by Andrew Gates
Ophelia sat down on the other side of Jallah while Dan and Grey made their way to the seats. In that moment, another blast hit the side of the ship, causing a much stronger jostle this time. Dan and Grey were suddenly thrown to the side. They tripped on the edge of a seat, Grey falling on top of Dan.
“Evolved-ones!” Kozakh said, scurrying toward them to help them up.
“Aah!” Dan cried out. He grasped onto his left leg.
“Are you okay?” Margery asked.
Kozakh leaned down to investigate Dan’s leg and slowly shook his head.
“A breakage,” he declared. “Kho Daniel, you must sit still. Do not move.”
The Kholvari helped Dan sit across the seat and leaned his back against the wall of the ship.
“Aah,” Dan said again. “It feels… if feels manageable. I think I can fight through the pain.”
Grey tried to stand up now too, but fell right back down. Evirak approached and helped to lift him up. He escorted Grey next to his brother and helped him sit.
“Your leg is broken as well,” Evirak said, motioning to Grey’s right.
“Perfect,” he spat out in frustration.
“It is important that you all remain seated. This flight will be turbulent,” Jakhu said. She turned to Ikharus. “Perhaps one of us should assist Kal Ukhrani in the cockpit.”
“I will do it,” Flokh said, volunteering with a raise of her claw.
“Kal Flokh?” Ikharus asked.
“I am no soldier, but I can follow orders in a cockpit. Allow me to lend my assistance,” she said.
Ikharus nodded.
“Very well,” he replied, waving her off to the front.
Flokh moved to the cockpit and out of sight.
“What do we do now? Dan and Grey both have broken legs!” Jallah asked.
“We aren’t out of this yet. We can still help,” Dan said.
“You can hardly stand,” Kozakh rebutted.
“Well… we have to do something!” Dan replied.
“We will find a need for you both. I am sure of it,” Ikharus said.
“I don’t know. I don’t see how much good we’re going to be in a fight if we can’t even walk,” Grey retorted.
“There are other ways to be useful than fighting, Kho Greyson. Bear with me. I am sure we shall think of something when the time comes,” Ikharus said again.
“Whatever happens, remember that our main objective is to protect Kho Jallah. He is the utmost priority. He carries our most vital weapon. Nothing else matters,” Jakhu said. “Is that understood?”
“Understood,” the room replied.
Protecting me is the utmost priority, Jallah repeated in his head. That did not seem right. He did not deserve that kind of protection. He did not ask for any of this.
Sensing his uneasiness, Margery placed her hand on Jallah’s. It felt good to feel her touch through the thick gloves of his suit, but it did not calm him down the way he hoped.
Maybe if I look somewhere else, that will get my mind off all of this. He swiftly turned his gaze to the window and immediately regretted it. What he saw outside was far worse than anything inside the cabin.
He held his breath.
The ship would soon be entering the swarm. The approaching force was like a dark, swirling tidal wave of blackness, like something out of an abstract nightmare. Nothing about it was comforting. Jallah had never felt his heart beat so quickly as it did now.
On all sides of the transport, Sorrevahni fighters began to form up around it, with this ship at the center. Ahead of them, farther up in the sky, the massive Sorrevahni warships ascended like ramrods into the Hive’s line. The drones took notice of the approaching warships and curled into snakelike formations, spiraling downward to meet the Sorrevahni like tentacles of a jellyfish.
It quickly became apparent that the entire Sorrevahni fleet’s only goal was to protect one single ship: this one. They’re all sacrificing their lives for this ship, for the Metamorph… for me.
The two opposing lines met each other now. The sky lit up even brighter with explosions of orange, yellow, white. Thunderous booms and pops echoed across the sky like a choir. The clash had begun.
