United We Stand

by Christian Messe

  James sighed, “Deal.”

  “Well, I’m guessing you didn’t bring us here just to talk,” Mark said, looking around at all of the old crates.

  “Nope,” Douglas said simply, “See all these boxes? Fallen Empire weaponry. Lasers, rocket launchers, laser launchers, grenades that’ll make you crap out your organs.”

  Mark winced.

  “My point is, this place has everything, or at least close to that. It’s easy to get ahold of stuff when you can overrun heavily defended markets just by creating something to take them over, with your mind.”

  “So, guns, and… other stuff, but what about like, vehicles? Tanks, light battle craft. Anything?” James asked, desperately.

  “Lore and its allies scrapped all that years ago. This is all that’s left. Gonna have to make do with what we’ve got.”

  “So, we have to go into a heavily fortified Jupitain base with nothing but these? We’ll get blown up before we even reach the flight deck,” James wined.

  “This ain’t my first rodeo kid, hell I don’t even wanna do this, but I am because of the kindness in my heart,” Douglas quipped, sarcastically, “So you better get your act together and follow my lead if you really wanna get outta here. Besides, what happened to the guy who made that speech five seconds ago? Prove to me your more than just talk.”

  Mark leaned over and picked up a clunky barreled, blocky laser rifle from one of the crates, “James, we either die here, fighting for Earth, or what’s left of it… or later knowing that we did nothing to try and save it. Which one do you want to do? Captain,” Mark asked.

  James stared at him. He had changed so much since the last few hours… or days, he lost track of time, “Your right,” James snatched a laser rifle from the floor, “Let’s do this.”

  Douglas rolled his eyes, “Ah yes, here we go, so motivational you two, really somthin,’ now how bout’ you guys grab the stuff that’s actually gonna work, like… I dunno, a laser launcher, grenades? Anything explosive?”

  The three of them walked out dragging two crates with them, filled with three rifles, some grenades, laser and rocket launchers, and much more. James and Mark had to pull it together, struggling. Douglas pulled one by himself and snickered at the two of them. They walked through the streets of the village, everyone working on something, cooking, cleaning, making tools, and weapons.

  “Why don’t you share your tech with them?” Mark asked.

  Douglas shrugged, “At first, thought they were gonna try an’ kill me in my sleep, thinkin’ I’m some demon from the sky. Now, just don’t see the point, I feel better if they just stick with spears anyway.”

  They reached Douglas’s hut, “We’ll stock up on anything we need here first,” Douglas said. James and Mark went inside. James noticed more than he did when he was first in there. There was an old M14 rifle hung to the wall, the kind used in the Vietnam War, how Douglas still had bullets for it was a mystery to him. There was another laser rifle; it had a dozen tiny squares on each side of its rectangular barrel, charging cells. Mark started walking towards it.

  “Be careful with that one, Tempest rifle, very powerful, in energy and recoil,” Douglas warned, “I’m fine just with good ole’ Cathy.” He grabbed his M14, and a pair of Military Grade binoculars, and walked outside, “Let’s get going boys!” Mark followed, smirking because of his cool looking new gun. James just took one of the clunky laser rifles.

  The three of them walked through the Jungle, the vegetation getting thicker every few feet, “You know, Sergeant Baker, my old Platoon Commander, told us that when you focus enough on your target, the enemy won’t hit you in time before you hit them, cause your concentration will be better than theirs. Course though them Vietnamese bastards were always behind us, so his theory didn’t really pull off too well, he died pretty early. Didn’t help that I had saluted him either.”

  “How the heck is that supposed to make us feel better?!” James asked, frantic.

  “It’s not… I just thought it was funny,” Douglas grinned.

  After a few miles of walking, Douglas heard faint footsteps. He lifted his head slightly, then quickly dropped to the ground on his stomach, “Get down!” He ordered, quietly, yet sternly.

  Mark and James got down, “What is it?” James whispered, panting.

  Douglas raised his binoculars. He cursed, “Demons, lots of em, they’re walking towards the village… They’re going to attack.”

