United We Stand

by Christian Messe

  Edwards looked at him, entirely serious, “I don’t know why you’re here. I don’t know what you want, or what your reasoning is, but what I do know, is that somehow you're controlling these… these monsters, and you didn’t shut them off.”

  “I’m not here to discuss morals. Admiral,” Karalus smirked, “I’m here to kill the insects. The scum that hides in the cracks. There’s nowhere else to go. I’m going to kill them, and you, and anyone else who stands in the way of justice! Justice, and vengeance… for my people, and it’s gonna be slow, so so painfully slow! I could’ve killed everyone, in the fraction of a second, but I didn’t, because I want you to watch. Watch as I destroy that city,” Karalus gestured at the one on Mars, below the giant flying saucer.

  “And the rest on your world as well. I did that already but, you built them back up so fast. It would be a shame to leave them like that,” Karalus paused, staring into space. “Then I’ll kill everything. Just in case anyone made it out. I won’t just massacre the Kelisians,” He looked at Edwards. “I’ll make them extinct.”

  Karalus made a Jupitain shut off the holo-screen, leaving Admiral Smith in silence, his entire crew, mostly Kelisians, left looking at him. He turned around, to face his crew. He didn’t say anything, just looked at all of them. A beeping sound started to come from a control board.

  A Kelisian answered the call, “Sir. The Main Leader has issued an evacuation of all…”

  “All what?” Edwards asked.

  “All Kelisians. All Kelisians sir, to the mothership, she wants every Kelisian from the city of Insignia to evacuate to the mothership. They. They’re fleeing to deep space, sir.”

  Edwards stood there, shocked, “What about the human citizens?” He asked.

  “She- she didn’t say anything. Just. Just Kelisians.”

  Before the Admiral could argue, the blare of a thousand Jupitain war horns echoed through space, making everyone’s blood run cold.

  Edwards exhaled loudly, “Battle stations! Battle stations!! Prepare everything we have, everything! This is a Definity-01 level emergency!! Fire the Ion cannons!”

  The Ion cannons on the U.W.S. Titan aimed at Karalus’s mothership and fired. Click click click… booom! The shots collided with the warship three seconds after the firing sound was heard. Three massive explosions hit the ship, and blue energy particles spread everywhere. The other hundreds of warships did the same, unleashing every weapon they had in their arsenal.

  “So it begins,” Karalus said, serious for once, “Scramble the fighters. I want every single one out there,” He ordered, “And get every Tri-Tank we have, deployed onto the surface of Mars, ten miles away from that city, I want them raining down fire on those skyscrapers, and the oxygen generator. Then when they get close, they’ll stomp on the ashes until the only thing left is rubble and smoke.”

  A Jupitain looked at him, “Three, primed and waiting,” It growled.

  “The defense that city has, we would only need one, but this… this means more fire.”

  “Yes, Alpha,” It screeched.

  Tri-Tanks, Cyrisian war machines. Three giant metal legs, each ten stories high, that stomped and demolished anything under it. One leg in the front, two in the back, with a command center that resembled a blocky, clunky, high tech triangle, with a high powered Ion cannon positioned on top of it. The giant craft were slow, heavily armored, and explicitly made for invasions. They were the same type of heavy invasion craft that was used to destroy the United States’s Eleventh Fleet on Arrival Day.

  The Jupitain warships returned fire. The sound of Ion cannons echoed through space. Plasma turrets fired nonstop, emitting a constant sound of, phoom, phoom, phoom, then recalibrating. Laser fire was everywhere. Explosions blinded every area. Every Jupitain warship opened their hangars, and fourteen thousand Jupitain fighters came zooming towards the United Fleet.

  “Deploy every fighter squadron we have!” Edwards ordered, “Defend the fleet! We’re the only line of defense the United Worlds has!” He ordered a Kelisian officer. “Please tell me the Main Leader will deploy Special Forces, she-she has to!”

  The officer didn’t say anything. He just looked away.

  Edwards grabbed his shoulders and shook him, “Tell me! Tell me she’ll do it!”

  Suddenly, the engines of the Kelisian mothership sparked and lit up. The light was blinding. Edwards and the officer watched it fly away into space, at I-Hypotonic warp… abandoning the city under it.