In an instant, it was clear that the Sorrevahni were losing. Jallah watched one ship as it grew overwhelmed by Hive. Like spears cutting through flesh, the snake-like formation of drones blasted through the thick hull of a particularly enormous Sorrevahni spaceship, then curled around it like a coil and forced another hole, then another, then another, the Hive ships perpetually flowing in the same path as if they made up one solid entity. The snake-like drone formation curled around the warship and tightened its grip until the entire vessel shattered like glass squeezed too tightly, but not before the warship deployed one last weapon: some sort of bomb that took out hundreds of drones in a single white fireball.
“By the Chiefdom, the captain detonated the ship’s engines,” Evirak muttered as he stared at the same sight.
It may have been the first ship to do so, but it was not the last. Only a few seconds later, another warship did the same, though this explosion took out considerably fewer drones than the first.
What the explosion did though, was cut a clear hole in the swarm directly in the transport’s path. It gave them just enough space for the ship and its numerous escorts to plow through. The ship moved forward, passing right into a now-cleared area formerly engulfed by Hive ships. We’re behind the enemy line now, Jallah thought.
Hive now swirled on all sides of them: above, below, left, right, forward, back. By this point, the ship had ascended high enough that Jallah could no longer see the clouds or sky. The world around them was black and the planet was so far below that it appeared as rounded as a ball. Soon directions like up and down would have no meaning at all.
A fireball of orange and white illuminated from deeper into the dense swarm like lightning behind a thick cloud. Jallah could not see anything clearly with so many small ships in the way, but he knew it must have been another warship getting ripped apart or detonating its engines. So many lives lost.
Then another flash, then another, then another. All around him, fireballs illuminated the dense swarm like bolts of lightning obscured by dark clouds. It was as if they were traveling through a storm.
But this was worse than any storm.
The hole through the swarm that they had been using began to tighten now, as if the Hive were intent on not letting a single vessel through. Jallah watched in horror as a wall of Hive ships seemed to close in on all sides.
“They’re coming!” he shouted, pointing in a panic.
The fighter escorts saw it too. All began unloading whatever they had in their arsenal, doing what they could to keep the Hive at bay.
Right on time, two Sorrevahni warships suddenly came out of nowhere, traveling parallel to the direction of the ship’s motion. The enormous vessels flanked the transport, on one the port and one on the starboard sides like two massive walls with the transport at the center. The underside of the ships faced the transport on either side. In space, orientation was meaningless anyway. Due to the sheer size of the warships, Jallah was not able to see anything beyond them, so he had no sense of where the Hive was anymore.
“The Sorrevahni have come to our aid!” Evirak noted.
But there was no cheer to be heard inside the cabin. Instead, everyone aboard held their breath and watched in quiet anticipation, frozen like statues.
Even the outside world around them was silent now. In the void of space, loud booms and pops no longer existed. Nothing existed that could be heard. Despite the silence, Jallah could still see bright flashes of light whenever a weapon fired. The view outside the window was aglow with every color Jallah could imagine.
Pop! The first Hive snake emerged through the underside of the warship out of the left window. Jallah jolted back in shock. It was somehow even more terrifying to see it from this angle. He felt himself instinctively grip Margery’s hand even harder.
&
nbsp; The Sorrevahni escort fighters did their best to take out as much of the snake as they could, but the wave of ships was too many. For every fighter destroyed, too many to count pressed forward, maintaining the snake’s powerful coiling motion.
As the Hive had done time and time again, the snake curled back down and pierced the warship again, then again and again.
Through the opposite window, a similar sight was beginning to happen. The Hive pierced through the underside of the other warship, then began curling around, closing in on it like a vice.
“It’s not enough. It’s not working!” Jallah muttered in fear.
Orange blasts lit up the darkness of space. Jallah knew instantly that the warships were about to break apart. He looked away, preferring not to see this part. But when that did not happen, he looked to the windows again. Surprised, he quickly discovered that the blasts were not originating from the warships themselves, but from somewhere behind them.
Jallah looked back. Two more massive Sorrevahni vessels were on approach, blasting away with their tremendous firepower.
