by Joseph Calev
Copyright © 2021 Joseph Calev
All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests write to the author, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address found at the website below.
ISBN: 978-1-7362617-0-5 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 978-1-7362617-1-2 (Paperback)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021901352
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by: Damonza
Space Needle Photo https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:International_Fountain_with_Space_Needle.jpg
First edition 2021
Publisher:
Joseph Calev
Bellevue, WA
www.josephcalev.com
To my wife Nelya and sons, Eitan and Nathan, for letting me travel to the Paramount Dimension.
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
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About the Author
1
The city was sleeping when the Guardian Drums awoke.
Dum-dee-dum-dum-dum-DA-dum-dum they roared over and over again.
A gargantuan troll manned each nearly hundred-foot-tall daiko drum, and pounded them with enough force to split a mountain. The thumping beat reverberated from every hilltop around the piercing spires of the city. It rattled every house, sent every pet into hiding, and woke an entire region.
The drumming was not without cause. Far above the emerald city, a flotilla crept forward through the deathly silence of space. Its bulky cuboid-shaped crafts were not built for beauty. Each sparkled with the lights of hundreds of fighters firing their engines. The reptile troops knew the drill; in a few hours the planet would be theirs.
The flutter of lights ceased and the dark-gray crafts aligned in rows. Then, with the deathly grace of the most professional of killers, they began their descent. Their gentle trip through the atmosphere was calm compared to the subsequent annihilation that awaited the inhabitants below.
The drumming got louder.
The sky turned red and the gigantic beasts pounded forth with even greater fury. Every human in the city had to be awakened. This was not a drill. The massive Last Shofar called out to the scurrying citizens from atop Cougar Mountain, which loomed over the metropolis of Seattle, in a desperate attempt to reach everyone.
Jason jumped from his bed and flew to the window. How had he slept this late! Everyone had known the lizards were coming. He’d always told himself the drums would waken him. Yet here he was, only pulled up by the Last Shofar. Its purpose and signal was well known, even though this was its maiden use.
The message was simple: Get up and fight, or die.
Jason gasped. The captain of his cruiser, the Ravager, would not wait for a lowly yeoman. There were no courts-martial for missing one’s ship during wartime, only executions.
He pulled on a shirt so quickly that he tore it, then covered it with his uniform jacket. Maybe this was humanity’s end, but he would still do his tiny part in giving these reptiles hell.
To his relief, they were still priming the wooden ship’s wings for launch, so he jumped through the door and took his position at the bridge. The captain, a gruff man who walked with a limp and had lost two fingers, gave Jason a snort but otherwise said nothing. They were all about to die anyway.
Jason hurriedly checked his comms while dozens outside struggled to lift the hundred-foot-long wings, which had no purpose given the hydrogen engines, up and down. The Ravager, like the thousands of others in the fleet, was never designed for wartime. It was a pleasure craft, meant for scenic cruises over the Cascade and Olympic Mountains, or jaunts to the San Juan Islands. Its intricately carved wooden hulls were stunning to behold, but also made it a defensive tinder box. For some reason it mattered how elegantly firewood could fly.
A few hundred feet away, a ship Jason recognized as the Gallant ascended. With one hundred and forty-three crew aboard, these things moved more like overweight bumblebees than war craft, and Jason gulped at the thought of battling at several thousand feet in this thing. A few seconds later, the entire bridge shook and the death trap that was the Ravager lumbered into the air.
Little time had passed since the evil Mordriss, who led the lizards, had made his demand. “Surrender to enslavement, or be annihilated,” he had ordered.
Yet never could they give up their freedom. So, this peaceful city along the Puget Sound went to war. Every window in these pleasure craft was replaced with a gun turret, and men and women alike were drafted into a new navy. The administrative side of the operation had functioned like clockwork. Combat efficiency was a different matter: The guns tore the canvas wings to shreds on the first practice runs. Jason couldn’t help but realize how hopeless this was.
The drums ceased, and the trolls replaced the massive sticks with rocket launchers. From above, Jason noticed one aim his tube the wrong way. These were not soldiers. This was set for a slaughter.
The crew’s eyes wandered and hands fidgeted on the Ravager’s bridge. Thousands of similar cruisers struggled to the air over Lake Washington, creating a sea of slow butterflies with wings now gleaming from the golden sunrise.
The silhouettes of the invading force took shape in the clouds. Their perfect formation resembled a tremendous game board, and he immediately thought back to those simpler pleasures. Jason turned to the captain, whose eyes glanced from side to side with a nervous twitch. And then he knew: There were no orders for the individual ships, no formation, and no strategy for the city’s defense.
He couldn’t help but consider whether their rockets and bullets would even affect these gleaming crafts. These reptiles were savage beings, world destroyers. A bunch of flying coffins with rusted guns wasn’t going to stop them.
