Authors: Greg Fish
“I’m gonna kill the bastard who invented these things,” growled Christine.
“Go for it,” replied Dot. “He’s right down there.”
“Where?... Wait a sec... You mean Ace is the bastard who...”
“Yes. He made them hundreds of years ago. Humans weren’t the intended fuel for spawns, but the Dark Gods adapted the process to work on humans too. Or at least that’s what it looks like.”
They sat in silence for just a minute. Christine was checking how well the ground forces fared while Dot tried to stretch her shredded leg which was just about half healed.
“Not good,” said Christine shaking her head. “They tore almost a thousand robots to shreds. We have just a few hundred left.”
But Dot wasn’t listening to Christine. An odd, faint sound caught her attention. Something big was heading towards them and it was going to arrive very soon.
“Something wrong?” asked Christine.
“I think there’s something coming,” replied Dot with a tense and anxious expression.
In the distance, the Nation’s war machines spotted the headlights of a bullet train, moving towards them at 300 miles per hour. It was carrying a small battalion of spawns. The ravenous creatures filled the passenger compartments and hung on to the roof and sides of the sleek train with their massive claws.
“Oh come on,” frowned Ace as he saw the train coming straight at him and the robots.
He jumped on a Siege Machine which stood on the rails and put his hand on the carbon nanotube hull of the robot as he powered up. He started transferring his energy to the machine. The giant cannon began to glow brighter and brighter as a red aura appeared around it. As the power levels reached critical, the Siege Machine fired a truly monstrous fireball at the incoming train.
The recoil from the pulse shattered the Siege Machine’s cannon, fracturing the robot’s legs and feet. As the fireball sped towards the train, the entire width of the street was ravaged by the shockwave formed by the superheated air around the pulse. The shockwave cracked any asphalt still intact after the first battle, melting and warping the train rails.
As the pulse and train collided, spiraling blast waves streamed down the length of the train launching spawns high in the air, almost instantly halting the train’s progress. The heat ignited the fuel tanks under the train, used to generate reserve power in an emergency, and an explosion shook the ground as an elongated fireball shot down the street like the breath of a dragon, shattering windows and sending a cloud of shrapnel in every direction.
With a sigh of relief, Ace jumped down from the remains of the Siege Machine. The mangled robot fell where it stood in an awkward heap, half melted from the blast it generated.
“I lose more Siege Machines that way,” scoffed Ace.
He looked down at his uniform. The spawns shredded it to bits, actually ripping right through the armor. Under the tears, his carbon skin healed itself from minor scratches and scrapes, using the thick, synthetic blood under his skin to form new carbon gel.
Suddenly, under his feet, the ground began to tremble and crack as something broke through all the power lines, concrete and metals that served as the city’s foundation. That something was a servant of the Dark Gods, another creature from the same species as the spawn which was in charge of the Rexx. The alien was now floating above the crack in the ground through which it broke through the city’s subterranean layers, its blue, glowing eyes stared Ace down with obvious distaste. It was still in humanoid form and shrouded in a rusty, old cloak. Its folded wings.
“Say haven’t I killed one of you already?” asked Ace.
“There are plenty of us around,” replied the alien.
“Do you mind coming back another time? It’s been a long night and I could really use a minute to recharge.”
In reply, the alien shot out a pyramid shaped blade on a chain. It missed Ace by mere inches. The cyborg remained still with a sleepy, almost bored expression on his face.
“I guess that means no,” shrugged Ace assuming a combat stance.
The spawn chuckled and produced another blade. Both of them now floated in the air, aimed at the cyborg’s head, ready to strike at any second. The battle for Earth’s capital was only beginning...
[ chapter _ 022 ]
A bomber rocketed past the Moon, searching for a small alien device that was used to coordinate interplanetary attacks. Usually, all bombers were piloted by AI chips, but this bomber was being flown by Nelson, who finally managed to make it to a nearby spaceport. He circled the Earth in spirals at astonishing speeds, hoping to detect an anomaly that would give him a hint about the alien probe’s position.
