United We Stand

by Christian Messe

“We don’t really know,” James replied. Before Imp could ask another question, a shadow darkened the entire bridge. “What the…” James was cut off by the loud horn sound that came next. It echoed through the entire ship.

  “I-I know that sound, its…” A horrible realization spread through Lewis, “Jupitain.”

  James looked up to see a massive ship, with a bow shaped like half of a downwards shark tooth, and a hull that stretched over a half a mile long and ended with another half shark-tooth shaped engine.

  Fear spread through the entire crew. It was silent, until Mark shouted, “Get us out of here now!!”

  James grabbed at the controls only to realize that now the main engine was completely offline. He slammed the dashboard with his fist, “They must be jamming our systems!” He shouted.

  “Do they see us?” Claire asked. A bright red light flashed through the bridge to answer her question. It was followed by another agonizing horn blast, the sound a constant reminder of death.

  “Ugh, I can’t see!” James yelled. The red light faded away, but the ship was suddenly forced into place. “The ship, it's stuck,” James said.

  “Really? I didn’t notice.” Lewis remarked, frustrated.

  Suddenly a small dot exited the large Jupitain ship until it got close enough to reveal that it was a boarding ship. “This is bad; this is really, really bad!” Mark said, stating the obvious.

  “How’d they get past the perimeter defenses? The entire asteroid belt is sealed off.” James said.

  “Well if it’s sealed off, what is that doing here?!” Lewis shouted. He pointed at the giant ship above them. The boarding ship collided with the airlock forcing Imp off his feet.

  “They’re here,” he said coldly.

  “Everyone hide now!” Mark shouted. The crew scrambled out of the bridge, to hear the sound of the airlock being forced open. A chill ran down their spines.

  James, 2027, August 2nd

  “Can you believe it son? Your old man’s gonna be the first black man ever promoted to Shadow Squadron,” James’s father said enthusiastically.

  An elite U.S. Military program designed to fight terrorism in the Middle East. James didn’t reply; instead, he just looked blankly at his cereal. His father noticed and said, “What’s the matter? You always get excited when I talk about Shadow Squadron.”

  James looked away, avoiding eye contact. “It’s just, what if I don’t become as great a pilot as you?” He said finally.

  James’s father knelt down and looked directly into his son’s eyes. “James, you don’t need to worry about things like that, because I know, and your mother knows that you will do great things, and you might not become a pilot, but you better know that whatever happens, don’t hesitate to try your best, at anything you want to do in life.”

  That cheered him up… a little.

  “Now come on, the promotion ceremony is in two hours so we better hurry if we want to make it to the Pentagon in time, plus in the military if we’re not thirty minutes early, we’re late.” He said it in a cheery, childish like way.

  In 2024, fewer and fewer Americans were willing to join the military because of the seemingly endless spread of terrorism across the Middle East. A new terrorist organization called Hajar was devastating the Middle East with guerilla tactics the world had never seen before. The group had spread through Europe as well, and the chaos was so substantial that immigration to European countries was halted completely.

  The result was a desperate attempt to create new programs, which made war overall more efficient, and safe. One of those programs was the Shadow Squadron.

  It was a short drive to the Pentagon, from their small house in the suburbs. James read his book about fighter jets, and bomber planes the entire way. He was extremely fascinated with military technology, especially airplanes. His father was a born pilot, and James could only dream of being the same. He was so wound up in his book that he didn’t notice his dad knocking on his window.

  “Well, you gonna get out or what?” He asked jokingly.

  The two of them walked up to the main entrance. James's father saluted the two standing guards and walked through the 9/11 memorial. A stage was set up, with people from military generals, to the sanitation director sitting in front of it. James’s father told him to sit somewhere while he talked to his fellow pilots. James sat down and started reading his book. Time passed, there were twenty pilots in all on the Shadow Squadron, and each gave a speech about their position.