The oversized, unit-block-shaped crafts left the clouds, and the battle commenced. Jason shuddered as a blast ripped through the Gallant in front of them. The crews of the two ships had trained together. On board was a certain Angie, whom he had been mustering up the courage to ask out. He would never have the chance.
A dozen other ships met similar fates, and then, just when everything seemed only mostly hopeless, each attacking ship pulled open its iron doors, and a plethora of pill-shaped fighters spilled forth.
The lizards clearly wanted this genocide finished before lunch.
The captain screamed and Jason echoed him for the gunners to begin firing as the horde of spinning crafts buzzed around them. As they all suspected, the machine guns’ volleys just richocheted away. The cannons, though, gave them a sliver of hope. Briefly he saw the gleam of an enemy’s windshield with all four blasters aimed at his heart, before a cannon blast clipped its side and sent it plummeting.
At least a few lizards wouldn’t survive this encounter.
Never before had he
felt so completely helpless. This was no strategic battle. Around him their fleet was disintegrating like a swarm of flies swiped with an electric net. The Ravager’s captain was sweating profusely on the same realization. The gunners kept firing, but almost everything that fell was wooden. There was no goal of victory, only temporary survival.
Outside, a lizard fighter tore through one of their wings, but no one paid heed. There would be no need to land. They would not return.
And then they saw it.
Gently floating through the medley was a singular black craft. Shaped like a stiletto, with no hints of windows or turrets, the sleek craft ran unopposed through the chaos. In a moment, a lizard fighter was on it, peppering it with a rain of lasers that disappeared completely in its sides. The dark ship continued unhindered.
This was no ship of theirs, but if the lizards wanted it down, it couldn’t be too bad. After attempting to obliterate it from every side, the pesky fighter collided straight into the sleek craft and not even the paint was charred. Fragments of burning reptile wreckage fluttered to the ground, but the black ship showed no sign of caring.
In stunned appreciation of a potential new ally, every gun on that side of the Ravager went silent. Immediately the captain ordered them to resume firing, just only at the reptiles. As two more kamikaze lizard craft were obliterated, one thing became clear: Whatever this thing was, its needle shaped front was aimed directly at them, and it was closing fast.
Was this any better than being incinerated under the lizard fleet’s guns? Jason stood at attention, awaiting the order to fire. The captain didn’t give it. There was no use. If the lizards’ weapons had no effect, theirs would be even more embarrassing.
The Ravager’s entire crew gasped when the black vessel came close enough to split their craft in two, then paused inches away. A door slowly materialized from its top and a black-shrouded figure emerged. Roughly human sized, it proceeded to stand on top of the thin nose, then calmly opened a side door on the Ravager.
“Whatever it is, don’t let that thing in!” the captain barked through the intercom.
Yet it was no use. A moment later, a soft voice said. “It’s not a thing. Looks like a woman.”
“Well . . . tell her to go away,” replied the old man.
Jason somehow knew how unlikely that was.
“She wants to see you,” said someone after a lengthy pause.
Before their captain could fathom a response, they heard another voice. “Right this way. I’ll show you.”
Outside, dozens more of Seattle’s cruisers were perishing every minute. Evidently tired from making aerial bonfires, the reptiles were beginning to direct their wrath on the city itself as explosions popped from everywhere. After all, annihilation meant everything had to go.
The door opened and a young girl, perhaps seventeen years old, waltzed in. While Jason stood tight in his red button black uniform, she carried herself in jeans, a loose pink sweater, and a worn pair of cowboy boots. He instinctively removed his cap in the presence of a woman, then dropped it on recognizing that she was the single most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Her long brown hair moved like a wave down her back, while her soft brown eyes gave no clues of someone who’d just outshone the entire lizard fleet, but instead disarmed him as the childhood friend he never knew. While Jason mentally avoided looking farther down than her v-neck, she casually pulled out a chair, sat down, and kicked her boots up on a desk.
“Hell of a party you’re throwing here,” she remarked.
The captain turned his back while Jason shook himself out of staring dog-eyed at her.
“Sit down,” she said playfully but with a flash of seriousness in her eyes.
“Look,” their chief grump started, “I don’t know who you are—”
She shook her head. “I’m not going to ask you again.”
The entire crew gasped at this young girl speaking to a man who had once tossed a crew member out the window for smirking. Jason backed away slightly, aware that he was closest to the window and to the captain.
Their captain turned sharply, then held his three-fingered fist in a threat that he wouldn’t mind striking a girl.
She didn’t hesitate. After one brush of her hand the captain had but a brief second to realize his situation, then he was gone.
