United We Stand

by Christian Messe

  The sky was pitch black and red, smoke completely covering the beautiful artificial sky. Ion bursts crashed into Jupitain formations, that were only a few hundred yards away. Every single skyscraper that had been in the outskirts, facing the entrance gate of the Lore, was gone. The Iro was six miles away from the middle part of the city, and Lore fighters were trying desperately to tear through its thick armor.

  Inside the trench, thousands of Lore soldiers were on their stomachs, firing into the cloud of dust ahead of them, not knowing if they were hitting anything or not. Suddenly, a Cyrisian robot, with four legs, and a cylinder body charged through the cloud of dust and immediately started to fire on Lore soldiers with its quad, minigun lasers. Lore soldiers screamed in agony, and all Claire did was watch, horrified.

  A different class of Lore soldier, came sprinting from another battalion. He was a Lore special forces unit, a branch named; Gloryrays. The ‘Gloryray,’ charged the mechanical monster, with dual flame throwers, only there was something different about the throwers. Instead of flame, they fired a blue, electrically modified current of energy, that stuck to the enemy like napalm. The substance tore through the machine like paper, completely deactivating it.

  Before the Gloryray could celebrate though, a Jupitain troop transport vehicle rammed him at full speed, sending him flying into the ground. He hit the ground on his back, which punctured the thrower’s power cells, which were inside a sensitive container on the Gloryray’s back. The impact into the ground caused the power cells to explode, and send electric flame everywhere, covering a few friendly forces. All Claire could hear was screaming. A Lore soldier ran away, waving his arms around wildly. He was covered in the sticky blue energy.

  The troop transport opened its side doors, and dozens of Jupitains scrambled out of it. One of them threw a black hole grenade, which sucked three Lore soldiers inside. A Jupitain started to shoot at Claire, and she just stood there. She was in utter shock. A Lore soldier next to her noticed the Jupitain, and then looked at Claire. He grunted, then tackled Claire before the barrage of laser bolts could end up hitting her. He raised his laser rifle, and shot the Jupitain in the visor, only needing one shot.

  He looked down at Claire, his facial expression desperate. He was Darsakian and had a giant, bloody cut running down the right side of his face, “Help us!” He screamed in her face. With that, Claire could suddenly take in her surroundings. She heard the laser fire. The explosions. The screams. The soldier looked at her in the eye, still looking desperate. All the chaos around her had set in, and it was the wakeup call she needed.

  She noticed a Jupitain in her peripheral vision, that was sprinting towards the soldier that was on top of her. For just a second, Claire didn’t think. At all. She shoved the soldier off of her with her Meta-Core hand, which made it feel like she was moving a pebble, then raised her Meta-Core hand, and transformed it into a new type of laser rifle. A sphere where her hand was, acted as the charging cell, and the barrel in front, would spin into the sphere after a few shots, to recharge. The sphere formed itself, and the barrel did a 180 from the back to the front, in a quick and smooth snap. She closed one eye, and fired a red energy burst at the Jupitain.

  She missed, but that didn’t stop her. She leaped off of the ground, and in the fraction of a second, while she was going through the motion of sliding her hand across the middle of the Jupitain’s visor while it was in a mid-charge, her Meta-Core hand transformed into a laser-edged blade, cutting the visor in half. The cut sent the Dark matter remains raining down on the soldier behind her.

  “Yes!!” The soldier yelled, while drenched in Dark matter.

  Claire’s hair was in her face. She blew it, her facial expression; pure determination. Without thinking twice, she started sprinting for the Jupitain transport craft. She blew a hole through the front of it with her new type of laser cannon, and the hovercraft crashed to the ground, deactivated. A Jupitain sprinted out through the hole and charged her. Claire grunted, and her Meta-Core laser cannon reverted into a fist and created an electric pulse in the center of her palm. She punched the Jupitain right in the visor, sending it flying backward. The visor deactivated from the electric charge, and the Jupitain dissipated into Dark matter goo in midair. Claire breathed out heavily. She could feel her energy, being drained away.