  “What do they have with them?” Mark asked, concerned.

  “Three light Hover tanks, and two Heavy tanks behind em, with a couple dozen Demons in front of em.”

  “Why are they attacking now?!” James asked, a little too loud.

  “Quiet you idiot, I dunno, how bout’ you ask em? Probably just spotted the villager’s life signatures while they were scanning for Dark matter,” Douglas whispered, harshly.

  “I thought you said all the Dark matter was drained from this place?” James asked.

  “I thought it was,” Douglas snapped, “We have to head back to the village. Now!” He said it in an orderly military-like way. They ran back for the village, the Jupitains not too far behind, they were going to flatten the village just for being there.

  The sound of jungle trees falling to the ground, ran over by Jupitain hover tanks was getting louder, as they cut their own path through the jungle.

  Douglas, James, and Mark reached the village about a half a mile before the Jupitains did, “Battle stations; move, move!” Douglas hollered, “Get the children inside, take your posts, this is not another drill, the Demons are coming!”

  The villagers didn’t waste any time. They scrambled around, taking their posts, and looking for weapons. All they had were spears, bows and arrows, and primitive swords.

  “How’d they know what to do when you said that?!” James asked.

  “When the Demons landed, I started training the men, and some of the women for an attack, I never thought it would happen, I just did it to make em’ feel safer cause they kept chatterin… damn, I should’ve gotten more guns from that bunker!”

  The natives took their posts, some along the village walls. The walls protecting the village were made of vine and jungle wood, the Jupitains could mow through that like paper. Others took bows, and positioned themselves on top of the trees. The arrows were strong enough to destroy a visor, but landing a shot was easier said than done.

  Douglas took position at the wall, and took aim with his rifle; he didn’t take his eyes off the jungle. It was too thickly covered in plant life to see anything, but of course, he was far too used to that. Mark climbed up a ladder to the top of the wall and stood next to Douglas. There was a platform for them to stand on, just beneath the wall enough for defenders to see over it, and have a clear shot at the enemy, on the high ground.

  “Are you sure these people can take on the Jupitains?” Mark gulped.

  Douglas looked at the jungle, sweating, and deeply focused. After a long silence, he said, “No.”

  James took position in one of the tree houses, he looked down on Mark and Douglas, then at the jungle.

  The crunching and grinding of trees falling stopped. The hover tanks stopped. It was quiet.

  “Horde,” Douglas growled, hate burning within him.

  Mark knelt down for extra cover and breathed heavily. He took aim, sweating, and in an instant. Roars.

  Loud, devastating, ear piercing roars. The Jupitains charged at full speed, unarmed, claws out, flailing everywhere. The tanks came from the back, mowing down the rest of the trees. One aimed, slowly, and fired into the wall. It was a low powered laser cannon, barely anything compared to most Cyrisian tech, but it blew a devastating hole into the wall, making a path into the heart of the village.

  “Auugh!!” Douglas fired shot after shot into the mob of Jupitains, reloaded, then fired again. With every cartridge only holding twelve bullets, he took out twelve Jupitains every time, not wasting a single bullet. His M-14 was semi-automatic. The Jupitai
n’s visors exploded, and they turned into puddles of Dark matter. Jupitains started to spill into the village where the tank had made the hole, and the villagers were there to meet them.

  “Aye aye augghh…” A native was sliced through the throat by Jupitain claws. Another native leaped into the air and threw his spear, piercing two Jupitains at the same time that were in a line for a split second. Jupitains with laser rifles started to pour out into the clearing. They shot off natives armed with bows, some from the trees.

  One a few feet next to James was hit in the stomach. He watched him fall to the ground, making James lose his breath for a second. He grabbed hold of the branch tighter and aimed his laser rifle at one of the Jupitains. He fired, but missed. He fired again and missed. He bit his lip and used anger as fuel for energy. He fired a third shot, and it hit a Jupitain in the torso, not doing anything.

