First Assault

by Kliment Dukovski

his speed, but he knew he could never outrun the ships. Besides, it would make zigzagging and avoiding rubble and bombs impossible without stumbling or crashing into something.

  One of the attacking ships was catching up on them. And then it dropped a sphere from its bay. Lucius decelerated to twenty kilometers per hour and jumped inside a shanty close to him. The jump sent him through the metal wall while the bomb exploded and showered the surroundings with dust and metal. The walls collapsed over his body. They were too light to cause any damage to him, but he found the cover to be good enough from other bombs that exploded somewhere close by. Lucius waited for the ships to move away and then he pushed the walls and returned to the street where Arrius and the soldiers struggled to pull out a comrade from the ruins. Lucius took the moment to look around. Destruction and chaos was the only thing left from Subura. If the shacks and ruined buildings in the slums could be turned into ruins and craters, he imagined what the houses in the upper capital looked like. The mighty statues of Forum Magnum, the glorious palace, center of Imperial power. It made him clench his fists and shudder with rage.

  “Wretched savages!” he screamed. “I will destroy you all!”

  Something started devouring the emperor from the inside. An increasing pain made him lose control of his limbs; everything trembled, ached. A fire burned inside his stomach, a pressure squeezed his vision. He wanted to fall to his knees, to cover up his face and pray that this was but a terrible nightmare, and when he would wake up he would be the golden prince he was supposed to be.

  The pain grew stronger, his legs became weak and foreign. It took all the effort to keep him standing. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  I have to get to my palace. It was the only way to save his people and what remained of his planet.

  Another deep breath and he opened his eyes in a newfound calmness. His gaze swept across his group. They all stood in a semi circle facing him, determination evident in their straight posture and tightly gripped weapons.

  Arrius nodded. “We can do this, Your Highness,” he said. His hand gripped the pistol on his belt.

  I told you not to call me that anymore – Lucius sent to him. He then turned to his soldiers. “These savages thought they can come here and claim our world? They thought it would be easy? We will show them the meaning of a superior race. We will show them what a handful of Palatine’s sons are capable of!”

  “Lucius Invictus!” they roared and saluted. Lucius the Invincible. He liked the sound of that.

  They turned for a straight run toward the wall, crossing through burning buildings and shacks, climbing over rubble and debris while enemy ships cut through the air above their heads and strafed the ground. But once they passed the wall there was no sign of the ships. Lucius looked back and focused on one of them. He remembered the Bion designs, the white gleaming surface, the black glass on their command bridge, the angular wings on their smaller crafts. These ships that attacked Palatine had none of that. Their surface was gleaming, it was true, but it was silvery, not white. They had not a hint of wings, but a frame like a ring that surrounded a cylindrical hull. And their weapons were different. Bions never used beam weaponry before. They must have upgraded their fleet in secrecy.

  It didn’t matter. They made their gravest mistake by attacking Palatine, and they were going to pay for that.

  The group passed through the ruined remains of the wall, and for a moment Lucius thought the bombing had stopped only to realize that the upper parts of his capital were not the focus of the attack. Every ship was flying above Subura, determined to raze the district to the ground and annihilate its people. It gave Lucius chance to make progress through the streets and reach Forum Magnum. There he found panic and chaos overwhelmed the forum. The people had no idea where to go. Their homes in Subura were definitely not the wisest choice, but the city was sealed off by walls. There was no way any poor man had the ability to climb over and escape the attacking ships. They could only run directionless around the forum. One man even tried to attack Lucius for no apparent reason other than panic. But Bruttius put a slug in his head before he could even get close to the emperor.

  “Gods have mercy on us!” someone cried.

  Lucius turned back to see the heavy smoke rising from Subura, the ships spinning and diving above it, unloading their bombs in wild barrages. And then he noticed some of the ships turning, growing larger, and larger, and larger.

  “Get out of the forum!” Lucius shouted at the people around him. He waved his arms. “Ruuuuuun!”