  She looked at the horizon. All of a sudden, all six of the Ion cannons perched on top of the Temple, fired at once, right on the Iro. The Ion bursts blew right through the Iro’s dense shields, and armor, and completely disabled it, causing a massive explosion. The Iro’s hover engines turned off, like a ripple effect, and the enormous invasion craft fell to the ground. Jupitain tanks and artillery were still making catastrophic progress though, tearing through the outer city, and destroying bases, street by street.

  Claire grimaced as the dust cleared. She saw dozens of battalions, each one filled with hundreds upon hundreds of Jupitains. Hover tanks moved beside them, continually firing at the Lore fighters swooping over them. The fighters were blowing up random formations. Jupitain artillery shot down one of the Lore fighters that was flying back over the trench, attempting to do a second attack run. It crashed into a skyscraper, destroying one of the floors.

  Ten Jupitain hover tanks slowly moved into the clearing, headed for the trench. Claire was positioned in the middle of the entire defensive line, the street behind her leading right to the Royal temple. It was a thirty mile stretch to the Temple’s gate, and the Jupitains were trying to march right through the line of Lore soldiers defending that path.

  The soldiers fired furiously at the Jupitain hover tanks that were coming right for them. Claire fired her laser cannon at the formation as well, but nothing was getting through their shields. The tanks were only a few yards away. Click, click, click… booom! One of the Temple’s Ion cannons blew through the center of the formation and sent the tanks flying, while the ones closest to the blast were vaporized.

  Claire squinted, trying to see through the cloud of dust covering where the shot had hit. She grimaced, then her eyes widened, with sudden shock. Jupitain bombers, three times larger than a Jupitain fighter, were swooping down towards the trench. There were three of them, all flying sideways, ready to drop their payloads onto the Lore soldiers. They were also escorted by ten Jupitain fighters.

  “Move, move!!” One of the Lore soldiers shouted. Claire didn’t have any ideas on what to do, the bombers were coming in too fast, and the ever-growing sound of the engines was more than intimidating. There were just too many to shoot down. She panicked, realizing that if she stayed near the trench, she would be blown up by a furious volley of bombs. The Jupitains dropped a modified type of bomb called a Hyperlax-5U.

  They were guided by an invisible laser and were very small, designed that way so that it was hard to shoot them down. Even though they had a miniature size, they still caused a massive explosion. When the bombs exploded, a sonic blast would be shot out as well, sending a red shockwave of energy in every direction, vaporizing the ground while the bomb exploded.

  Claire and hundreds of Lore soldiers started to sprint away from the trench. Dozens stayed, trying desperately to hold the line. The bombers flew over the channel, and dropped over fifty Hyperlax-5U bombs onto the trench, causing a blinding explosion. Claire and the soldiers had run a few meters away from the blast zone, just barely, but the shockwave still wiped some of them off their feet.

  The Jupitains were slamming through the middle of the trench line, and there were just too many to stop them. The Ion cannons had to fire at both Jupitain warships and infantry forces on the ground, when there were only six in the entire Lore. Even though they were immensely powerful, there were too many Jupitains to hold that much of the city. The middle trench line was run over, and the hover tanks started for the Royal temple. Claire and thousands of other soldiers had no other choice but to keep losing ground and take positions in the inner city.

  Jupitains surrounded the Queen and her troops, firing on them relentlessl
y, roaring in loud, deadly voices. The Queen used her Meta-Core staff to block most of the fire, turning it into a shield, then a laser launcher to destroy a faraway Jupitain tank that was just beginning to charge it’s barrel. It exploded into a hundred pieces, blowing up all the Jupitains nearby.

  Above, a Jupitain warship went down, when the blue burst of energy from an Ion cannon collided with its bridge. The fiery crash went down into two skyscrapers, both sides of the hull bringing the two massive buildings down with it, blowing a gust of debris and dust in every direction. The sound of Lore fighter engines screeched from above, leaving a trail of yellow, golden energy behind them. They were charging into the fleet of Jupitain warships.

  The massive Ion cannons brought Jupitain warships down, with only one shot needed to puncture the shields, and hull, making a swift, and devastating blow. Jupitain fire could do nothing as long as the shields protecting the Heavy Ion cannons were still up. The warships started to retreat from the outer city, but still released drop ship after dropship, in hopes of breaking to the Lore’s shield generators.

