Alien Arsenal

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  “That’s… that’s crazy.” We slowly circle the site trying to map a proper image of the field when an idea hits me.

  “Lux, they don’t have any kind of indestructible force fields, do they?”

  She looks down at the ships, her eyes flash as she looks in ways I can only imagine.

  “We don’t have that kind of tech, so I doubt they do. They will have, what you call ‘shields’ to deflect energy but concentrated bombardments can destabilize them for a bit.”

  “Awesome. Epic, put Kate on the line.”

  A few seconds pass and I hear Kate’s voice. “I’m here.”

  “The weather dominator they’re using is coming from that central ship. It’s protected by a shield. My plan is simple. Lux and I will smash away at it until the shield collapses. At which point you teleport in and then to the ship. Once inside Epic should be able to guide you to the machine. You kill it, then we let loose with the full team. Questions?”

  “Oh, so many,” Kate says. “But I don’t think anyone has the answers.”

  I smile, “No, not likely. Lux?”

  The beautiful alien smiles at me, her eyes practically shining. “For Luxilla!”

  She darts down, form blazing with energy as the air behind her ignites in a fiery trail.

  I would suggest moving. They know we are here. I am detecting rising energy levels and weapon blisters are going active.

  “Red alert,” I say. My HUD flashes from blue to red. Weapons, energy levels, and flight systems show ready across the board. The Emdrive kicks in and I split off from Lux. It’s a blast controlling it with my mind. Before I used hand motions, eye blinks, and specific nerve impulses rigged to activate the drive. Combined with voice controls and Epic’s intuitive nature, we did pretty well. But this— I just think, and it happens.

  Green laser fire spits through the sky in a barrage. They’re way off, but I don’t think they will be for long. Lux blasts away at the middle ship, raw energy erupts from her hands bathing the vessel in fire. The outline of the shield protecting them springs to life. I bring us up and around. My weapons have a drop-off point, but I can shoot from a thousand feet no problem. Lux just wants them to know it’s her. I can’t say I blame her.

  “Particle Beam, full power.”

  The HUD flashes, letting me know the weapon is at a hundred percent charge. The new alloy can take well over three thousand degrees, which is awesome, because I can do a solid beam of fire as well as my three-second burst fire.

  Air turns to heat as green chemical lasers try to lock onto me. Electromagnetic countermeasures powered by a ZPFM do their very best to keep the Th’un weapons off track.

  “Epic, target the center of Lux’s blasts.” It won’t take them long to figure out their lasers will pass right through her and then all of them will shoot at me.

  Locked on.

  The suit hums as power dumps from the ZPFM into the particle beam. Blue energy in a tight line of hyper-accelerated silica shoots out, smashing against the shields exactly where Lux hits.

  “Get some,” I yell as we circle the enemy.

  Suit temperature is holding steady. The particle beam system is operating within expected parameters.

  Lux is a thing of beauty. She arcs in and out in a graceful dance of light as she hurls hard light at the shields.

  I’m picking up increased communications activity from them. I think they may have realized the current defense plan is not working.

  “Understood, let’s keep at it. We’ll react as needed.” I send another extended blast of particles into their shields. Whenever Lux hits them I can see the physical shape of their shields falter.

  If we hit them with the mass driver, I think it will do the trick.

  “Can we? It’s not like we’ve tested it…”

  I have run the calculations. Combined with the new suit, and our ability to modulate the energy output on the fly, I believe it will work.

  With a nod I fly up blasting through a couple of Machs to gain altitude as fast as possible. At ten thousand feet I flip over and kill the jets.

  “Arm the main gun.” The suit whines as the alloy reconfigures, moving parts around and forming them out of nothing. I still can’t believe all they did with this tech was make doors. The sky’s the limit when you can create anything you want out of a lump of metal.

  SDF-1 configured. Request permission to override the armor.

  “Do it.” Epic takes over, my body moves the way he needs it to for the shot to work. I end up looking like a prize diver heading straight down. My arms merge together forming one long cannon.