  That Jupitain was holding a missile launcher. It looked up at him, aimed, and fired. The launcher made a loud 'phooom' sound. James didn’t have time to curse. He shrieked and kicked off the branch as hard as he could into the window of the tree house. The missile exploded a few feet away from him, destroying the wall where the window was. James landed on his back, on a dining table made of wooden logs. He groaned from the pain of his landing, but he was lucky to be alive.

  “Oh God, James!!” Mark yelled.

  “No time to worry bout’ that kid, you’re carrying a miniature Tempest cannon, fire that thing!” Douglas ordered.

  Mark, teary-eyed, obeyed. He aimed, Jupitain shots barely missing his face. The large rifle charged, in an unusual way. The cubes came together in the center of the barrel line, compressed, and gained energy immensely while he had his finger on the trigger. He fired at a Jupitain’s visor by letting go of the trigger. The cubes decompressed, and went back to the edges of the barrel, cooling down. The surge of charged up energy hit the Jupitain at full force, and the visor exploded into millions of little pieces.

  “Are you frickin’ kidding me?! Charge that thing all the way, and fire on one o’ those tanks!”

  Mark held the trigger longer, the rifle not only getting harder to aim with but also hotter. Finally, it was too unstable to hold onto any longer, he fired on the tank and a bright surge of energy, moving at the speed of light hit the tank dead in the center. The front of it exploded, causing the hovering motors to deactivate. Then a chain reaction occurred, and the tank shriveled up into ruin after two more explosions blew it to pieces. The rifle’s recoil almost made Mark fall off the wall.

  A Jupitain tried to climb up, but Douglas grabbed its visor and ripped it clean off. The Jupitain fell like rain. He looked at the visor, crushed it, and threw the two pieces behind him.

  Mark watched in awe for half a second, until explosions forced him back into the fight. Mark fired his Tempest rifle again, blowing a hole between five Jupitains, scattering them by the force of the blast.

  “Toss me one of those grenades!” Douglas yelled at Mark.

  He reached into the crate they had grabbed from the bunker and took the closest one he could get his hands on. He picked his head back up from looking in the container, then quickly ducked back down to avoid a few Jupitain shots. A native perched on one of the tree branches shot his bow, and pierced the Jupitain in the center of its visor with an arrow, keeping Mark out of enemy fire.

  Mark looked back and gave him a thankful thumbs up. The native didn’t notice, he was too busy notching kills. A Jupitain hover tank slowly moved its turret to face the tree. It fired dead center into the spot holding all the branches together. The blast obliterated the tree, vaporizing the top, sending all the natives on it whirling towards the ground, some missing limbs.

  Mark winced, then growled angrily.

  “Grenade boy!!” Douglas screamed.

  Mark completely forgot. He lobbed it over to Douglas, who bit off the clip, and threw it into a horde of Jupitains. After two seconds the grenade exploded in a hurl of boiling dark blue particles that expanded around the ground extremely fast, but didn’t go higher than a few inches off the ground.

  The particles disintegrated the Jupitain’s footing, and eventually their entire bodies until they were eroded so much that their faces slammed into the ground and the visors were dissolved as well. The grass and plant life was gone, and where the grenade had burst, a two-inch deep hole was dug into the ground, everything burnt in an instant.

  “What the hell was that stuff?!” Mark asked.

  “Tersakian Oil, compressed with Carbon dioxide, very lethal,” He answered smartly. He got up from his cover and shot off a few more rounds, then reloaded. He took down a few more Jupitains, but still, about two dozen remained, along with two tanks.

  They were starting to spill into the village, killing everything in sight along the way. They began to crash through houses, walls made out of Jungle wood. They killed everyone they could reach, woman, and children too.

  “Dammit!” Douglas cursed. He kept firing, but now he and Mark had to fight on two fronts.

  “Any more miracle grenades in here?” Mark asked.

  “Nope,” Douglas grunted. He leaped down from the wall and grabbed the nearest Jupitain’s visor through the back of its head. He smashed it, his hand through the Jupitain’s face. He didn’t have to move it; the Jupitain melted into a puddle of goo. He kept firing, unloading round after round into the Jupitains, trying to keep them from attacking the natives. His gun clicked. Empty.