“By the Chiefdom, two Teceron-class ships,” Evirak said.
“Teceron? What is that?” Jallah asked.
“They are the most powerful weapons in the Empire,” Ikharus explained. “These warships beside us now are dwarves beside the Tecerons.”
“Oh,” he said.
Teceron ships. They will help us!
The Hive must have known the power of these vessels, as the swarm immediately withdrew its assault on the two warships on either side of the transport. The ships were admittedly in bad shape, with enormous holes across their entireties, but at least they would survive a little longer.
The Tecerons accelerated with immense power, pulling up beside the two flanking warships and plowing through the field of Hive drones like a fist through water. If the initial two warships felt like walls beside the transport, the Tecerons felt like fortified castles. But even layered two ships deep on either side, Jallah still felt vulnerable. He knew how powerful the Hive truly was and even shields as powerful as these could only last for so long.
We don’t need to last forever, Jallah reminded himself, we just need to get to the queen’s ship. That’s all. It’s a race to the finish, not a battle.
“Behold,” Kozakh said, motioning forward.
Jallah looked ahead. He felt a minor sense of relief as the queen’s ship came into view. The ship was exposed. Clearly the queen had withdrawn the entirety of her drone guard to use in the assault. Seeing the large Hive ship did not quell Jallah nerves entirely. In fact, far from it, but it gave him a slight bit of ease. At least the end was now in sight. Like any other race, it helped to see the finish line.
Suddenly, on both sides of the ship, booms of orange explosions erupted across the surface of the Teceron ships and subsequently the smaller warships closer in. There were no coiling snakes this time, but instead explosions here and there across the surface of the vessels, as if they were being pelted by bullets.
“What is happening?” Jallah wondered. “Are they firing weapons this time?” That did not seem like the Hive’s way.
“Negative, Kho Jallah. I saw this during their initial attack. The Hive forms a solid grid wall and accelerates their ships forward faster than any bullet. They use their own ships like daggers and blast into the field like a hailstorm,” Ikharus answered. Like everyone else, his gaze was fixed on the world outside. “We can only hope the warships will last long enough to see us to safety.”
“It’s not looking good,” Grey added.
“Kal Ukhrani and Kal Flokh will get us there. They must,” Jakhu said, optimistically.
Jallah peered outside again. The protective ships were falling apart. He was not so sure they would make it in time.
Suddenly a pelting drone fighter managed to make it through both layers of the Sorrevahni warships on the transport’s starboard flank. It shot forward and collided against the rear of the ship, causing the entire cabin to rock quickly. It was fortunate that everyone was seated this time. Even sitting, the collision was hard enough to bring Jallah’s back forcefully against the wall behind him.
A red light blinked inside the cabin.
“What is that?” Grey asked.
“Some kind of warning,” Ikharus replied.
Seconds later, the door to the cockpit opened and Flokh stood in the threshold.
“We have engine failure. That last drone knocked out our thrusters,” she explained. Her voice was full of desperation.
Ikharus stood.
“Can we still move?” he asked
“Momentum is carrying the ship forward, but we have lost control of steering.”
No steering. Jallah looked forward. They were getting closer, but at this trajectory, they would miss the queen’s ship. They needed to change course if they were to make it.
No one spoke for a moment, but then Jakhu stood.
“Our thrusters. We can still use them,” she said.
“You must have misheard me, Kal Jakhu. The ship’s thrusters have been destroyed!” Flokh replied.
“No, no, not the ship’s thrusters, ours!” Jakhu motioned to the back of her suit. “Kreed power suits are outfitted with thrusters. They can provide us the power you need.”
Flokh turned to the open cockpit door and leaned in. Though Jallah could not see her from where he sat, he knew Flokh must have been talking to Kal Ukhrani.
“Will it work?” Flokh asked.
