United We Stand

by Christian Messe

  One of the Ion cannons fired, but the Skyframe was too quick. It raised its wing as a protective shield and blocked the energy from the blast entirely, scattering the blue Ion particles everywhere. The beast started to scour the battlefield, looking for anything that was still breathing. The Queen and her forces were nowhere to be seen; Claire was on her own. The troops and most of the citizens in the camp were dead. Some were hiding; one was even a few feet away from Claire.

  The one next to her was a male, probably in his sixties, scars all over his face, with dark orangish skin, and a cracked orange gem on his forehead, but he didn’t look scared. He didn’t say anything, he just looked at Claire, with a confident expression on his face. He squinted his eyes and pointed at her Meta-Core hand.

  “Anything,” He whispered.

  “I-I can’t,” Claire whimpered.

  “Anything,” he said, boldly.

  The Skyframe was closing in on the trenches. When it reached them, they were all going to die. Its footsteps clanked loudly in the pavement, cracking it with every step. It roared intimidatingly, and let its mouth open slightly, red energy forming for another strike.

  The man reached out, and grabbed Claire’s arm, “Be the one who saves the light.” He looked at her straight in the eye, and nodded, hope in his eyes.

  She didn’t know what that meant, but she knew what she had to do now, she’d already let enough people die, it was now, or nothing. The man let go, and still trembling, she slowly climbed above the dry dirt and stood up onto the cement. The Skyframe lunged as soon as it laid its sights onto her.

  Claire acted out of reflex, and her Meta-Core hand created a small thruster on the right side of her wrist, propelling her from the Skyframe’s impact. It growled, frustrated, and tried again, but this time was stopped by suppressing fire from one of the Ion cannons. It only took one Ionic shot to knock the unshielded beast off its feet, and into the ground. Its eye flickered but then turned on again, even brighter than before, like it was enraged.

  It flew at Claire again, but she launched a small piece of metal from her Meta-Core, that flew into the ground. It dug itself in until it was stable enough to expand higher up. The pieces grew, and formed together, flying and whizzing in all directions, assembling something.

  They built up, piece by piece, layer by layer. A leg, two legs, then a body, two arms. An exo-suit, no, no, a mech. It was a particular unit in the United Worlds military, only used by special forces and pockets of military bases. For a left hand, there was instead a heavy Plasma laser hooked up, and on the right, just a hand, but there wasn’t a helmet piece, only the legs, the torso, and two arms, and inside were the controls.

  Claire envisioned it from sketches Lewis had drawn aboard their asteroid cleanup ship, and military issued holo-images. Lewis’s dream was to have an enhanced, heavily armored, battle mech, to fight on the front lines, now, Claire had one. She didn’t even need to think about all the details, just the memory of the pictures, and the Meta-Core handled the ‘nuts and bolts’ side of the creation.

  The Skyframe lunged, energy forming, blindingly bright. Claire sprinted towards her mech that five seconds ago was a two-inch piece of metal. Where the rest of the metal came from, she had no idea. She jumped inside and grabbed ahold of the controls. She had to stand inside of the mech’s body, her head being the only part of her that was vulnerable. Her arms were partly visible, metal straps acted as the arms, with huge armor plating protecting her shoulders, wrists, and elbows, and her legs were completely covered.

  She started to aim her plasma cannon, but the Skyframe smashed into her like a bus. She flew backward, hitting the ground with a bang. She was snugly locked inside of her mech by a metal compartment, but the fall still hurt. The Skyframe growled and started to charge at her. Claire tried to get up as fast as she could, but she wasn’t used to this new way of moving at all. The Skyframe smashed into her again, but before it could finish her off, an Ion cannon from the Temple fired again, causing the beast to recoil, but not enough so for it to fall over again. It was still enough time for Claire to get stabilized. She raised her Plasma cannon and fired. Her arm recoiled from the force of the blast.

