by Vowron Prime
One of the creatures stabbed through a Zevan-type warrior, eviscerating him. Another tripped while attempting to flee. That was the end of her. The creatures grew bolder with every hand lost, realizing that they had poked yet another hole in the Resistance fighters’ already thin defense.
“We’ve reached a cliff!” a female Zevan-type shouted.
They broke through the edge of the forest onto a moonlit shale plateau. A sea of lush greenery greeted them, miles below. The World Trees soared to the sky in the distance, towering over their lesser brethren. We have no way down.
They’d been led by the enemy to a point away from the stairs that would have been their salvation.
Another of their ranks screamed from behind, taken down by an invisible foe—a Trilnyth.
His own kind was more durable than the Zevan-types, but Trilnyth magic had no issues compacting even Qephyx spheres into a bloody, gushy mess. Their soft flesh ruptured the instant the armored metal shells failed.
The group crept back to the very edge of the precipitous cliff. The beasts remained at bay. It was as if the Legatus was giving them a choice: jump, or be mauled to death.
Krar’eaks glanced at the rest of the Resistance cell. So few of them were left now. From over fifty, their ranks had dwindled to a mere eighteen. A third of them were children.
So this is the end.
This was what Vorien and Ayala’s sacrifice had bought them. A few hours of life.
No. No!
Vorien had bought the group a chance. It was he—Krar’eaks—who had failed them. It was his insufficient leadership that led them into the enemy’s trap. It was his failure that would cause them all to die. He had doomed them all.
“Nonononono.”
“Mother? I’m scared—”
Bloodcurdling cries pierced the night. Wails of sorrow that would make grown men cry.
Many sank to their knees. Some Qephyx wobbled unsteadily, their emotional state throwing their onboard life-support systems into disarray.
Krar swiveled to face off against their pursuers who had stopped at the edge of the forest. Dozens of Trilnyth. Thousands of mutated creatures. But the worst of all…
“The chariot…”
The great craft loomed above like a giant insect. The Legatus had found them.
Four Ultimators stood at the edge of the forest, unmoving. Staring at them like commanders in charge of an execution.
“We are all going to die,” Krar said without ever meaning to voice his thoughts.
It was a tragic mistake.
A few had held onto the last vestiges of their courage, but they despaired at his words. They threw down their guns. They sank to their knees and wept. Several Qephyx turned off their anti-gravity generators, causing their shells to fall and roll around on the ground—an age-old gesture of surrender. But there was no surrender to be had on this night.
What I would give to have switched places with you, Vorien. You would perform some miracle, some daring act to deliver us from this end. Yet there are no miracles for the damned. There is only death.
The Ultimators raised their arms and brought them down in unison. The beasts rushed in.
Krar’eaks’s final moments passed slowly. Memories flitted by as his death loomed. The years he spent as a mindless drone in Ubiquity’s army jumped to his mind. He recalled the revulsion he’d had upon first meeting Vorien—a traitor to the cause.
We’ve come so far since then. It is too bad that it was not far enough.
He made to shut off his own anti-gravity generator when his sensors picked up an oddity: a noise.
A grating, whirring noise that grew in intensity until it drowned even the roar of the beasts.
First Dawn broke, warming the world in rays of light. Yet he dared not hope. Not this time.
For hope offers the cruelest of temptations.
His infrared picked up nothing until the vessel broke above the cliff—right behind them. Slowly, it rose. Like an alien bird of prey, come to find its next meal.
Rising. Like a beacon of hope, a savior come to grant them a miracle. Krar’eaks’s actuators went limp in shock.
The miracle came in the form of a deafening roar. A noise so loud, the Zevan-types plugged their ears. A roar that belched hundreds upon hundreds of angry projectiles above their heads. Their velocity was such that his sensors couldn’t track them, but they hardly needed to.
Where it fired, only death followed. It walked a path through the ranks of thousands, right up to the Ultimators. Even those champions of the Dyn could not escape the onslaught. The force riddled them with so many holes that they appeared to dismantle. Their arms and heads fell off. Their torsos vanished.