Desperate to escape this demoness’ wrath, Jason immediately dashed toward the end of the ship, but after just three steps something made him halt. No one else had budged. They weren’t frozen, but it was as if she’d stuck an invisible pacifier in each as they now stood with heads admiring the floor, and arms listless by their sides. A few wandered around the bridge like zombies.
She swiveled in her chair to scan the remaining misfits, and Jason began to study the contour of her lips. Then she leaned back and crossed her arms.
Everyone on the Ravager was quiet.
“What the hell are all of you doing?” she asked out loud.
Jason glanced out the window, just to ascertain that they were in fact in the middle of a battle for survival. Over half of their fleet had been destroyed. The Space Needle had collapsed and a hole burst from the Columbia Tower. A troll took a direct hit.
“We’re defending ourselves from annihilation by the evil Mordriss,” said the first officer in a monotone voice while still admiring the floor.
She lifted her hand in a halt sign and he stopped speaking, then she sighed.
“And what do you know of Mordriss?”
A cricket could have given a soliloquy across the ship given the silence. Even Jason admitted that, despite owning a uniform and knowing his place on the ship, he couldn’t recall ever having any military training.
“And when did he threaten you?” she added.
Everyone stared at the floor while contemplating. When Jason paused to think of it, this was the first time he’d ever seen a troll. He also couldn’t recall ever hearing of drums that large, or the Last Shofar.
She stood and strode across the room while pausing to eye each person. Jason lowered his head like the rest when she reached him. He caught a heavenly scent as she stood but inches away. It was as if plumeria, gardenia, and the most fragrant of roses were blended together, then multiplied by a thousand. For her part, she ignored him.
“And have these flying . . . whatever these things are . . . ever existed in Seattle?” she yelled.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said the first officer with his hands clasped together half between a prayer and a beg. “But we’re all the city’s got. Could you please let us continue?”
The girl shook her head, then plopped herself back in the seat and leaned back.
Jason again glanced outside to witness his beloved city crumble underneath the lizards’ assault. The Columbia Tower was now leaning over, while Rainier Tower had been completely destroyed. Soon there would be nothing left.
She laughed quietly. “You know . . . you’re right.” She tucked her hair back. “These lizard things are obviously a problem, so let’s take care of them.”
She grinned, then turned toward the bow and waved both of her arms to create a sudden wind that blew effortlessly through the Ravager’s walls. Just outside, a lone reptilian fighter burst into a white oblivion. Within moments, those beyond it suffered the same fate.
Like a great wall sweeping across the land, the gusts flew across the battlefield, obliterating every lizard craft they met, while sparing every cruiser, troll, and building. Even the fires were extinguished and the handful of enemy wreckage was removed.
Above them, the now startled mother ships turned to flee. With another wave of her arms, every one disappeared in blinding flashes, and what little remained fluttered as dust below.
She had their full attention now. “As I should have said, you don’t need an armada. You just need me.”
The crew broke out of their trance to shout in unison while a roar of cheers broke across the city. Had they just won? Jason couldn’t believe this. Whoever this girl wa
s, she had just saved them all. The first officer moved to hug her, but she backed away.
“How did you do that!” the officer shouted, then paused to admire the disintegrated lizard armada. “You’ve just annihilated the most feared fleet in the universe!”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she remarked with a glare in her eyes. “Play time’s over. You all need to go home.”
What did that mean? A cold howling wind took his breath and Jason suddenly was staring up at the clouds, which were growing more distant. Surrounding him in midair were now thousands of bodies. He turned frantically to see the Seattle armada disappearing into dust and the metropolis rapidly approaching. Jason flung his arms and legs while straining to scream, but there were no options. He closed his eyes while the ground rapidly approached. Everything would be over soon.
2
Jason’s body hurtled into the ground and instantly he was flailing and thrashing until his feet and arms became so entwined in something that he could barely breathe. Yet he should have been scattered remains rather than hopelessly wrapped up.
He awoke to find two sheets completely constricting his legs, to the point that he tumbled from bed untangling himself. His arms were sandwiched between three pillows, which themselves were wrapped in quilts. After finally freeing himself, he stood and laughed. Everything had seemed so real. Jason paused to smell his forearm, and swore that it smelled a bit like plumeria and gardenia. Yet it was nothing more than a dream.
He canvassed his room, the floor covered in comforters, quilts, pillows, and layers of blankets. No wonder he’d felt that he couldn’t move. He couldn’t recall ever owning this many.
“Mom?” he yelled hearing footsteps outside. “Did you buy more blankets?”
She sprung open the door and examined the mess while the underwear-clad Jason dove for cover.
“Can’t you knock!” he screamed.
“Yes,” she replied in a monotone voice. “I thought you were a little cold last night, so I brought you these.”
He shook his head. “You bring one blanket, Ma. One blanket! What the hell?” He looked at the pile of layers. “I nearly suffocated. Had some crazy dream.”