  The Plasma bolt collided with the left side of the Skyframe’s face, tearing apart it’s upper mouth, and eye. Claire didn’t have time to celebrate, because the Skyframe didn’t waste a second. It opened its mouth, gears and circuits clinging along it’s destroyed left side of its face, like chimes. It fired a profound and incredibly bright laser beam directly at Claire’s mech, hitting its chest, and sending the mech flying into the rubble of a destroyed building.

  Claire grunted desperately. The controls wouldn’t work, and she could feel her energy draining. The mech was useless now. She climbed clumsily out through the top of the mech, landing onto the rubble, scrapping her arms because some sharp bricks cut her. She felt the right side of her face with her hand and could feel a huge gash that was bleeding profusely. She sat up and looked at the burning mech, and out, slowly through the fire, the Skyframe emerged, it’s one working eye so bright it could have been burning, and no one could tell the difference. It got closer, and closer, it knew that Claire was helpless, so it took its time, it was going to enjoy killing her.

  Claire got up and stood as straight, and as confident as she could. All the while, her Meta-Core vibrated chaotically. She didn’t say or do anything, just stood there, looking the beast straight in it’s one good eye. It lunged, roaring, it’s anger intense, but Claire still stood there, until the last second.

  Her Meta-Core hand transformed, clicking and clanking into a weapon — a sturdy, stable, spear, with a layer of blue energy at its sharp tip. When the Skyframe was almost mouth to face with Claire, she thrust her hand as far up the bottom of the beast’s mouth that it could go. The spear impaled the beast’s bottom and top parts of its head, and then a blade emerged from the front of the spear, turning it into a one-sided sword. She cut through the thick, laser resistant metal with a sword that was sharp enough to cut through the hardest of metals. She was using exactly what the Skyframe was made of. She slashed through the mechanical beast, in one line, shouting the entire time, until she reached the core, the shiny blue sphere inside of every non-biological Meta-Core.

  She retracted her sword back into a hand and pulled the core out. As soon as it was detached from the body of the Skyframe, the entire dragon-like body separated into millions of tiny pieces of metal, and small puddles of Dark matter.

  A roar of loud cheering emerged from the survivors inside the trenches, loud whooping, clapping, for a while it was even louder than the explosions coming from the Jupitain warships and Ion cannons.

  Claire grimaced, extremely exhausted, the pain from her wounds catching up with her fleeting adrenaline. Then, she fainted. The last thing she heard before she closed her eyes was the running of the citizens coming towards her.

  The Lore. Twenty Years before the release of the Jupitain experiment.

  “You’re progress on these… experiments, are starting to make me question your intentions, Monteaire,” Said the King of the Lore.

  His clean, white beard stretched down to his chest. He had battle scars all over his arms, and face, and was armored with a thick golden chest plate. The gold armor also covered his arms and legs. An advanced, and sleek laser rifle was holstered at his waist. Meta-Core, passed down to every ruler of the Lore since its founding.

  “My intentions,” The Cyrisian Overlord replied, “Are to protect my people, by any means necessary, you would understand that, wouldn’t you?”

  “No,” The King said, “No I wouldn’t, not if you’re putting innocent lives on the line for no reason. You’re going too far. For example, you're, ‘upgrade,’ to your Meta-Core controller.”

  “Just, Meta-Core,” The Overlord replied.

  The King ignored his input, “As I was saying, this… Meta-Core controller, it’s dangerous, a risk. They were fine before, but you’ve been changing something about them. It’s a
lmost like they have a consciousness. Like they’re evil. Meta-Cores are dangerous enough as it is, but making them so savage, and relentless, that could bring devastation if it fell into the wrong hands,” He sighed, “And I think it already has.”

  The Overlord frowned slightly, showing a hint of emotion for once, “I’m insulted that you think I would ever use this breakthrough as a destructive weapon, it is simply for convenience, imagine the advantages this could provide. The Meta-Core is now more lethal, it can take on the enemy even faster now, without being told orders directly.”

  “Do you not even remember your history? The Fallen Empire? Lord Eraus?” The King asked, getting nervous.

  “Eraus was a madman, a savage… you couldn’t even call him a man,” The Overlord replied, “Besides, the Meta-Core’s programming has nothing to do with him.”