  “Push forward!” The Queen shouted. The soldiers started to charge down the crater infested street until the ground began to shake below them.

  “Decimator…” The Queen mumbled. Her eyes widened, as she made a devastating realization, “Scatter!!”

  The ground opened through the center of the platoon, and out screeched a Meta-Core worm… a Decimator, blaring the Jupitain horn of death and firing small bolts of lasers from its metal scales. It crushed one of the soldiers and started to burrow back into the ground, preparing for another attack.

  “Steady!” The Queen yelled.

  The ground shook again, and the Meta-Core started to burrow through a skyscraper’s support, then another, and another, until the building began to collapse.

  “It’s gonna bury us!” One of the soldiers shrieked.

  When the last support was shattered, the building collapsed one story, then began to fall towards the ground, about to crush the platoon and the other building on the other side of the road. The Queen raised her staff, concentrating, and held it longways, with one hand. Then, it spread, into more metal pieces, each coming out of each other, snapping with perfect harmony. It formed a giant, roof-like structure over the platoon, and created two metal supports to stabilize itself on the back side.

  When the building fell into the slanted metal roof, it broke into thousands of pieces, but the Meta-Core shield remained undamaged. The Queen held up the staff with two hands and struggled to keep it steady, with desperate intensity. She didn’t have to rely on her personal strength; the Meta-Core had its own supports which were being dug into the ground, deeper and deeper.

  The bricks and metal rolled off the side until there was nothing left. The building that had been behind them was demolished. She dissembled the roof, and turned the Meta-Core back into a staff, breathing heavily. She looked towards the ground, and angrily pounded the bottom of her staff against it. A surge of electricity spread through the cement, cracking it. Then out came the outraged Decimator.

  It looked at the unharmed platoon and blared the horn of death again. It was about to lunge, but the Queen acted faster. Quickly, in a matter of seconds, her staff transformed into a fully functioning Plasma ray. It charged, and fired, hitting the Decimator directly in the mouth, sending the metal pieces everywhere, and showing its bright blue core inside of its body, still alive. The Queen shot it, and the core exploded, permanently deactivating the Decimator. It disassembled into millions of pieces like glass, the core unable to hold the Decimator's form.

  The Queen turned around, “On your feet, we still have work to do!”

  Horde after horde of Jupitain soldiers, sprinted savagely towards any living thing. They weren’t ordered to take prisoners like in the invasion of Earth; they were ordered to slaughter. Karalus wanted every remnant of the Lore wiped from existence, and he was throwing everything he could at the invasion. He was starting to make progress too. Lore ground forces lost block, after block, until the Ion cannons had a safe enough range to decimate any advancing Jupitain forces, without costing the lives of civilians. The Lore didn’t seem to have any land-based war vehicles; they probably never had a reason to have them, until now.

  Jupitain hover tanks were heavily armored, and without a superweapon like Claire’s Meta-Core, it would take overwhelming, and intense firepower to break through the dense shields, and reinforced metal plating, firepower most Lore ground troops simply didn’t have. The troops consisted of various amounts of different species, all of them mostly humanoid, but with varying features that made them different from a human. They were from planets all over the Galaxy.

  In the air was where the Lore excelled at. Their ships could easily outmaneuver the Jupitain’s, and the Dark matter EMP that they used to destroy the outer fleet was the only one they had. Karalus intended to solely use it on the Photon cannon. The Jupitain force wasn’t meant to outperform though; it was meant to overwhelm, throw everything at something until the target was drowning with enemies. That method worked for the rest of the Galaxy, but not on the Lore.

  Some of the dogfights would have one Lore ship versus three Jupitain fighters, and the outcome would still be the Lore’s ship flying through the smoke. Jupitain warships had to either land in or leave the city’s interior as the Ion cannons blasted away their shields. The hole that the first Ion cannon had blown through the thick walls of the city revealed the vacuum of space, but holo-shields from all four corners of the city limits kept everyone from being sucked into oblivion.