  The ships whizzed above their heads and dropped their bombs. One of them exploded close enough to throw Lucius at a statue. The statue came crashing down while Lucius was sent skidding on wet, muddy marble. Once he came to a stop he looked up – more ships incoming. He looked back, his silent palace awaited his return.

  My throne.

  He tried to get up but all that flying around and slamming on things and the shrapnel impacts on his body took their toll. There was no pain but apparently his body was considerably damaged. Multiple failures on all his joints were quite evident. His right elbow even sparked and twitched. His vision was flooded with information considering all the damage. But he was not going to quit. Not now when he was so close to claiming his throne and activating the planetary defenses.

  Lucius got up to his knees and crawled. More explosions echoed around him, more screams and pleadings for help. He then stood up and staggered toward the entrance of his home. One hundred meters away. That much to the salvation of his planet and his people.

  Two ships flew past his head and fired missiles at the palace. One of the obelisks took a heavy blow and crumbled down in a cloud of dust and rubble. The entrance was quickly covered in ruins.

  “No…” he mouthed the word voiceless. His feet stopped him in place. More missiles were fired at his palace, more bombs were dropped on his people. The ground shook relentlessly, chunks of marble showered his body. Statues crumbled down with fire, his ancestors dying without a fight.

  Determined, Lucius staggered forward forcing his legs to take more steps into the inferno.

  The whizzing didn’t stop, nor did the bombing.

  “Wretched savages,” he kept muttering as if to give him strength to go on. It didn’t take long before the second obelisk collapsed. Now it was impossible to reach the entrance. He would have to dig until he found the doorway, but it was more likely that the palace would collapse first. The only direct entrance now was the balcony. If he could somehow climb the palace walls faster than the bombs fell… If there was only a way…

  Growing engine noise approached from behind.

  If this is the end, then so be it, but he was not going to stand and wait for a bomb to finish him off. No, he was going to stagger on, no matter how long it would take.

  The noise was close enough for him to feel the air stir.

  “Lucius!” Arrius called. Lucius didn’t turn. He went on.

  “Lucius!” Arrius called again. The engine noise almost muffled his voice. “I have a way in!”

  Lucius stopped, slowly turned. Arrius jumped off a motorbike. “Take it, Lucius. Drive over the walls. You can get in. The turrets are focused on the ships. Go and activate the planetary defenses before we all die.”

  Lucius bestrode the bike. He nodded to Arrius in gratitude for all he had done for him. And then with a determination like never before he pressed the pedal to the max and launched forward like a Bion missile. With that speed he avoided every bomb that fell in his vicinity with ease. He turned around the obelisks’ ruins and drove over the steep walls of his palace. The wide rubber wheels provided enough friction into the slippery surface to propel him up. And that was all he needed.

  The emperor arose from the ashes of Capital City, riding on top of his palace. He tried to focus on the balcony, on avoiding the missiles, but he could not avoid looking around. Countless fires burned into the night. Explosions tore chunks of houses, of temples, of the walls in the distance. It was
tearing him inside to watch his city burn. Tears came unbidden to his eyes, just like it happened to the boy in his dreams. But he knew it was an illusion now. He had no tears. He had no heart to ache.

  The balcony was there, almost at his grasp. The throne got closer with every turn of the wheels. Once he would reclaim his seat of power, he would use it to activate the defenses and his automated guards. Finally he would be able to stop the slaughter on Palatine. And then he would recall his fleet and transmit a message to every human that the true emperor is waiting for them back home.

  Twenty more meters.

  Torn banners flapped their golden eagles in defiance. They awaited his return. He knew it. He felt it.

  Five more meters.

  Lucius didn’t even saw the bomb that exploded in front of him. His eyes registered a flash, and that was it. He was weightless again, flying away from his throne and his palace.

  “No…” he whispered, his hand extended toward the balcony.

  His body slammed the slippery surface and kept bouncing and tumbling down, smashing his limbs with audible cracks. His head smacked hard on the palace’s surface, and everything blurred.

  Lucius found himself back in his dreams. He was now in the upper floor of his house, peering through the slightly-opened door toward his parents’ bedroom. Lucas hoped the arguments would stop once