  His father was up, and speaking about anti-terrorism, and the fight for world peace. He was about to be given his medal until the promotion ceremony was halted by a loud horn, that blazed everyone’s ears. The Jupitain flagship… had arrived.

  “What the hell was that?” Someone asked from the audience. It sounded again, louder. The projector screen was switched from Shadow Squadron battles to someone’s phone, showing a news report in Tokyo. What happened next was unimaginable.

  The view that was laid before everyone’s eyes was the beautiful city of Tokyo and a giant alien ship that was probably the same size as the entire city. The flagship had a half-shark-tooth shaped bow, with a two-mile hull, and another half-shark-tooth shaped stern, with an engine booster attached to it. The flagship hovered there surrounded by fifty smaller warships just like it.

  “Dozens of UFOs have come straight out of our atmosphere and are now hovering over the city of Tokyo,” said the News reporter, “This live video is coming from a helicopter, over the bay, almost a mile away, we are currently unsure of what is going on…”

  The reporter kept talking, but the crowd was too stunned to pay any attention. James looked away from the projector to see his dad sprinting towards him. “We need to get out of Washington.” James was too young to understand what a UFO even was or why they needed to get out of Washington. The two of them looked up to see the biggest warship, the flagship that had blared the horn blast across the planet, make the first move. A laser shot out of one of the warship’s side laser cannons, and blew up a nearby police station, causing the apartment complex next to it to completely collapse.

  Dozens of brand new, treaty allowed, Japanese fighter jets were launched into the sky, but blown up before they could fire. On one, a wing was blown off, and the plane crashed into an office building in a hurling ball of fire. Fighter ships were flown out of the UFOs and started to attack the people on the ground. Even in the constant roar and panic of the crowd around him, James could still make out what was happening on the projector screen.

  A commercial plane’s cabin was split in two and crashed into the bay. Then the helicopter videotaping the event was blown up by a red laser. The screen went black. People were running around frantically. Some were saying it was probably some hacker who was pranking the world. That theory was put to rest when a blast of red light came from the horizon. It struck the Pentagon and blew a hole through its center. The rest was a blur. His father picking him up and sprinting to the car. Debris shooting out of the Pentagon, landing everywhere.

  It was chaos. The inner city wasn’t a better alternative either. The White House had been evacuated secretly, hours before the attack on Tokyo, but the Capitol building was still full of government workers, where his mother worked. James’s father told him to wait inside the car. He ran into the building, which lacked security since the Pentagon had just been destroyed. James waited and saw a man run to the car.

  He opened the unlocked door and started trying to hot-wire the vehicle. James screamed at him, telling him to go away. The man cursed and pushed him back into his seat. Desperate tears started to roll down James’s cheeks, until his father grabbed the man by his shirt, yanked him out of the car, and punched him in the face. He fell to the ground.

  “Get in the car now!” James heard his father say to his mother. She got in, and turned around, hugging her scared to death child.

  “Marcus, where are we going to go? The streets are overcrowded!” James’s mother said, half crying.

&
nbsp; “I know a place,” He replied. The car pulled out of the parking lot and onto the sidewalk. Half of the car was on the sidewalk, while the other barely touched the curb. The sound of honking and cursing flooded James’s ears.

  Helicopters and fighter jets were constantly flying overhead, in all directions. He swore he saw a tank crushing the cars in front of it at one point. They drove far enough out of the city until they ended up on a dirt road. The trees cleared to reveal an airbase. The metal gate had been forced open, so they drove right through. James’s father drove further through the destroyed base, eventually finding what he came for. A nuclear bunker.

  The car ground to a halt, and James’s father told all of them to get out. His mother held his hand and followed his father towards the bunker. No one stopped them from going inside; it was too chaotic outside for anyone to notice, or care.

  The bunker went deep underground; the stairway was crowded with random government workers. People were on their knees praying, while others cried or shouted. A monitor that was meant to watch nuclear radiation levels was instead turned on to the news centered in Tokyo. It was horrifying. Japanese national guard soldiers and tanks crowded the streets, but were just blown away. People were running everywhere, getting abducted by passing ships. Buildings collapsed, crushing cars.