  “Oh my God,” He breathed. He let go of the officer and turned around towards the front of the bridge. He looked out at the battlefield. He saw Jupitain fighters overwhelm his own. He watched them get shot down and explode. He watched two United Worlds warships slowly blow up in a chain reaction, debris flying everywhere. All he could do was stare. Just like Karalus wanted.

  However, he didn’t want the humans to watch. He wanted the Kelisians to, but he knew that most of them would flee, just like they did to him thirty-nine years earlier, but he had a plan to make sure they would die anyway. There was no way the Kelisians could get out of the Galaxy fast enough, before the supernova caught up with the mothership, and vaporized them.

  Another ship was being destroyed. The Admiral onboard was Kelisian, and he was giving orders on the bridge, relentlessly, “Deploy everything onto those two Cyrisian warships, fire the Ionuclear torpedoes!” The Admiral was supposed to keep the Cyrisian name a secret, but at this point, he didn’t care.

  “Sir, s-some of the debris could hit us; we’re too close!” A female Weapons-Operator yelled.

  “I don’t care how close we are, all you need to do is follow my orders, and just maybe we can all live a little longer!! Fire those torpedoes!” He shouted while pointing at the Jupitain warships outside of the bridge.

  The ship’s engines had been disabled, and they were flying without control towards the Jupitain fleet. She nodded, tears all over, trying not to sob. She flicked a switch on her control board, and released twenty Ionuclear torpedoes aimed for ten nearby Jupitain warships.

  Ionuclear torpedoes were advanced hydrogen bombs, upgraded by the Kelisians to do more damage, all while being able to penetrate shields.

  The torpedoes collided with the warships, through their bows, destroying the fronts of the ships, and sending the rest of the crafts into a devastating chain reaction. Instead of creating a mushroom cloud, the explosions just looked like balls of fire because of the lack of gravity.

  “Direct hit!!” The Admiral screamed. Before they could attack more, a Heavy-class Jupitain fighter, in thick armor fired a Gen-87UI missile at the bridge. The tiny missiles on the side of the main one disconnected from it, and spiraled and hit the bridge’s weak shield. It broke, letting the main missile slam right into the deck. It exploded, sending the rest of the warship into even more disarray, and killing everyone that was on the bridge. After the fighter made it’s hit, it was shot down by a United Worlds fighter jet. The Jupitain fighter blew up, and it’s two support wings went flying in separate directions.

  “Take that you son of a...” The pilot got shot down by three Jupitain fighters behind him before he could finish the sentence. He slammed into a nearby U.W’s warship in a ball of fire.

  Karalus’s mothership opened a giant hangar from the bottom with two giant metal drop doors.

  “Start the invasion,” Karalus growled, “There are still tens of thousands of Kelisians down there that will feel, what I felt.”

  “Alpha…” A Jupitain started.

  “What?!” Karalus yelled.

  “There is… a line of defense surrounding the city,” It growled, “Trenches. Filled with human soldiers.”

  Karalus looked at the Jupitain, then blinked. He started to laugh hysterically, “March those Tri-Tanks straight through the most heavily defended area of their lines, this… this is gonna be fun.”

  The Jupitain obeyed and sent the order to its fellow soldiers through its visor. The three Tri-Tanks were still floating in the hangar, bay doo
rs open under them. They had to be pushed by stabilizers to fall to Mars’s atmosphere. They started to descend.

  “Admiral, l-look!” Shouted a human U.Ws Analyzer. He pointed at the falling machines, headed for the city of Insignia.

  “What the hell are those…” Edwards gasped, “Tell the ground, tell them they have three enemy assault craft headed for the city… tell them to defend. Defend by any means necessary!” He ordered.

  A Kelisian officer nodded, and started to alert the defense on Mars by activating a communications link on his control pad.

