Paranormals (Book 2): We Are Not Alone (46 page)

“Please,” their mother begged. “Please listen to Larr.”

Dejected, Della said, “We don’t even know if Callin is coming. They said he’s hurt...”

Larr straightened to his full, considerable height. “Your brother is
the Shining Star
. He will be here.”

“They’re coming out!” Naltin called from the front of the bridge, panic in his voice.

“Go,” Larr barked. “Go!”

PCA

Della and Charl exited the human-dubbed
Refuge One
just as the three Noctoponm came into view; the insectoid took to the air, while the flabby pachyderm and stone-skinned Taalu-tek approached on foot.

“That one’s big,” Charl whispered, gaping at the rock-like beast.

“Yes,” his sister agreed.

“It’s bigger than the Cargaun was.”

“Yes, it is.”

The Taalu youths trembled with anxiety as the monstrous hunters drew nearer, yet they could not flee — they had to keep the Noctoponm away from their people, most of whom still slept and had no idea of the mortal danger lurking outside.

“But you and Callin beat the Cargaun, right?”

“That’s right.”

Charl added a soft, “I’m not Callin.”

“But you
are
my brother, Charl Lan of Taal-ceky. If we do what Larr told us, we will get through this. I promise.”

“I don’t know if I can do this. I haven’t been converted very long ...”

Della forced a smile. “Don’t be silly. You were converted years ago.”

Charl made a sour face, but Della thought she saw an amused twinkle in his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“I know.”

Climbing the hill toward them, the tall one took the lead, extended its chilling wrist-blades, and shouted, “
Blee nok, Taalu! Ceptol—
!”

If Della and Charl had been privy to the tall one’s thoughts, they might’ve seen frustration that it never got to finish its challenges on this planet — the Lan siblings extended their arms and together fired four blasts of energy (his silver, like Callin’s; hers golden) striking the large alien across his torso. None of the attacks were as potent as the Shining Star’s, but there were four of them, and the giant was knocked over backward, to tumble back down the hillside. The pachyderm and insectoid barked and buzzed and rushed into battle.

Mindful of Larr’s orders, Della and Charl took to the air.

PCA

“Can we go
any
faster, Lieutenant?” Takayasu called up to the pilot.

“No, sir,” the pilot replied. “If we’d come in at a higher altitude, I might’ve been able to dive for more—”

“All right, I understand.” He looked to Shockwave. “Mark, what’s the fastest you’ve ever flown? If you went flat out?”

Shockwave shook his head. “I don’t know, Mike. I spend all my time tryin’ to fly straight. If we’re pushin’ Mach One already ... no, I don’t think I could top that. Sorry.”

Takayasu turned back toward the cockpit. “How much longer, Lieutenant?”

“Less than ten minutes.”

Takayasu activated the communicator. “Lord Larr, come in.”

“
This is Larr.
”

“Sir, we’re less than ten minutes away. What’s your situation?”

“
Della and Charl are flying circles around the Noctoponm. I mean that literally. But the few shots they’re getting in aren’t doing much.
”

“Do your ships have any weaponry you can employ?”

“
Very limited, and nothing reliable from the ground. We’ve got a few small, one-manned crafts, but our qualified pilots are still in stasis.
” Then he growled an extra, “
Naltin has threatened me with physical harm if I take one of them out.
”

“That’s probably for the best, sir.” He paused, frustrated that all he had to offer was a lame-sounding, “Just try to hold on. We’re almost there. Takayasu out.”

The four men were silent for a minute, all of them antsy but having no useful way to express it.

“Lieutenant,” Takayasu called up front again, “we’ll be dropping out as soon as we can. I want a low pass over the encampment before you push on to the landing strip.”

The pilot snorted at the term “landing strip,” but replied with a simple, “Aye-aye.”

“Okay, guys,” Vortex said as he rose from his seat, “let’s be ready. I don’t know about you, but I plan to go in
hot
.”

Shockwave’s reply to that was, “Can I get a ‘hell-yes’?”