  Before long, every camera monitoring the events in Tokyo was destroyed. People were blind. Two hours passed inside the bunker, almost everyone was still discussing the events in Tokyo, wondering what to do now, until the talking was silenced, by a loud bang that came from the roof of the bunker.

  They were twenty feet underground, what could have caused a sound as loud as that? The question was answered when the roof of the shelter collapsed inside, crushing three people under it. A twenty-foot-deep hole had been blown into the bunker, with Jupitains raining in from above.

  They were humanoid creatures, much taller than the average human though. They had no face, only a dimly lit red visor, and a mouth with jagged, pointed teeth, and thick, pitch black skin. The strange part was that anything slow like a punch, would hit them, but anything fast like a bullet, would go right through them, not causing any wound unless the visor was hit.

  They held what looked like rifles, but they glowed red and shot lasers instead of bullets. The aliens didn’t shoot but instead growled to each other in an unknown language. One of the Jupitains looked around and said to the crowd in an almost untranslatable scratchy voice,

  “Take… take them allll!” The others immediately started to round up everyone in the bunker. Panic spread through the crowd.

  The ones that tried to fight back had a hole blown through their body. James’s ears were flooded with screaming, cursing, and crying. James called out for his father, who answered by yelling, “Run!!”

  He grabbed both James’s and his wife’s hands. They sprinted towards an empty cafeteria, which was designed to last for two years in a nuclear winter. James’s father locked the door behind them and stepped back towards the wall. A bang from the opposite side of the doors knocked off one of the latches. A second bang and the door flew open.

  Two Jupitains walked in, and they looked like they were smiling.

  “Get away from my family!” James’s father shouted, grabbing a kitchen knife. James was too scared to process what was happening.

  “Marcus, maybe we should go with them, it might be…” James’s mother’s voice trailed off; she knew wherever they would take them it would be a living hell. The Jupitains pointed their rifles at James’s father, no one moved for a moment, until James’s father charged at the aliens, yelling for James and his mother to run.

  So that was exactly what they did. The last thing James saw in the bunker was his father slash one of the Jupitains, causing it to recoil, but in the end, James watched as his father was shot in the heart, and killed.

  CHAPTER 2

  Overall, James’s crew was having a pretty lousy day. Being assigned asteroid clearing duty is not the ideal best-job in most people’s opinion, but this was much, much worse. The metal door to the airlock was being blown open, and the sound of constant barrages of laser beams echoed through the ship.

  James and Mark hid in a large storage compartment, while Claire and Lewis hid in the engine room, locking the door behind them. Imp climbed into the ventilation shaft and watched as the Jupitains broke through the airlock, and sent the remains flying into the cabin.

  “Well, this is great. Just great, now what do we do? It’s not like we can call for help, the nearest Checkpoint base just blew up,” Mark whispered, annoyingly.

  “Would you shut up?” James whispered back, “You’re gonna get us killed.”

  “Alright, alright, just sharing my opinion,” Mark replied, with fake innocence.

  “Ugh, something’s hitting my back,” James said.

  “Maybe it’s the side of the compartment that you’re next to,” Mark whispered sarcastically.

  James was lying flat on his back, up against what turned out to be a dozen laser rifles pressing against him.

  “Dude, we’re in a compartment full of S-22s,” James said, dumbly.

  “You’re kidding right?” Mark replied while looking down, “They never told us that during the briefing.”

  The two were silenced by the sound of footsteps and savage growling coming from the airlock. “Here goes nothing,” James said nervously, heart throbbing out of his chest, as he grabbed the rifle that was digging into his back. They were standard grade United Worlds military laser rifles, codenamed S-22s. They looked like a standard Scar-H, but instead of a bullet cartridge, there was an automatic charger, that served as the gun’s ammo, and shot out bursts of energy.