  “Wha… Ion cannons? Your sayin’ the damn things have Ion cannons on em?” A human Commander was holding a sleek looking, rectangular device, talking to the crew of the U.W.S. Titan. “You do realize that most of my men, my men, are on Earth right now, because they can’t get a damn transport to take em' here, why?! Cause our fearless, or should I say, your, fearless son of a bitch leader, just fled this suicide zone! Some of my people here are volunteers. volunteers!! Are you hearing me right?! I’m telling you I have an untrained volunteer militia, with maybe a couple thousand actually trained soldiers! If you don’t give us some air support, we’re screwed!”

  “Sir what’s going on?” Asked a female soldier. She was wearing white United Worlds military combat gear, with a sleek, white, and high-tech helmet that covered and protected her entire head. There was a piece of glass in the front of the helmet, allowing for her entire face to be seen. The helmet was also airtight, and circulated oxygen. The soldier’s gear had to have that function since the trenches were outside of the range of the oxygen projector, in the center of the city. All of the soldiers in the trenches were wearing the same type of armor as she was.

  “Not now Private! Keep your…” The Commander and the soldier next to him watched as the Tri-Tanks fell to the ground, surrounded by fire from the atmosphere. They landed with a loud phooom, and a giant explosion of rock and dust covered the giant machines for a few seconds, making a shockwave fly through and collide with the trenches. Nobody said anything. Everybody, was scared.

  “The Martians were supposed to protect us…” The soldier said, “L-like last time.”

  “God.” The Commander breathed. He tuned into his communication device, “I’m going to repeat myself. We critically need air support. Right. Now.”

  The voice answered back, “We know, we know! There’s just nothing we can do right n-auugh!” The voice grunted, “We don’t have enough to support anyone right now, I’m sorry, but you’re on your own.” The device clicked. The officer had left the channel.

  “Hello? Hello! Officer! Officer?!” The Commander yelled frantically. He cursed, and threw the device, breaking it.

  “What’s going on?!” The soldier asked.

  The Commander sighed, “We’re on our own.”

  The dust cleared, and the three Tri-Tanks were in plain sight. The clicking and churring of their gears could be heard from even ten miles away. They were massive. They started to move forward, the front legs stepping out, then the back doing the same, one by one. They moved slowly, but intimidatingly. Then they stopped, and the metal feet of the legs shot out structures of metal into the red rock, attaching themselves to the ground, like an impact stabilizer.

  “What’re they doing?” The soldier asked.

  The Commander had a pair of high tech binoculars; he was looking at the Tri-Tanks. “I dunno, I think they’re attaching themselves to the ground…”

  The Ion cannons on top of the Tri-Tanks fired, with a loud click click click… booom that echoed across the battlefield. The shots were bigger and had more Ionic energy in them. They hit the trenches and exploded, blue particles scattering everywhere. The Ion shots blew up laser turrets, manned by soldiers, and scattered supplies. The explosions ruined parts of the trenches and blew people everywhere.

  “Fire!” The Commander yelled. The trenches had artillery, and a few low powered Plasma cannons, with plenty of single barreled laser turrets, that had to be manned by a person, sitting in a chair next to the barrel. The United Worlds forces fired everything that could reach the enemy at such a far distance. The laser turrets were always in use, constantly firing, the controller usually yelling.

  Three rapid clicks, then, booom! Another volley of Ion bursts was fired onto the trenches. More turrets and soldiers went flying. People were killed instantly, disintegrated. Others lost limbs and were blown out of the trenches.

  “Where the hell’s the heavy artillery!?” The Commander yelled, “Call in a satellite strike!”

  “Sir the Plasma laser Rays were destroyed!” A soldier yelled back.

  “Get the base to fire the heavy Plasma cannons then!”

  Before the soldier could call it in, the three Tri-Tanks fired a volley of Ion bursts into the city, hitting the center of the artillery base. A burst also hit the oxygen generator, completely destroying it. With that, every building in the city started to activate their emergency protocols. The buildings were airtight, and they had emergency blast doors that would seal the building shut incase the oxygen generator malfunctioned. Thousands of citizens frantically sprinted for the buildings if they weren’t in one already. If they were locked out, they’d die in minutes as the oxygen inside of the city fleeted away.

  “Shit!” The Commander yelled. He looked at the streak of smoke left from the Ion burst in the sky. The Tri-Tanks were getting closer now, close enough for the soldiers to start firing their laser rifles at them.