  “He slaughtered billions, he abused his gift of the Meta-Gene, and created an age of chaos and destruction, I just hope that doesn’t happen to you.” The King paused for a minute; the entire royal hall was silent, “How were you even able to create a sort of consciousness in the machines?”

  The Overlord leaned forward in his seat, and spoke quieter, “I won’t tell you all the steps, all I’ll say is, Dark… Dark matter.”

  The King slammed the table with his fist, “Dark matter is illegal!” He shouted, “Do you not know how dangerous that substance is?!”

  “You use the material of the light. The Gold matter for your army, why can’t I use dark for mine?” The Overlord asked calmly.

  “Because Gold matter is the substance of life, Dark matter… The darkness is death! It erodes everything that lives, it is impossible to work with,” The King was getting frantic, and angry.

  “We handle it as carefully as possible, no leakage, no casualties,” Lied the Overlord.

  “If the Nova Alliance ever finds out about this… or the Kelisians…” The King started.

  “They won’t,” The Overlord replied firmly, “I know you don’t want a war Pheldis, and if the Kelisians ever found out about this, they would kill for it, not to protect, but to horde it. You know them, hiding away in their saucers, gaining wealth for almost nothing. They have secrets, deadly secrets. Unlike the Nova Alliance, they don’t share their technology with others, they take it, and use it to take advantage of others. For example, the Photon cannon you have in development… they’d wipe out your entire city just to get ahold of the schematics if they had the upper hand.”

  The King didn’t say anything. He knew that the Overlord had a point, “I will keep your secret, but promise me just one thing.”

  “And what would that be, your majesty?”

  “Never come to the Lore again.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Lewis and Red’s escape pod got closer and closer to the Jupitain warship.

  “Why are we going towards it?!” Red asked frantically.

  “I think we’re being pulled by a tractor beam,” Lewis answered.

  “Well then do something! Get us out of here!”

  Lewis maneuvered through the tight space of the pod and tapped the control pad. Its screen stayed black.

  “That’s not good,” Lewis sighed.

  “What, what happened?!” Red asked.

  “I think that blast they hit us with messed up the pod’s systems.”

  “So, what do we do now then?”

  “I-I don’t really know.”

  The pod reached the warship’s hangar and hovered into it. The tractor beam shut off, and the pod slammed into the hangar floor, surrounded by armed Jupitains. One of them growled and kicked the pod, causing it to move slightly.

  “That can’t be good,” Lewis said.

  “You think?” Red answered sarcastically. She sighed, “What do we do now?”

  “The only thing we can,” Lewis said. Without hesitation, he kicked open the pod door, got up and said, “We surrender!”

  The Jupitain that had kicked the pod aggressively walked over and smashed Lewis’s face with the butt of its laser rifle. Red winced. The Jupitain dragged Lewis away, while another grabbed Red from the pod, and forced her to stand still. The visor scanned both of them and flashed green to signal their unimportance. The Jupitain escorted Red into a dimly lit hallway, while another Jupitain dragged Lewis, going in the same direction. Karalus didn’t know they were there. At the time, he was just putting the finishing touches on his plan to obliterate the Lore.

  For ordinary people, a Jupitain’s protocol was to find a labor job for the prisoner. If there wasn’t one available, they were killed. They reached a hallway, filled to the brim with nothing but prison cells. Each cell had a viewport only about two inches wide, cut through the thick metal doors. One of the Jupitains opened a cell and shoved Red into it. The Jupitain holding Lewis simply threw him in by the legs. One of the Jupitains snarled, and left with the other one, closing the door behind them.

  “Lewis, can you do me a favor and wake up?” Red said, with weak sarcasm.

  Lewis opened his eyes and looked around, “Sorry, something about getting repeatedly hit in the face just seems to knock me out for some reason.” He rubbed his head slightly; the spot where the Jupitain had hit him was bruised.

  Red gave him a sad smile, “So, what now?”

  “What, you’ve never been in one of these before?” Lewis asked like he was a professional at escaping heavily fortified warships. “I’ve broken out of one of these before… granted I was let out, but still.”