  James slid up and moved past Mark, breathing heavily. He carefully adjusted the barrel, pointing it at the nearest Jupitain. He fired at its facial visor, and the shot Jupitain fell to the floor, into a pile of Dark goo. The others roared with rage.

  “Find… fiiiind!!” roared one of them.

  James kept pulling the trigger, missing most shots. The Jupitains found where the two were hiding, and pulled the lid off the compartment. The closest Jupitain was shot in the visor by Mark. It dissolved into a puddle of dark goo; it’s visor blown through the middle. Another Jupitain kept firing at them. Shears of red light flashed by Mark and James, as the fight continued.

  James made a daring move, by jumping out of the compartment, and rolling next to the wall. He shot a nearby Jupitain in the stomach, but that’s when everything went wrong. The surge of energy passed right through its body, but then its stomach started to fill itself with the black goo that the Jupitains were made of.

  The Jupitain smiled monstrously and kicked James in the face. He fell on his back and groaned, but before he could get up, the Jupitain stunned him with its laser rifle. Mark ended up getting stunned by the Jupitain’s gun as well, and he collapsed to the bottom of the compartment.

  “Alpha… Alpha will wan-t them… bring them to Alphaaa,” One of the Jupitains growled, savagely.

  They dragged James and Mark into the airlock, while the remaining Jupitains searched for the rest of the crew.

  “This is really bad,” Imp whispered to himself. He had watched the entire thing from the air vent.

  A minute passed, Lewis and Claire thought that they would be safe inside the engine room, but they were sadly mistaken. The door was blasted open by a surge of red energy, and smashed against Lewis, making it impossible for him to get up. Claire tried to punch one of the Jupitains, but it grabbed her wrist and yanked her arms behind her back. She struggled to get free, but the attacker was too strong.

  Lewis opened his eyes, confused about how he was under a door.

  “Wha-what happened?” Lewis mumbled, then he closed his eyes again. The Jupitains led Claire out of the engine room while dragging sound asleep Lewis across the floor. Initially hesitating, Imp sighed, then dropped out of the air vent, landing on top of one of the Jupitains and tumbling with it to the ground. He got up first
, and shot the alien in the head, destroying its visor. Immediately after the visor broke, the goo like skin of the Jupitain melted onto the floor.

  The other Jupitain growled and hit Imp across the face with his laser rifle. He dropped to the floor. Then the Jupitain’s visor turned blue and said in an audio of perfect English, “Now here's what I came for.”

  The voice said it calmly, almost sounding human. The visor turned red again, and the Jupitain acted as though nothing had happened. It shot out a light-bluish electric burst from its rifle at Imp; the same type of energy used to stun James and Mark, knocking him out before he could get up, then picked him up by the collar of his United Worlds uniform and dragged him and Lewis into the airlock, letting another trail behind with trembling Claire.

  They had docked their boarding ship against the airlock; again, the Jupitain craft resembled that of half a shark tooth, with the bridge in the middle, and a downwards facing half shark tooth wing under it. Almost the entire crew was knocked out except for James and Claire. It was the most fearful flight they had ever experienced. The Jupitains keeping them were quiet and didn’t make a sound during the entire journey, which was barely a minute long.

  Claire was still processing what had happened, and she looked horrified. James was still trying to regain his bearing from the stun. A slight bump was felt through the boarding ship. They had arrived. When the door to the Jupitain dock opened, a humanoid blue man greeted them.

  He looked so much like an average human, that the only difference between the two species besides the blue skin was that his eyes glowed entirely red, even where his pupils should’ve been. He was wearing a pitch black colored war jacket, with grey, high tech armor underneath it. The chest plate read; ‘C-300A,’ on the left side, in small, white font.

  Two Jupitain guards accompanied him. “Welcome my guests. We have much to discuss,” he said it casually like he was inviting them over for a party, “Guards, escort our new friends to the bridge, we can talk more there.”