  Firing in five…

  My heart races as he counts down. The last several times we did this, things didn’t work out the way I would’ve liked. Sweat beads at my hairline as the suit charges up. The ZPFM red lines and then the jolt hits.

  A crack of thunder ignites the air in front of me. The visor goes dark to save my eyes from the flash. I can still see the round hit, though. The shockwave ripples through the ocean raising water in its wake. The round punches through the weakened shield. The residual energy is enough to blast right through the ship. Fire erupts from the hull as secondary explosions ripple around the point of impact.

  “Way to go, Epic!”

  It is a team effort. Reconfiguring to flight mode. I feel like a Veritech fighter the way the suit flows around me, resetting to normal.

  “Make a note, I need to come up with some pre-configured modes and cool names to go with them.”

  Note made.

  Another gout of flame erupts from the hole. Lux’s next salvo hits the hull, melting parts which run off into the sea with a sizzle of steam.

  “Kate, you ready?”

  “Amelia, I was born ready,” I can hear her smile as she quotes one of my favorite lines back at me.

  The Emdrive whines as I plunge toward the Earth adding my own acceleration to gravity. Within seconds I flip over feet first and pour on the power. I come to a stop in a few seconds landing in a crouch next to the hole we made.

  “Now!”

  Pop. Kate is in full combat gear, she’s even wearing the tungsten carbide weave suit I made her along with a full face mask. She gives me a thumbs up before drawing her twin short swords and leaping into the hole.

  “Epic, transfer full awareness to Kate. I’ll handle myself until you’re back.”

  Affirmative. Transferring to Kate.

  He’s still here, sort of. It’s just his full processing power is now helping Kate navigate the alien ship. Which is all I can do for my best friend. I spin around on the hull and take a quick—alarms flash. Panels on the hull slide open and Th’un in battle armor thunk out onto the deck. They look like mechanized gorillas with weapons hanging off their backs and in their oversized hands.

  “Well, Amelia, time to work for a living,” I tell myself. With my hand out I send the mental impulses needed. My sword forms in seconds as I run screaming at the enemy.

  If they want to dance with me, they better get used to having their feet ran over.

  Green lasers shoot past me as I dodge the clumsy fire, slashing my sword out at the nearest Th’un. I’m not a fencer, but I’ve practiced a lot with the ‘Sword of Doom’ and all I have to do is score a hit and it will cut right through flesh and bone.

  The first soldier falls over in a gurgle as blood sprays from his missing arm. My HUD tags ten soldiers coming up out of the hull. Each one marked with a threat level. I kick in the Emdrive for an assisted jump, wrap both hands around the pommel and bring the blade down on another one with a scream. My PA pumps up the volume of my roar to ear-shattering decibels.

  “Amelia,” Luke’s voice whispers in my ear. “Epic has us on a holding pattern outside the storm. What’s going on?”

  “A little busy—” I duck as a colossal fist flashes through the air where my head was a second before. I kick out, catching his knee with a satisfying crack. I never really did hand to hand in the old suit because the limited way in whi
ch it amped my strength… but this… I grin savagely as I punch out.

  Of course, it would help if I had any martial arts training at all. Like… any. He grabs my arm and throws me over his shoulder. I yelp as he tosses me through the air. I hit the deck— hard. The shields absorb the majority of the impact. Rolling over I raise up my arm and drill a hole through his torso with my particle beam.

  “Screw the storm, get us in there,” Luke says.

  “It’s too powerful, we ran the numbers. Lux and I are keeping them busy while Kate and Epic locate the weather dominator.”

  The Emdrive flings me back, then up and I land in a crouch. The remaining soldiers are far more cautious now. With a mental command a second sword forms in my off hand.

  “Come get some,” I yell as I charge.

  I plow through two of them, blades slicing through their armor like it didn’t exist. The diamond coated, one molecule thick edge doesn’t even pause as I cut through armor, skin, and bone.