“I am afraid that one thruster will not be sufficient,” the voice of Ukhrani replied, shouting through the cabin from the cockpit. “In order to control steering, I will need thrusters on all sides of the ship; one on the top, one on the bottom, one on the left and one on the right. Only then will I have full directional control, assuming you all can activate your thrusters at the exact moments I require them.”
“We will keep the comm open,” Jakhu said, nodding. “And there are four of us. I, Kal Ezenkharam, Kho Kozakh and Kho Evirak will each take to a side of the ship.”
There was a pause, followed by affirmation from Ukhrani up front.
“That will work,” she said.
“Very well,” Jakhu said. She waved her claws. “Kreed Scion, you heard the plan. Stick to the ship. Keep the comm open. When Kal Ukhrani gives the order, we activate our boosters to steer the ship. Is that understood?”
“Understood,” the Kreed replied, standing up.
“Kho Evirak, take left. Kho Kozakh, take right. Kal Ezenkharam, take below. I will take the top.”
The four soldiers shuffled their way to the rear door and stood in position.
“Wait. Are they opening the door in space?” Margery asked.
“Do not worry, Kal Margery. Your suit shall protect you in the vacuum,” Ikharus said.
“But if they’re all going out to space, then who will be with us when we go into the queen’s ship to deploy the chemical?” Jallah asked.
“The number grows smaller, Kho Jallah, but fear not. Only one is needed to break the glass vial. As long as we have one, we have enough to succeed.”
One. That thought was not comforting. I hope I don’t have to do this all by myself.
“Rear door lowering in five!” Ukhrani shouted from the front. At those words, Flokh turned back into the cockpit and the door shut behind her.
“May you be swift and efficient in your efforts, Kreed Scion,” Ikharus said.
The Kreed bowed to their Supreme Chieftain. Something about the bow seemed different this time. They were lower, they held the position, there was emotion to it, weight to it. It was as if they were bowing to their Chieftain for the final time.
And then the ramp lowered.
Air instantly blasted out, pushing Jallah to the back of the ship, but he kept himself in place as best he could, gripping onto Margery’s hand. It was completely silent. Jallah blinked in shock, not sure what was happening. He felt dizzy, confused, disoriented. He leaned forward, fighting against the pressure th
at pushed him back.
And then the door closed.
Jallah took a deep breath of filtered air and looked around the cabin. He had not seen the Kreed leave, but sure enough, they had left. The only Kholvari remaining was Kho Ikharus. For the first time in a long time, the humans now outnumbered the Kholvari.
Clunk! Jallah turned around to find a Kreed suit pressed against the other side of the window. It seemed Scion had already taken position on the outside of the ship.
He glanced at the queen’s ship again. It was getting closer. Part of him honestly did not think they would even get this far.
Suddenly his head began to sting. He wondered if the door to space had opened again, but after a quick glance, he realized it was shut. He wanted to reach up and press his hands against his forehead to subdue the pain, but his helmet covered him.
He curled down in his seat and let out a gasp in pain.
“Jallah!” Margery said, pressing her hand against his back, comfortingly.
“What’s wrong?” asked Ophelia.
“I… I don’t know,” Jallah replied.
Ikharus stood again.
“It is her,” he observed. He stared out the window. “It is the queen. She calls to him.”
The queen? How can she call to me? How is this possible?
And then he knew.
“Human,” a deep, powerful voiced muttered, echoing through his head. The pain only got worse as he heard the voice.
“Aah!” he cried out.
“At last I see the intent of this foolish display,” the voice continued, communicating telepathically. “I had wondered what this was all about, but now I can see it all so clearly.”
“Try talking to her!” Margery suggested. “Try telling her to stop fighting. Tell her we want to negotiate.”
“It will not work,” Ikharus told her. “The Hive is intent on destroying us.”
That would not stop Jallah from trying though.
“Queen,” he started, “please listen to me. My name is Jallah Sane. You have to stop attacking us. Please, I am just a boy, a kid. I am not ready to die and I don’t want to fight. I just want to live.”