The bomber’s cockpit seemed very simple and user friendly. The holographic canopy also functioned as a heads up display, tracking a wide variety of objects from destroyers to asteroids. Nelson piloted the bomber with two trackballs which controlled the craft’s direction and speed, responding as fast as his reflexes would allow.
Nelson’s seat was deep, wide and angled upwards. It cushioned his body, reducing stress at high speeds and during maneuvers which sent the ship into spiraling spins and death defying nosedives. With a practiced, steady hand, he aligned the ship for another flyby and just as he entered his next loop, a holographic display with Steve flashed into existence over his knees.
“Nelson, the spawns are neutralized,” he announced.
“Good,” smiled Nelson with a sigh of relief. “I guess I can take a little time to find the probe.”
“Um... not exactly.”
“Something wrong?”
“Well Nelson... I’m picking up a signal of a probe trying to hack into the destroyer’s system. It’s coming from about... here plus or minus a thousand miles.”
Steve called up a three dimensional diagram of the signal’s point relative to the Earth and Nelson’s position.
“Steve, I checked that area, it looks all clear,” said Nelson.
“The destroyers have more powerful sensors then you do. Trust me, the probe is there.”
“Can you stop the hack?”
“No idea. The computer is trying, but the probe is using our own command codes, not just trying to break in through decryption.”
“How does it know our command codes?”
“No idea. Please hurry. I can’t command the ship to go after this thing already. Next, I’ll lose weapons systems.”
“What’s the worst case scenario here?”
“The virus over-revs the reactors and sends me barreling into the city below. The ship would basically become an IGF.”
“Shit!” growled Nelson as he started re-setting the course for his bomber. “See this is why the fighters and bombers work on a totally different network then the SBDs. Hold on Steve, I’ll find it.”
He turned off the holographic display and shot towards a much higher orbit, arming his missiles and lasers. His naval training as a human would pay off in just a few minutes.
In the burnt and ravaged street of the Earth’s capital, an alien readied itself to plunge its blades deep into Ace’s chest. The blades were sent at the cyborg with great skill and excellent timing, but the alien felt the blades sink deep into the ground as Ace warped out of focus just a few milliseconds before the blades hit.
The Nation’s robots fired their most potent guns at the alien, but most of their fire missed as the creature deftly dodged lasers and red, churning energy pulses. Only a few lasers and bursts managed to hit it, but the impressive energy they unleashed wasn’t enough to pierce its strong, blue shields.
With a rattle of blades, the alien warped out of view, leaving the robots and Ace looking around in confusion. On the rooftop, Dot and Christine tried to find it to no avail. It was as if the alien vaporized in a flash, never to be seen again.
“Where the hell did it go?” asked Dot.
“I don’t know...” replied Christine with a bewildered frown.
“Just look above,” laughed the alien as it warped back into view right above them, unleashing three blades one after the other.
Each blade was deflected by Dot’s massive sword. Even with an injured leg, she was still fast enough to block every strike and cover Christine from a rogue attack.
“Cheap shot,” she chuckled, straining to hold her sword against the pressure exerted by the alien.
“Oh I can try again,” purred the alien reeling in its blades.
Summoning all its might, the alien shot its blades at full power, a maneuver designed to shatter anything in its way. But instead of the cracking sound of a shattering sword, all it heard was a loud clank. It didn’t feel its blades go through anything either. Just the coldness of another blade.
Dot blocked the alien’s attack, covering her and Christine’s head with her wide sword. Ordinarily, her blade should’ve been broken in three places but Ace slipped his katana under Dot’s sword, absorbing the devastating shock of the triple strike.
“Hey jackass,” growled Ace. “Leave the ladies alone. What’s the matter with you? Nobody ever teach you any manners?”
Sliding his katana from under Dot’s sword, he unleashed an energy wave that nearly sliced the alien in half. As the alien fell back, he grabbed Dot and Christine and quickly descended to the ground.
“I’ll help you handle this guy,” said Dot rising to her feet.