  Alarms scream at me to dodge, and I do. A green beam slashes through the air cutting one of their own in half. I chuckle, sending a particle beam back at the shooter.

  The last of them fall back in a line, raising their weapons at me. I guess they had enough of the close quarter's stuff.

  I mentally engage the Emdrive when a line of fire roars down from the sky so hot it melts the deck and vaporizes the Th’un standing on them. Lux flies in to hover over her handy work like a vengeful god.

  “You really are something,” I tell her.

  “I’ve waited so long to take the fight to them, Amelia. I’ve watched them rape my world and kill my people. This is the first time I’ve felt like I’m making a difference.”

  I nod. “We’re not done yet. Let’s blow some more stuff up.”

  She grins, flying off into the air at impossible speeds. My HUD flashes an alert. Sensors detect several small craft departing the ship. Fighters? I scan the area and spot them. They look like snub winged coffins with large noses. Blue fire leaps from behind them as they arc through the sky almost too fast to follow. Time to take the battle to the sky.

  “Amelia, we’ve found the weather machine, it’s a huge swirl of energy. Epic is working on a way to shut it down without releasing the—” she stops and I hear the whine of her IP pistols followed by a grunt as she swings her sword. “—without blowing us all up. Keep ‘em busy.”

  “You got it.”

  I leap into the air telling my HUD to track the multiple bogies inbound. As soon as I’m airborne they open fire. Rolling right, I return fire with particle beams as my swords vanish back into the suit. Two fighters dog after me and the others go for Lux.

  I pull hard up, leading them away from the ships. Alarms blare as they try to get a lock on me.

  “Flares!

  A hundred microflares flash out of my thighs leaving a trail of blinding lights behind me. I spin and point both wrists at the nearest fighter. Super accelerated silicate particles lash out at the nose of the craft. I hold the beams on it with the assistance of the computer. Six seconds later it flashes by me but the nose is a smoking mess.

  “I’ve got it!” Kate yells over the comms. A second later the middle ship shakes as a plume of flame leaps out of the center. The results are instant. The black clouds around the area dissipate almost immediately.

  “Luke,” my comms switch to his channel with the sound of his name. “Kate did it, get your butt in here.”

  “On it. ETA thirty seconds.”

  I glance down at the ship, smoke pours out of the hole Kate made.

  “Kate, get out of there.”

  “I’m on it, I just need to get away from the reactor, it’s messing up my—” she screams for a heartbeat and then the line goes dead.

  Amelia, Kate is in trouble. My connection was disrupted by some sort of paralyzing weapon not unlike your IP cannons.

  “Epic, full defense, I’m going in after her.” The course appears on my HUD instantly and I dive. The air screams by me as the suit plunges down toward the hatch.

  “Luke, I’m going in the ship after Kate. Keep ‘em busy up here.”

  “Roger that. Glacier, freeze as much of the water around the ships as you can, it might keep them from taking off. Tessa, drown those mother—” The line switches off as I tune the comms to Kate’s beacon. I learned a little something from Ericsson. Radioactive decay beacons implanted in the team’s clothes allow me to track them regardless of the interference.

  I slam against the hull in a metal bending crunch. A Th’un opens fire with his rifle. Rolling to the right I come up and blast him with the particle beam before jumping into the hole. I don’t care if he follows me.

  “Epic, charge an EMP in case we need it.”

  Roger, EMP charging.

  The EMP whines as it builds toward a discharge.

  Inside the Th’un ship looks like a cross between a World War ll submarine and the Titanic. Pipes jut out of the walls at odd angles. Lighting comes from below, and the corners of the halls have that bizarre scrawl of half visible language.

  “Any luck on giving me a visual spectrum that can read their language?”

  Negative. We would need to dissect a Th’un eyeball to know precisely how they see.

  “Eww, gross. I’m an engineer Epic, I don’t dissect living things.”