  “Incoming!” A Lore soldier shouted, creating panic within the groups. A Jupitain bomber was zooming past laser fire, straight for the entryway to the shield generator. Another one of the soldiers grabbed a standard rocket launcher and fired the self-aiming missile into the bomber. It flew out of the barrel and sped into the ship’s side, causing it to spin out of control and smash into a large fountain statue, exploding.

  “They’re getting desperate,” Another soldier said, with hopeful relief. The Jupitains weren’t alive, they were clumps of Dark matter formed into a body by a computer code in their visors, but the Lore’s troops were very much alive, and suffering significant casualties, and injuries. Hospital tents were being set up in ruined plots, and inside of toppled skyscraper wreckage. Fires were everywhere, covering the artificial sunny sky with a cloud of thick smoke and smog. Even the able-bodied soldiers had bleeding slashes and cuts that ran down their faces or arms — the claws of a Jupitain.

  Suddenly, a Meta-Core glided through the thick smoke, roaring mechanically, but it looked, different. It had wings, and a head that seemed almost lizard-like, yet machine.

  “Is that… a dragon?” Claire asked one of the soldiers amid the chaos.

  “No-whatever a dragon is… that right there,” The soldier pointed at the flying Meta-Core, “Is a Skyframe, not too many of those suckers around, but the ones that people do encounter, well, they never live to talk about em.”

  The ‘Skyframe’ definitely looked like a mechanical dragon, with the same type of metal scale type armor as the Meta-Worm. It had red energy glowing brightly from its eye sockets. Layers of thick metal protected its blue core. It swooped through the air, leaving trails of smoke at the tips of its wings. When it came across a Lore fighter it opened its mouth, but instead of breathing fire like in medieval legends, it shot a powerful red laser beam, disintegrating the fighter’s hull, and sending the two wings flying in separate directions, exploding.

  Another fighter started to follow its tail, firing relentlessly, but the Meta-Core adapted. It’s head, and part of its neck, detached from the rest of its body and formed a small engine to boost itself towards the back of its body. It flew under itself, until it reached the tip of its tail, and reattached to it, making the tail now it’s neck. It readjusted its entire body, the legs reversed, it’s stomach twisted, and it’s systems reconnected, making the red energy eyes flicker. It opened its mouth to fir
e again, hitting the fighter head on with the beam of light, causing it to explode, and sending the debris hurling towards the street, only a few blocks away from the camp Claire was at.

  “Jesus…” Claire whispered.

  “Get down, get down now!!” A soldier shouted desperately.

  The Skyframe was headed full speed towards their campsite. While it flew, it made a sound, like it’s razor-sharp wings were cutting through the air. It crashed onto the center of the camp, crushing at least half a dozen tents, and the wounded inside them. Claire was too stunned to do anything; it was all happening so fast. The Jupitain tanks were nothing compared to this.

  She lunged towards a small trench and got as low as she could, her Meta-Core hand vibrating wildly, but she couldn’t notice that, not in all the chaos. Part of her wanted to cry, she didn’t know why she was getting so scared all of a sudden, but she was. This was a hundred times scarier than a Jupitain to her.

  Meta-Cores that weren’t biologically connected to an organism via a Meta-Gene, or made into a weapon like the Queen’s spear, which required immensely complicated and difficult craftsmanship to be made, were programmed. Machines. They were designed by Cyrus, as loyal war machines, allies of the Lore during the reign of the Fallen Empire, but they had limits. They could only use one form, the one object they were programmed to be, nothing else.

  The Skyframe ripped apart every tent in sight and fired its laser at anything that moved, its eyes burning with energy like it had just flown out from hell prior to its deployment. A soldier started yelling, and firing, missing nearly every shot. The Skyframe noticed the petty annoyance and crushed him with its tail, into the burning cement, then launched his corpse into the fire with a single swipe of its tail.

  Claire had to have a lot of self-control to keep from screaming; she was scared. She watched, helplessly as all kinds of different races of troops were either blown to pieces or smashed by the cold, sharp metal of the Skyframe. It roared in triumph and looked towards the Temple. Claire knew what its mission was, it was going to try and break through the shields, and let the Jupitains march right into the shield generator, and if they really shut everything down, not only would the Ion cannons be vulnerable, but the four massive shield projectors as well, that kept the Lore from being sucked into space.