When Darkness Reigns

by Preston L. Marshall

  She stood up from where she had landed screaming: “Fuck you bitch!”

  She had managed to keep her launcher in hand even after being thrown. She fired three more rounds into the chest of the behemoth. Fire and force stuck it hard in the chest. It staggered back with each blast. But when the fire and smoke cleared the body of the giant was still intact.

  Radcliff let go of Wallace.

  “Now! The back left leg! Fire! Now!” Radcliff screamed.

  Ford, Radcliff, Wallace, Nate, and Lumar all jumped up from their hiding places and emptied all their bullets into the joint. Hundreds of bullets sawed through the leg. The creature was starting to lunge forward at Jesse again when its leg broke off. It fell back on its left haunch roaring an angry burst of sound.

  Something clicked inside Lumar. All at once he could see something. There was an opening. A flash of images shot through his mind. He saw himself taking very specific actions against the Sarsaul giant. Some computation in his head told him that if he moved now he could kill it and save the others. He hesitated for a second, but it was like a timer in his head was telling him that his window would close if he didn't move now.

  “Oh fuck me,” Lumar groaned.

  He bolted out of his cover faster than he thought his legs could move.

  “Lumar stop!” Radcliff yelled too late to stop him.

  Lumar jumped up onto the haunch that landed on the ground after the leg came off. The creature started trying to stand back up and turned its body around back towards the portal, where Radcliff and Wallace were standing. Lumar pulled his knife out from his boot and plunged it into a crack in the armor on the side of the creature. When the giant turned he held fast by that handhold his knife made. He was able to get a foothold on the left side of the creature’s pelvic protrusion. From there he swung his body around onto the creature's back. He pulled his knife out and leaped up as far as he could reach. He plunged the knife into another chink in the armor to make another handhold.

  The ant manning the guns saw him. Lumar realized he hadn't thought about the other alien when he bolted up here. The cannons spun around on him, but the barrels didn’t turn far enough to fire on Lumar as he clung to the giant's back. Lumar let out a sigh of relief. The ant fired anyway. Lumar threw himself against the back of the giant. Two shells almost as big as his head zoomed over the length of his body blasting the ground around the giant’s three remaining feet.

  “Shoot that thing!” Radcliff yelled pointing up at the ant on the cannons.

  Radcliff still had Jesse’s sniper rifle on his back. Wallace grabbed it and put two bullets into the ant’s head.

  “Couldn’t have done that yourself?” Wallace asked slyly.

  Radcliff grinned and kept firing on the leg joints.

  Without the gunner keeping Lumar’s head down, he finished his climb up onto the shoulders of the giant alien. One of the scythe-arms swung around level with Lumar’s waist while he was standing up on the shoulders. He threw himself onto his back. The blade whizzed over his head. He pulled out his pistol and stood back up. Lumar fired a clip of bullets into the side of the giant’s neck. The monster began to buck around violently to shake him off. It slammed into the wall. Lumar was almost thrown off. His feet faltered off the side of the giant's shoulder, but he managed to catch his fingers on the lip of the armor on the Sarsaul's back. He lost his pistol, but he was able to pull himself up. Lumar climbed up the back of the giant's neck and grabbed onto a ridge in the skull plate of the helmet covering the alien's massive head. He was almost there.

  The others were all out of cover blasting away at another of the giant’s legs. The creature flung its head back and forth as hard as it could, trying to throw Lumar. Another one of the legs fell off. The giant ant collapsed down to the ground again. That was all Lumar needed to reach his target, the left eye. He jumped down on to the ledge of the helmet just below the left eyelid.

  The eye fixated on Lumar staring at him. The pupil danced in rage. Lumar drew his sword and plunged it into the center of the massive pupil. Lumar felt the blade hit bone. The skull stopped the blade about a foot into the eye. The monster roared and shuddered, bucking its head harder than ever.