  There was that one time…

  “Quiet you. Guide me to Kate. If they stunned her they aren’t planning on killing her, at least not right away, but let’s not waste any time.” A path highlights the way. I snap out my hand and the ‘Sword of Doom’ forms. I shorten it a foot making it about the same size as Kate's. These halls are wide, but not tall and I don’t want the blade to lodge into something and leave me vulnerable.

  Amelia, I have noticed your proclivity for violence has increased of late. Are you okay?

  “You want to have this discussion now?” I ask as I fast walk down a hall. The path on my HUD points the way but I’m having trouble seeing in here. It’s like there is a spectrum of light that is just on the edge of visible. “LED’s please. Half power.” The lights flash to life around my helmet lighting up the area. “Much better,” I mutter as we continue on.

  It is just… you were sick the first time you were forced to kill someone. Now you seem okay with it.

  I shrug. “I don’t know what to tell you, Epic. I’d love to not have killed anyone or anything. And yeah, I still have nightmares sometimes… but that doesn’t mean I won’t do it again to defend my family and friends. If that makes me a psycho, so be it. I will never reach for it as a first solution, but yeah, sometimes people got to die. Better them than me.”

  I wish there was a way to do this without resulting in anyone dying.

  “Me too, buddy. But my less-than-lethal don’t really work on them, and they certainly aren’t interested in keeping me alive. I don’t see as I have much choice.”

  Would you feel this way— hold up. There are two Th’un around the corner waiting to ambush you. I picked up their thermal radiation. “Roger that. Smoke.”

  A canister shoots out of my shoulder area and I hit it forward to land in the junction corridor. The can explodes in purple smoke. I give it a heartbeat to sow confusion before charging through. The smoke blocks vision and thermal, not even I can see through it. However, Epic has been down here already, he wire-frames the hall on my HUD so I can see where I’m going.

  I turn the corner and slam hard into something. He grunts as I hit him. Even this close I can’t really see the big alien. I just reach out and grab a handful of something and run my sword through it. He screams. I kick him once for good measure and run.

  The hard deck thumps as my feet hit it and I try to focus on where I’m going and not the new sensations the suit is giving me. It’s marvelous to feel my lower body, but also incredibly distracting. The armor acts as a synthsuit of sorts. Giving me access to all my nerves through conduction. I didn’t expect it to go both ways. Part of what messed me up when I first put
it on was the feedback, which is why I had Epic turn it down. But now? Oh boy. This is so far ahead of my old suit I’m not sure I ever want to take it off.

  Go right, now.

  I skid to a halt and leap right. Energy discharges down the hall where I was a second ago. The heat of the beam washes over me. The entire ship shakes for a second and I have to grab the wall to keep my feet.

  “What was that?”

  I believe that was something heavy impacting the hull. A chunk of ice from Glacier lifted by Tessa to slam against the ship like a battering ram.

  “Hot damn,” I mutter. “They make a good team.”

  You have put together an excellent group, Amelia.

  The ship shakes again and emergency doors slam down around me. The hall is suddenly cut short.

  She is moving. From the speed it suggests she is not under her own power.

  “Dang. Okay, let’s try something.” I crouch down at the door and jam my fingers under the lip. “One… two… heave!” I pull. My arms and legs strain and that translates to the suit. I growl as the metal bends. Servos whine in the wall before shorting out and exploding in sparks. Then the door is up.

  “Nice!”

  I charge forward. Beyond the next door is a shuttle bay. Epic shows her as on the far side. I glance around, the room is filled with equipment and a high ceiling. I jump up and fire off the Emjets to propel me through the air.

  Amelia, I think they are abandoning ship. I detect several escape pods.

  I focus on the ship as the massive engines on the back power up with a wave of heat. The other vessels in this room look short range, but the one powering up, the one with Kate on it, that seems an awful lot like the scout ship I shot down.

  “Epic, launch the EMP!” My suit shakes as the micro ZPFM breaks free. It pops behind me and all the lights inside the ship explode as the energy from my little ace in the hole overloads them. The scout ship, though, is unaffected.