  “Send in a full invasion force,” Karalus murmured.

  The sound of Jupitain fighters filled the air, “Sir, sir look!” A soldier pointed at a small fleet of Jupitain boarding ships. They were headed right for the trenches. They flew over them and dropped Jupitains from above. They fell to the ground, roaring the whole time. The soldiers were too stunned to react in time. The Jupitains were right on top of the trenches and started to overwhelm the U.W’s forces.

  A Jupitain landed next to the female soldier and tackled her. She screamed and started hitting it, frantically. The Commander shot it in the visor, and it disintegrated into goo right on top of her. Jupitains kept coming in by the hundreds. Most were unarmed, which made it easier to kill them, but there were so many of them. It was getting overwhelming. Soldiers were yelling orders or screaming in pain. Laser turrets got overturned, blown up, or abandoned. The trenches weren’t wholly overrun yet, but the Jupitain boarding ships started to fly into the city.

  “They’re going for the streets!” The Commander yelled. He shot a Jupitain in the visor.

  “Commander behind you!” The female soldier yelled. He turned around to see a Jupitain charging at him, claws out. He hit it’s visor with the butt of his laser rifle, but it didn’t break it. The Jupitain picked him up, and threw him at the soldier, roaring the whole time.

  The Jupitain boarding ships started to unload Jupitains onto the streets. They were abandoned, everyone was hiding in buildings, underground, behind walls, or under desks — anything they could find to stay alive. The streets were filled with abandoned hover cars. Jupitains looked inside them, and some shot into the air, frustrated. The corpses of civilians that had suffocated also lined the streets.

  The Jupitain’s visors found heat signatures when they got close to a large group of people. They flooded the floors of skyscrapers, tearing through the blast proof security doors, and ravaging everything. When they found people, they didn’t save them for slavery. That time was over. They killed anyone they saw. Mercilessly.

  Boarding ships started to drop Jupitains from midair, into skyscrapers through the windows. One Jupitain landed into an office building. A woman by the window screamed and ran away. Before it could go after her, a man came from under his desk and hit its face with a clipboard. It did nothing. The Jupitain grabbed the clipboard from him and thrust it through the man’s forehead. The man fell to the ground, and the Jupitain started to search through the cubicles.

  In the trenches, the soldiers were starting to gain the upper hand.
They took position low enough so that they could hide under the cover of the ditch, but still be able to fire at the Jupitains trying to charge in. Twenty Jupitains dived on top of two soldiers and started ripping them apart.

  “Rocket launcher!” Someone yelled.

  A soldier carrying a rocket launcher came over. It was sleek, and high tech looking, with the code 5-V7 imprinted on it. The soldier fired it, and the rocket flew out of the barrel with a loud thoom! It flew into the Jupitains, and exploded, blowing them all into every direction, visors destroyed by the explosion.

  The Commander lifted himself off of the female soldier and punched the Jupitain straight in the center of its visor. It broke, and the Jupitain dissolved into a Dark matter puddle. The Commander looked at his hand, knuckles bleeding.

  “Nine years, all they give us are a few fancy rifles and a clean lil’ uniform,” He growled. He picked up his laser rifle and started to shoot at more advancing Jupitains.

  The streets were chaos. United Worlds hover tanks were starting to give support to the defenseless citizens from the military base, but the Ion burst had destroyed most of the military equipment, so the soldiers there didn’t have much to work with.

  A battalion was moving through the streets, supporting anyone nearby. The Jupitains hadn’t hit their sector yet.

  “Stay sharp!” A soldier ordered. He was inside an exo-suit and was walking in front of their hover tank. The rest of the soldiers with him were wearing space-proof armor.

  “Easy for you to say, you’re the only one here that can take more than one laser blast,” A soldier shot back.

  “Now’s not the time to argue, we’ve been training for this for nine years, so how about we all try to keep our heads in the game unless you wanna lose this city,” The exo-suit soldier replied.

  “If we’ve been training for this for so long,” A chunkier soldier said, “Then why were we so unprepared… for God’s sake they blew up our Plasma Rays, and Plasma cannons, and we didn’t even know they were invading!”