  “Argh!” He growled. He dropped the rifle and grabbed a laser pistol out of his thigh holster. It had two slanted pieces of smooth metal, one above, and below the barrel. They spun around it, switching spots each time it fired, charging after each shot. It fired a green type of energy, sending Jupitain visor pieces flying. A body shot still kept them off balance, from the force of the blast.

  Native soldiers were starting to charge towards the tanks. They poked at the thick shielded hull with spears, but they didn’t even dent them. One of the tanks aimed its barrel at the ground where the natives were attacking it, and fired, killing most of them, but also destabilizing itself, destroying one of its hover motors, making the tank lean to the left, it’s side colliding awkwardly with the ground, disabling its shields. Mark didn’t hesitate. He charged up his rifle, until it was too unstable to aim, then released the trigger.

  The surge of energy collided with the damaged side of the tank and sent half of it flying to the right, and caused the other half to explode. The explosion caused the other tank to recoil slightly, but it only made the shields flicker for a few seconds where the blast had come from. The tank moved its turret immediately, aiming directly at Mark.

  “Think I pissed it off!” Mark yelled.

  It fired, but Mark jumped from the ledge on the wall before the blast hit. The explosion blew the wall into oblivion, including the weapon crate filled with ammunition and grenades, causing an even bigger explosion, sending the village gate crashing into the dirt. Mark landed on his feet for a split second and then was launched forward from the force of the explosions.

  There was a small chain reaction, a few more pieces of the wall started to fall, and a fire began to spread around the village. Mark fell to the ground, on his side. His face was scratched up and bleeding. His left arm hurt, but he couldn’t tell if it was broken or not. He looked through the flames, where he saw the tank, slowly running over the shriveled wall.

  His ears were ringing, but he could hear the faint sound of Douglas shouting nearby. He couldn’t make out any of what he was saying. The tank moved its turret slowly towards Mark, in a close enough radius to hit Douglas too. Mark realized that Douglas was sprinting towards him.

  Then, right as the tank was preparing to fire, the turret whizzed, then slid to its lowest position. The turret exit hatch opened, and out popped James, smiling broadly. He was holding the first aid knife they had found earlier, and apparently, it had a function that would turn the sharp edge into a laser, able to cut through metal.

  “There’s a b
ack hatch on this thing… who knew?” He said, cockily.

  Mark let out a sigh of relief and laughed a little. Douglas stopped, and leaned over on his knees, panting, but obviously smiling.

  The Jupitains were exterminated, but at a cost. Douglas counted with the people, twenty-four natives had died, among them woman and children, out of the few hundred villagers.

  Douglas looked down at one of the bodies, a pained expression in his face, “This was a waste,” he said to James, who was walking nearby.

  “There was nothing you could have done better. We got lucky; a regular squad of Jupitains would have steamrolled us.”

  “No, there was. A whole arsenal of weapons, just a short hike away from here, I could’ve told em’ the code, got em’ armed, been prepared. Instead, I let these poor bastards charge into those monsters with sticks, all for my own safety.”

  James didn’t say anything; he just looked down. He was guilty, and James knew there wasn’t going to be a way to comfort him, “I’m gonna go check on Mark,” he said.

  Douglas nodded. James walked to the hut where Mark was laying on a table. His left arm wasn’t broken, but he had multiple wounds around his body from the tank’s blast that needed bandaging. He had bandages wrapped around his chest, one on his leg, another around his left arm. He had small cuts on his face, but nothing dangerous.

  “Feeling better?” James asked.

  “Wasn’t ever hurt,” Mark sat up, grunting.

  “Hey, don’t hurt yourself more by doing that bro.”

  “You a doctor?” Mark asked sarcastically.

  “No.”

  “Then I’m not listening to your treatment plans.”

  “Doctor or not, you got shot by a Jupitain tank.”

  “Grazed, by a tank.”

  “Whatever,” James said.

  “So, is he coming with us… to Earth?” Mark asked, changing the subject.