  Lumar grabbed onto a lip on the helmet just above the eye and kept pushing the sword into the head, but couldn’t break through the skull. It was too hard. Even with all of his strength, he couldn’t get through it. Whether it was desperation or anger welling up inside him, Lumar could feel heat coursing through his body. He could feel it pouring off of him. He started to sweat profusely. His arm shook like lightning was coursing through it. Then the sword plunged down to the hilt into the alien’s head. A burst of red light exploded out of Lumar’s sword hand and swirled around him like smoke. It hung on the air for a fraction of a second and then vanished.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” Radcliff muttered.

  The behemoth became dead still when the blade pierced its brain. It twitched slightly as muscles lost contact with the nerves that controlled them. Then it collapsed to the ground destroying a cluster of three more consoles and shattering another one of the glass pillars.

  Wallace ran to Jesse.

  “Are you alright?” he asked her.

  “Better than that damn tyrant,” she replied pointing at their kill. “In my book that’s all that matters.”

  Lumar toppled to the ground gracelessly as the giant alien died. He ended up on his back laying still for a good while. Nate came to his side as soon as the alien stopped moving.

  “What did you just do?” Nate whispered to Lumar as soon as he checked that he wasn’t hurt.

  “I don’t know, but it worked,” he replied.

  He jumped up to his feet and pulled his sword out of the eye of the giant ant. It was harder to get out than he thought it would be. He had to put his foot up on it so he could get enough pull. It finally ripped out with a gush of thick grey blood and clear eye jelly.

  When Lumar looked up he and Nate were standing on one end of the room by the kill and the others had assembled in the middle of the room facing them. Lumar could sense a feeling of uncertainty coming from the others, but he couldn’t say how he felt it. It was like a whisper without a voice from somewhere deep inside him. For a few seconds Lumar feared the others were going to turn on them, but that feeling passed quickly.

  “Good work taking down that tyrant everybody. Only one thing left to do here,” Radcliff said grimly. “We have to kill these people, the ones in the columns.”

  “Wait a minute!” Lumar objected. “They’re human beings! We can’t just kill them.”

  Lumar advanced up to Radcliff with Nate on his heels.

  “It just doesn’t seem right,” Nate added.

  “Think about them,” Radcliff said, “in there. Would you want to live like that? Can you imagine how painful that is?”

  Lumar looked over at one of the hideous people in the container. Lumar couldn’t even guess how many bones had been broken in that body. The skin was covered in scars where the skin had ripped apart over and over again from the rapid growth of the flesh beneath.

  “But…” Lumar muttered.

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Radcliff replied with a sympathetic voice, “but it’s our duty to them. Go ahead and wait outside with Nate. Take the Adept with you.”

  “Yes sir,” Lumar said as he turned to go.

  Lumar and Nate each got under an armpit of the Adept and carried him in tandem. As they made their way out of the room all they could hear was the sound of gunshots and human screams.

  Lumar was starting to wonder if he should have taken that deal the doctor offered him back at Guardridge. A new life away from all the killing and violence was starting to sound better with every shriek coming from behind him. The images of the people floating in those tubes wouldn't leave him. It was all he could think about while they were waiting it out. They screamed so loudly while the others were killing them. They sounded so afraid as they were dying. If he'd just
said he'd rather go on to Phoenix than stay in the army he'd never have had to hear that. Now he doubted he'd ever be able to forget it.

  It was Nate's fault, he realized. He hadn't really made the choice for himself. He just asked what Nate had done and followed his decision. He wanted to be angry at Nate for making him join up with Radcliff and come on this mission, but then Lumar caught a glimpse of Nate's face. Nate had opened up his visor to get some fresh air. His eyes looked so hollow and his lips were curling with grief and nausea. He looked like he was on the brink of losing it. Lumar wondered if that's what his face looked like right now. It was clear that Nate was regretting that decision just as much as he was. He'd always been told war was hell. Now he genuinely believed it.

  7. When Darkness Reigns is a GenZ Publishing Book

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  To be continued in

  Lion-Blade: Remembrance