arms and fired six bolts of what appeared to be pure flame. These bolts moved faster than the eye could see, and before anyone knew what had happened, Narbosaurus’s wings were shredded, and it was falling to earth.
Just before hitting the ground, it stretched its legs out and stopped the fall. The wings melted back into his body. He stared at the flaming figure again, and it was occurring to him that maybe, just maybe, this machine couldn’t actually be beaten. A fleck of his flesh tore itself loose from the tail.
Xule and the others were watching in disbelief at what was happening. A black, human-sized blob of black flesh fell out of the sky in front of them. It twisted around and took the form of Terra once more.
“Okay, this thing needs to have a weakness. Do any of you know what that might be?” she asked but stared directly at Xule with those yellow eyes.
“Honestly, I have no idea how to stop it; I never did. But you’re doing great out there, champ. Keep it up. It is all we can really do,” he replied and Bruce stepped forward.
“Those pilots were no threat to you. How come you killed them,” he asked angrily.
“No one attacks me and gets away with it. Tell your people to knock it off, but really. If you can do more than just stand here and watch, that’d be great. Figure out a weakness to this thing,” Terra said and turned back into a black blob of slime, taking off back to her main body.
“What in the hell am I supposed to do? I guess I can ask them if they have any ideas,” Xule said. He didn’t want an angry alien beast on his back for the rest of his life if he lived past today. He raised Sippy up and turned the communication channel back on to his former commander, not knowing what else to do.
Xule came on Ulrix’s screen. “Sorry to bother you, but Narbosaurus demanded I find a weakness to this thing so we can bring this fight to an end. Any ideas?” he asked him.
“We only have one, but it’s insane and impossible to do, so no. No ideas other than shoot it until it stops getting back up,” Ulrix replied to him.
“Try me; what’s your idea?” Xule was getting desperate as was
everyone else.
“The Yolomites seem to think that we can give the creature a pilot, but it’s connected to whoever asked for its help and finding that person in time to make a difference is impossible,” Ulrix replied and began to punch in the codes to have a unified front attack from the remaining ships.
“All we have is a snozing voice print. I’ll send it to Sippy, and you can listen to it on your own time. We have a battle to fight up here, I’m out. Don’t call again unless you can be of some use to the effort,” Ulrix said harshly, but Xule understood why.
Xule knew who called Garmonbozia. Suddenly, things were looking up.
“Don’t respond, just listen. We know who called this thing. Have a Strider lock on to my position and send it to me. We can end this, but we need to act fast,” he said and hoped that he’d listen to his request.
Bruce picked up his own phone and made a call of his own.
“Get me the president. We have an update, and this needs to be fast,” he demanded to whoever was on the other end.
Seconds later, a small silver transport ship flew out of the sky around the battle that was commencing between the two titans, and landed mere feet from Xule.
“Thanks,” he said to no one.
“That’s only big enough for two people. What about everyone she’s with?” Phil said, and this got the attention of the others. Xule sighed a heavy sigh and opened the door to the Strider.
“I don’t think anyone is going to like what happens next,” he said and got inside of the ship. Seconds later, it took off and sped into the distance.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Heather and the others managed to get Boz out of the RV, but he was bleeding and broken in several places. Once they pulled him out, they kept him where he was. Thankfully, the RV wasn’t on fire.
“Heather, we need to get in the van and keep moving. These people can’t help us, and we need to get to the Vegas refugee camp to get help, don’t you think?” Bob said as he stood next to her with his arm around her.
“Yeah, we need to go for help. It’s the least we could do,” she agreed and the others did too. None of them wanted to stay here.
“Listen, we’re going to go to the refugee camp and get some help. You guys should stay here for now,” Alex said to them, but the group was still in shock over what had happened to their leader and the incident as a whole and weren’t paying attention.
“Right. Let’s get out of here before someone gets manic,” Cory suggested to them and slowly, they began to inch their way towards the van. It only took them a few seconds to get to the van. Cory started it, and with skill that defied his age, he managed to sneak the van out of the tight spot it was in. Soon, they were driving down the road.
“We don’t care what happens to those people, right?” Alex finally said and continued. “I mean, we barely know them at all,” he finished, not really wanting to be responsible for them.
“Shut up, Alex. They could have killed us all without a second thought but didn’t. Sure, we didn’t know them for very long, but we owe them to keep our word. I don’t want to hear about it again,” Heather replied to him, angry he’d even consider such an option.
Bob just punched him in the arm for even saying something like that with more force then.
“Ow, alright I’m sorry, geeze,” he said as he rubbed his arm. He wasn’t thinking clearly so much anymore, the stress levels were just too high for way too long. Suddenly, the van started to sputter and choke. Finally, it rolled to a stop.
“What in the hell is going on?” Cory said and tried to restart it, but it was dead. Suddenly, the wind picked up, and in front of them, the alien Strider landed. Xule got out and waved as the others got out of the van.
“How did you find us?” Bob wondered out loud.
“DNA sample. When Heather fired my weapon, it took a copy of it. Sippy here was able to track her and she is why I came,” he said to them.