Entire swaths of enemies were eviscerated in an instant, sliced in half by an invisible blade.
A voice boomed from the alien craft.
“Ladies. Gents. Aliens. The cavalry has arrived.”
Thirty-Three
Reaver decloaked as it crested the cliff. MC didn’t want to add to the refugees’ panic, and besides, stealth was pointless with the barrage of gunfire he was laying down.
The gunship continued to rise, raining death upon the enemy with depleted uranium hellfire. A hailstorm of heavy metal, auto-tracked by the gunship’s advanced AI. The clearing turned into a hellscape of horror, but there were thousands of them. Far too many to kill with direct fire alone.
“Missile lock,” Al called out. MC pulled the joysticks’ dual triggers. Twenty Maverick Mk-IV air-to-ground missiles erupted from their recessed berths. Twenty dazzling explosions lit the landscape with fire.
When the dust settled and the gore stopped flying, there were many craters, and precious little else.
“658 bogeys confirmed down.”
“Weren’t there some of those Ultimators down there, too?” Nina asked.
MC searched the flaming ground. “Not anymore, there aren’t!”
But there was that chariot. The surviving animals had already routed, their survival instincts overriding whatever mind-control the Dyn had thrust upon them. Which just left the big, bad hovering gunship. MC had already confirmed that the 20mm frontal guns were useless against its armor during their initial attack—they’d need to try something a bit bigger.
He armed eight Meteor Mark III air-to-air-missiles and fired. The laser-guided munitions danced through the sky along erratic, unpredictable trajectories—to throw off anti-missile countermeasures. The chariot’s defenses detonated six in midair, but two struck home, exploding directly against the enemy vessel’s hull.
“No good, huh?”
The chariot’s armor was just too thick. He’d suspected as much.
The enemy vessel returned fire with its arsenal of energy weapons. The powerful emissions slammed into MC’s energy dampener like a freight train on nitrous. But he’d anticipated that. He’d already focused the shield into a small, sturdy surface that tanked the impact. Then he deflected it, right back at them.
But the enemy had learned about his abilities. They shut off the beam the instant it was redirected.
“Guess they’re not going to fall for that trick again. We need altitude superiority.”
Reaver ascended rapidly, putting it out of the firing arcs of the chariot’s arsenal. The twin VTOL fans pivoted forward, accelerating Reaver to 250 miles an hour and an altitude of a thousand feet. The chariot rose to match them.
“Al, execute a pylon turn. I want us circling that fatass like a mosquito. Deploy the main guns and stand by for aerial bombardment.”
“Deploying rail artillery. Diverting power to weapons. All weapons systems are now active. Standing by.”
The twin twenty-foot-long 40mm artillery rail cannons swiveled out from the belly of the aircraft that now banked at a thirty-degree angle to port, allowing it to keep its artillery on target for minutes on end as it circled around the enemy below. The sheer time-on-target greatly outstripped the firepower a fighter jet’s strafing attack run could muster.
&nb
sp; “All right, gals, hold on tight because shit’s about to get real. Put these inside your headsets, and trust me you’re gonna need them.” He handed them earplugs to insert within the noise-canceling headsets they already wore. He did the same. Then he cued up some music. A soundtrack appropriate for the occasion.
“‘Ride of the Valkyries’? Excellent choice, brother.”
He replied with a thumbs up. Then he flipped it. Thumbs down.
“Al, let’s start small and work our way up. 40mm guns. Fire for effect.”
The rail guns came to life. The two-pound projectiles fired at a rate that could only be called obscene: four hundred rounds a minute. The barrage of deadly destruction shuddered Reaver’s frame. Even with the doubled-up hearing protection, the trio’s ears rang.
An unending torrent of tungsten-carbide slammed the chariot, ripping into its armor bit by bit. Sparks flew, and chunks of metal sloughed off under the awesome barrage.