  Red sighed, “This is serious, if they had looked at me a little closer, their visors would’ve realized I’m a rebel, and they would’ve killed me.”

  “But I’m United Worlds, wouldn’t they have killed me too?” Lewis asked.

  Red smirked like he just said something funny, “Here, they laugh at the United Worlds, they know humans apart of that have no idea what the Kelisians are really doing, so they just brush them to the side.”

  “Everyone says the Martians… or Kelisians keep secrets around here, why is that? Well, besides them keeping their real name a secret…” Lewis said.

  “They’ve always been that way, but now they really have to keep things under wraps since if one lil’ biddy human gets captured and tortured, out comes every single advantage against the E6s, which by now, I don’t even think they have anymore.”

  “I don’t get it though. They rescued us from the Jupitains when my planet was invaded.”

  “That was nine years ago,” Red said.

  That comment bothered Lewis, “How’d you know how long ago that was?” Before Red could answer, the metal doors slid open, and an armed Jupitain walked in.

  It looked at Lewis, then over to Red. The visor turned green, signifying the prisoners as unarmed. It turned around and started to walk away. Red let out a breath of relief, but it was too soon. The Jupitain turned around, and looked at Lewis closely, and realized that multiple Jupitain distress signals had been reported from Stratus, the planet that Lewis and Red had just escaped from. It grabbed Lewis by the neck, and the glare of the glowing red visor shined brightly in his eyes.

  Then it saw Red and dropped Lewis on the ground with him gasping for air. The Jupitain looked at her, and without warning grabbed the back of her head, and slammed her against the wall. The Jupitain scanned her face closely, and obviously found upsetting results, because, in the next few seconds, the Jupitain grabbed her, and forced her out of the cell, closing the doors behind it, and leaving Lewis on the ground, dazed, and alone.

  “No, no, no no no!” Lewis got to his feet and started to bang on the door as loud as he could. Then he remembered what had happened last time James did that. Lewis got an idea. He kept banging on the door, but unlike James, he had to do it constantly for almost thirty minutes, making as much noise as he possibly could. A Jupitain finally opened the doors and growled at him. It was holding a shock spear. Before it could do anything, he sprinted out of the cell, right past it. The Jupitain roared in frustration, and chased after him, gaining a le
ad since it was almost two feet taller than him.

  It started to get creepily close. Lewis saw a rogue control pad next to a set of large metal doors. He slammed it with his hand, and the door closed, making the Jupitain halt to a stop on the other side of the doors. Lewis panted, but kept running, not knowing where he was going at all. He passed doorway after doorway, each leading to another part of the ship.

  He kept running and running until he started to think why he was doing this, risking his life, for the sake of a girl he had just met hours ago. Then he remembered why. She was beautiful.

  Lewis started to think of places the Jupitains would have put her, not another cell; they grabbed her, to get rid of her, get rid of any threat to themselves. Those monsters were going to kill her, and Lewis had to find out where. He didn’t know how he was going to find Red. He didn’t know how he was going to rescue her even if he did find her. Heck, he didn’t even know her real name, but he ran anyway.

  Lewis was pretty sure he was heading towards the back of the ship, which meant he was about to run into the engine room sometime soon, that was, if he wasn’t stopped, or on the wrong floor. A patrolling, unarmed Jupitain was walking through the hallway and came in front of Lewis’s path. It growled, and turned towards him, ready to impale its prey with its deadly claws.

  With the Jupitain in sight, Lewis still didn’t stop. He ran faster, and faster, in a charge and rammed the Jupitain to the ground. He fell on top of it, and ripped the visor off of its face with both hands, making the Jupitain turn into a puddle of dark liquid.

  Lewis looked at the visor, and then the Dark matter. He grabbed some and covered the picture of Earth stitched to the right of his chest with the dark liquid. Then, he took the visor, sighed, and put it on. The red light turned back on, and the mind-controlling program scanned him but didn’t activate since it was used to the Dark matter, or an official command to control something. All the other features seemed to work though.