“Listen, I’d like to explain everything, but we need to go. Now,” Xule said again, outstretching his hand as he continued. “You can trust me, please,” he said and Bob narrowed his eyes. Alien or not, desperation was the same in any language.
Bob didn’t trust it at all, and neither did Heather.
“I don’t know, how I can help this situation?” she asked him and Xule sighed.
“You called the thing. Only you can call it off. We need you,” he replied, and even though it made no sense to anyone there, she knew that this must have been a last-ditch effort for him to be here.
“Okay, if I can help, I should do my best, so I’ll go with you,” she said to him and turned to look at the others. “I’ll be fine. Get to the camp and make sure you get help for those people. I’ll meet you there, okay?” she said to them but only looked at Bob. Despite saying those words, she had a chill run down her spine.
“Alright, see you around.” Bob thought about trying to hug her or something, but Xule made it seem like time was running out. He watched as she smiled, turned around, and got into the strange-looking ship.
“I’ll watch out for her; you can trust me,” Xule said to the rest of the group, turned, and got in the front driver’s seat.
The doors closed, and in a second, the ship lifted off the ground with a slight hum, then shot off into the distance.
“You’d better come back alive,” Bob said to himself, then shook his head.
“Well, you heard her; let’s get out of here and get those people some help,” he said as they all walked back to the van. Cory got inside and turned the key; the van came to life as if nothing happened at all.
“I’ll have to ask him how they do that,” he said to himself as the others got into the van.
***
Xule and Heather were flying back to the scene of the battle. If the situation wasn’t so dire, she might have had time to enjoy this ride.
“We’ll be there in minutes going this fast, so here is the situation. Garmonbozia can only be called off by the one who requested its help. Basically, all you have to do, we think, is ask it to quit when you get a chance to do so,” Xule said to her and she swallowed.
“I don’t think I really want to. It’s after that slimy thing, and if it will kill it, all the better,” she replied. Xule sighed.
“You don’t quite understand the situation. I passed a tower; you must have seen it. Well, the machine is going to teleport around your planet and build these towers. When it’s done, it’ll start a chain reaction that will burn everything on Earth, cleansing it. This is what the machine considers help. Right now, the Narbosaurus is fighting the machine, but when I left, it wasn’t going so great,” Xule said to her, and then she figured out the purpose of all those ships they saw that came after the ship.
Then it clicked as to why the message said to evacuate the planet in twenty-four hours; it was literal.
“Okay, I’ll help, but what are we going to do with the slimy one? Any plans on that?” Heather asked as she tried to look around Xule to try and get a glimpse to see what was coming, but she couldn’t see anything.
“No plans on that. One problem at a time,” Xule replied to her. Suddenly, the Strider shook and turned away from something. A deep red light flowed through the windows at the same time.
Heather looked out the window and saw two titans standing in an ocean of flame. Massive alien ships firing on a burning figure didn’t seem to have any noticeable effect on the machine.
“Don’t worry, the rest of us are not in that fire down there, although I’m not quite sure how it got this bad. Hold on, we are landing soon,” Xule said.
That was the only warning she got when the ship took a dive so hard that she got light headed, but she didn’t have anything to hold on to.
Minutes later, the Strider was on the ground, and Heather had never been happier to be on solid ground. Getting out of the ship required no encouragement. As soon as those doors opened, she got out and was immediately assailed by a blast of hot air. The glow of the fire illu
minated everything despite being daylight still.
“Mrs. Mills, nice to see you again,” Bruce said to her and stepped forward.
“I’m still not sure how you lived through that explosion, or being attacked by the monster, but I guess it’s good to see you too,” she replied, still not trusting him in the slightest. He smiled.
“I have my ways. Anyway, we have about an hour to shut this machine down. I got off the phone with the president and he’s going to have this whole place wiped out with a nuclear barrage. Anyone still here is just going to be a shadow on the ground,” Bruce said to all of them, and it was apparent that none of them knew this until right now.
“Well, we need to get the hell out of here. Now,” Rose spoke up and the others started to mumble in agreement.
“Why? The weapons won’t kill either of these two things, and once that plan fails the rest of Earth is toast anyway. There isn’t anywhere to go,” Xule said, getting order in the group again with a grim reality check.
“This woman here is our only hope of getting things under control, but we need to wait until Garmonbozia shifts colors again. Anyone getting close to the battle now will be fried instantly,” Xule added, and they turned their attention to the field of fire that was growing closer by the second as it ate everything in its path. He was hoping that Narbosaurus had it in him to trigger one more color shift; otherwise, all was going to be lost.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Narbosaurus stood in the flames that came up to his waist. The pain was intense, but he managed to ignore it for now. His flesh was rapidly repairing itself, but it was taking a lot of his energy. Garmonbozia apparently liked this form, despite all the damage it was taking; it didn’t want to shift to anything else.
The machine lifted its burning hands and shot streams of white flame from its fingers. The alien reacted quickly and formed a shield with its own flesh as it crossed its arms. The fire spread out in all directions. Narbosaurus screamed in agony as the shield was burning away, but this gave him an idea. He shot into the sky as his wings spread out in a second.