Reaver kept up the assault for a full twenty seconds as it circled its prey. MC grew displeased. Very little could withstand that kind of firepower. This was no mere chariot. The gunship shrugged off the damage and continued to rise. It was an up-armored variant, its shell an array of angled armor plates. Despite their velocity, the bullets simply deformed and ricocheted harmlessly. Its armor must’ve been many times harder than tungsten to hold up that well, but even so, the chariot had not survived unscathed.
“Al, cancel bombardment.”
The noise stopped, much to Nova’s delight.
“Al, arm the howitzer. Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.”
“Command confirmed. Deploying main artillery. Brace for kinetic bombardment.”
Unlike its sleeker, more advanced brothers, the thirty-foot-long howitzer weighed in at eight-thousand pounds and used conventional gunpowder to fire its colossal projectile. A one-hundred-pound high-yield explosive warhead. Like a frag grenade, but bigger. A fuckton bigger. The designers must’ve been high to mount such a massive gun on a ship this small.
“Brace yourselves!” MC shouted moments before the massive cannon belched a single projectile.
The shock wave pummeled the three occupants like a sucker punch to the gut. Their ears rang. The air in their lungs evacuated and the entire gunship jolted sideways under the awesome force.
Yet as bad as the experience was on their end, it was utterly incomparable to the destruction wrought upon the hapless gunship below.
The warhead penetrated the chariot’s already-damaged armor, sinking its teeth deep within the vessel.
Silence—the calm before the storm.
Then it detonated.
Imagine a beetle stuffed full of industrial-grade fireworks. The chariot fared no better.
The doomed vessel exploded in a glorious starburst of destruction, sending innumerable chunks of metal flying. Some hit the ground. Others soared to the sky, painting a trail of flames and death as they fell.
Like someone had lit a jigsaw puzzle on fire and thrown it against a wall at Mach nine, the destruction was total and catastrophic.
“There really is nothing quite like good ole human whoop-ass, is there? Can I get a hell yeah?” An ear-to-ear grin plastered MC’s face.
“Hell yeah!” Nina roared with glee.
Nova was less enthused. “Only deranged lunatics would find satisfaction in loud noises and chemical weapons!”
“Don’t worry, Nova,” MC replied consolingly. “One day, you’ll lighten up.”
She responded only with an icy glare. One that sent shivers up MC’s spine.
“Anyway, I think we oughta go greet our new friends.”
MC left his seat and walked aft, commanding Al to land the gunship in front of the Resistance remnant. First impressions mattered, and he intended to pull out all the stops. Stepping into the X42, he mashed the button to drop the rear ramp. He turned and threw the girls a hasty salute. Then he jumped.
The armored frame plummeted to the ground. He refrained from using the jump jets to kill his speed, lest he give the poor survivors a fright. Instead, the energy dampener activated just before landing, serving as a brake.
Though attenuated, his impact still kicked up a wave of dust. The ground shuddered underfoot. He marched up to the dumbstruck Resistance fighters huddled in a tight circle around their young ones.
Raised his hands in a show of nonviolence, he spoke through the suit’s speakers.
“We come in peace. We were supposed to meet yesterday near your base. We came here as soon as we could. Looks like we were just in time.”
“Who are you? Name yourself!” one of them called out.
“Apart from The Ones Who Saved Your Collective Asses? I’m, uh, I’m an alien. From Earth. And my name is Magnus. Magnus Cromwell.”
“From Earth? How is that possible?” an orb-type Qephyx asked. “We have been on the run ever since some unknown elements destroyed the transit gateway and the spatial anchor in orbit. We do not have enough words to express our gratitude at your intervention.”
“Uh… yeah, that may have been my doing.”
Hushed murmurs broke out, some less muted than others. “YOU? You’re the one who destroyed the transit gateway!?”
MC retracted the faceplate of the suit. “Yeah, that’d be me.”
“Then, it was you who also destroyed the space-time anchor?”
“Guilty as charged. And you’re welcome.”
“You fool! Do you know how many have perished on account of your actions?” an irate woman called out.
“Isana, please, now is not the time. If not for them, we would all be dead.”
The woman wasn’t happy, but she chose to keep her mouth shut.