“No way!” protested Ace. “Your leg is still healing. You and Christine need to get somewhere safer.”
“But the robots...” started Christine looking at the machines which mysteriously shut off when the alien attacked her and Dot.
“Move!” barked Ace. “That’s an order.”
With a grimace on her face, Dot grabbed Christine and headed to a nearby high rise where a small team of armed cyborgs surrounded them. Moments later, each of the five dark blades the alien possessed sank into the asphalt, less than a fraction of an inch away from Ace who barely avoided them. Gliding down to the street with an eerie hiss, the creature reeled in its blades, aiming them for Ace yet again.
“Fine,” it spat. “You have my undivided attention. I’ll deal with the females later.”
A strike of its blades immediately followed its words. Again and again, the alien fired its sharp spikes, slicing so close to Ace, it could feel his body heat. Ace managed to dodge every attack, jumping and leaning every which way he could as the alien attacked with ever-increasing ferocity.
After the last shot of its fifth blade, the alien felt that something was very wrong. With a swift strike of his sword, Ace hammered the creature’s blades deep into the asphalt. The chains holding the blades to the alien’s body were tangled in a spiraled mess.
“What the hell...” it muttered. “What did you do?”
“Me?” asked Ace with an innocent expression. “I didn’t do anything to your blades. You were just shooting them like a maniac and see what happened?”
The alien struggled to move its blades out of the ground, rattling the chains and growling under its breath.
“You tangled up my claws!” it roared.
“I was going to be modest about it,” shrugged Ace as he assumed a fight stance with his sword. “Now, the more you struggle, the more it’s gonna hurt.”
The alien erupted into its natural form, unfolding its huge, torn, rusty wings, shooting out the extendable trunk with its mouth while it yanked on the chains of the blades attached to its legs. Each blade was in effect, a modified talon connected with a chain that ran deep into its appendages.
Jumping off the top of the stuck and tangled claws, Ace warped out of focus and reappeared right above the alien monster. Surging at full power, he unleashed a devastating shockwave that tore the alien apart, rocking the ground beneath him once again. He sunk his sword deep into the creature’s brain stem, preventing the modified monster from gathering itself back together.
The tangled blades were shot in all directions, embedding further down the street and into the walls of high rises. All that remained of the alien monster was a mutilated, burnt cadaver with pieces strewn across the width of the street. Ace’s sword was stuck under the three antennae that supported the alien’s eyes, behind the fanged mouth on its extendable trunk.
Ace examined the remains with his claws armed just in case, even though the creature was obviously dead. Dot warped into focus behind him. Her leg was already much better and she was almost fit to fight again.
“I was trying to get the robots working,” she said, “but there’s a problem...”
“That’s all right,” replied Ace. “He went down pretty easy.”
“Getting tired?”
“A little bit. Where’s Christine?”
“She’s in a building, working on getting the robots back up and running. She says there’s something wrong with the signal. Some kind of issue in connecting to the SBDs.”
Nelson’s bomber approached an area less than a thousand miles from the surface of the Moon’s dark side, propelled by a small warp bubble generated by the destroyer. Just as he approached the place where Steve detected a possible disturbance, Nelson opened fire with his missiles and lasers. The beams of energy and powerful missiles slammed into the surface of the Moon or shot out into space. Slowly but surely, he worked his way to the center of the inky blackness.
Halfway into his spiraling approach, the missiles found the mark as they struck an alien craft protected by red shields. As its shields lit up, the alien ship lost its cloak. It was a menacing, jet black, shapeless blob wrapped in countless random, chrome spikes. Whatever was piloting this craft shot back at Nelson with a menacing death beam generated between several spikes angled towards the bomber.
Nelson easily dodged the red laser and fired back with just about every weapon in his arsenal. Lasers, missiles and even several hyper-charged electromagnetic pulses stressed the alien blob’s shields, but the shields held as the blob quickly returned fire at the bomber spiraling around it with incredible speed. After a few minutes of non-stop fire, the blob’s shields finally began showing signs of weakness.