“Now look, I don’t know the circumstances around your situation, nor could I have known. But as that upstanding hovering metal ball over there said, this is neither the place nor the time for such a discussion.”
He pointed a thumb at the gunship that had just finished setting down behind him, kicking up a maelstrom of dust in the process.
“I have tech. I have a base, I have some kickass powers, and did I mention I have a hidden base? It’s armed to the teeth with bleeding-edge human tech, and to be honest, that’s a whole helluva lot more than what you have right now. So how about we join forces and see if we can’t fuck over the Dyn? Ever heard the saying, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’?”
“Magnus, thank you for your elementary schoolyard diplomacy. Now, why don’t you run along and let the adults take it from here, hmm?” Nina said as she exited Reaver with Nova. Both of their faceplates were retracted, a tactical risk that made MC frown with worry.
“Esteemed members of the Resistance, it is our honor to make your acquaintance.”
Nina took command, explaining their situation and how it had come to pass, though she omitted a few details. There was no need to inform them that MC was an Ultimator candidate with a parasite in his head—no reason to freak them out more than necessary. She narrated how they’d teleported Sanctuary to Kelruhn prior to the teleporter’s destruction. How they planned to mount a new, organized rebellion, giving the existing Resistance cells a shot at a brighter tomorrow.
“Know that you are not alone in this fight.”
Her pitch was masterful, but the crowd was tough.
“You present a compelling argument. However, I fear that any discussion of future alliances must be deferred until we have secured our situation. Can we impose upon you for transport?”
“It would be our pleasure,” Nina replied. “You must be tired and worn after your ordeal. We’d be happy to fly you to any location of your choosing.”
The fighters initially asked to be transferred to the nearest Resistance facility, but Nina pushed hard for a compromise, and for that, she leveraged Nova. They came around when Nova revealed herself to be Dyn, and the ex-Lead Artificer at that. Apparently, news of Nova’s rebellion had spread to most Resistance cells. Her own refusal to play by the Legatus’s rules was seen as a be
acon of hope among the Resistance.
The plan was that MC and Co. would fly most of the Resistance to their base, but they’d take a few key members back to Sanctuary—to let them confirm his claims for themselves. If everything checked out, they’d be willing to discuss next steps.
The fact that Nina managed to accomplish even that much flabbergasted MC, given how panicky and scared the rebel Dyn all were. Watching her work made him swell with pride. She was walking her own path—making the world a better place, not by destruction but through peace. Perhaps, in another life, he might have done the same. But was useless to ruminate on hypotheticals.
A half hour later, Reaver was back in the air, except this time it carried some precious cargo. A rear cabin packed full of Resistance Dyn. Only eighteen had survived. Not an army, or even a company. Barely more than a squad, if he discounted the children. But then, eighteen was infinitely better than zero.
“I would like to apologize on behalf of my people for our earlier behavior,” a Qephyx said as they flew above the lush forests of the Logosati. “I am Krar’eaks, the acting military leader of this Resistance cell.”
“Acting?” MC asked from the pilot’s seat. “And no need to apologize. I get that your people have been through harrowing times lately. I can’t even imagine how bad it had to be, even without your kids in tow.” MC set Al on autopilot and turned his pilot’s seat around to face the floating metal orb.
“Thank you for your understanding. And yes, I am only the acting leader. Our leader, Vorien, perished last night in an attempt to draw away the chariot’s fire. A bid to give us a chance to escape.”
“I’d say he succeeded, wouldn’t you?”
The hovering sphere wobbled in midair, a gesture that was lost upon MC. “If it were not for you, we would all have perished. I cannot thank you enough. Yet now that you’ve destroyed one of the Legatus’s chariots, he will pursue you with force. I hope that you are prepared for the consequences.”
MC laughed. “Friend, I blew up his space station. And his teleporter. One or two chariots is a drop in the ocean at this point.”
“A drop in the… ah! I see. Quite true. I, at least, do not blame you for destroying the transit gateway. You could not have known what impact it would have had on the Resistance, and I am sure you were only doing what you thought was best.”