PCA

Della circled around for another pass. So far, the Noctoponm had not posed much of a threat to Charl or her, but neither were they in return. It was the flyer that worried her; the insectoid was only moving a fraction of their airspeed (though she had to consider this a possible deception), but it had also proven the most impervious to their attacks — Charl had made the mistake of firing at it a minute before, and had nearly been struck down by his own energy when it reflected back. How long would the insectoid bother reacting to them at all, once it realized they weren’t attempting any physical assaults? When would it decide to advance upon the helpless ships? If that happened, she would be forced to take a more direct approach, which Larr—

At that moment, as she swooped in for a lower pass, all concerns over the insectoid’s perceptiveness fled her mind as a terrible, crushing weight fell upon her — at first she thought she was actually being assailed from above, but no, it was her own body grown far, far too heavy.

Gravity! Larr said one of them is rumored to control gravity!

She tried to keep herself in the air, but it was a futile effort as she sank into a downward spiral she could not resist.

“Della!” she heard Charl cry out. She knew he would come to her aid and she wanted to warn him off, but she couldn’t draw breath enough to speak. And unlike her older brother, she was not so without the need for air.

Her erratic, plummeting flight brought her around to where she could see Charl. He was firing energy in the general direction of the tall one and the pachyderm, but his attention was focused on his sister. Given their orders to remain out of the Noctoponm’s reach, he would probably try to catch her.

And then Charl’s choice of action became irrelevant: He arced in low, his arms extended toward her ... and the ground rose up between them. Charl’s inexperience betrayed him, and he crashed through the wall of rock and soil. When he emerged on her side, he appeared more disoriented than hurt, but now he was within the reach of the tall alien, which stretched up and struck him in the midriff.

The force of the blow sent Charl tumbling down; a second after that, Della, too, crashed into the ground, and it took all her will to remain conscious.

She could not turn her heavy head, but from her upside-down angle, she could see the tall one striding toward her, a depraved smile upon its stony face. Its long legs brought it to her in no time.

“
Sorum, yaba Taalu,
” it rumbled in a gravelly voice. It raised its right arm, the tip of its wrist-blade aimed at her throat.

Fortunately for Della, physical immobility did not mean defenselessness.

Her sheath of golden energy had diminished when her sudden weight overwhelmed her, then nearly expired when she hit the ground. Now it flared anew, fueled by equal parts self-preservation and righteous anger, and she fired a thick cone from her entire chest at her enemy. What was chest-sized for her was only face-sized to the large beast, but that was satisfactory — the cone struck with enough force to knock it away, roaring; it still attempted to spike her with its blade, but its aimless attack was a wasted effort.

As the beast shook its head, its three eyes literally steaming, Della tried with all her might to overcome the weight and fly away. She needed to reach Charl before—!

The tall one focused on her once more, its radiant white eyes now tinted copper but glowing fiercer than before.

And that was when Powerhouse collided with the beast in a deafening crash that carried them both out of her sight.

PCA

“There they are!” Vortex had called a minute earlier, shouting over the wind rushing across the jet’s open door. He could make out a pair of glowing entities, gold and silver, south of the Taalu encampment. “There! That’s gotta be Della and Charl!”

Takayasu joined him in time to see both Lan siblings fall. “Lincoln, Mark, listen close! The second, I mean
the second
we hit the ground, drop Vortex and me and get over there! We’ll catch up! Engage the enemy as fast as you can! It looks like the triclops is going to reach Della before the others reach Charl! Whoever gets there first, get it off Della’s back! Then make sure Charl is clear! After that, Lincoln goes after the walrus and Mark sticks with the triclops, to counter that earthwave trick! Vortex, we’ll see how the wasp handles a compression wave from you! Let’s go!”

Seconds later, they were in the open air.

PCA

Upon landing, Powerhouse dropped Vortex as ordered, took a few running steps, and leaped at the triclops — thankfully, the stony alien made for a big target. He slammed into the alien with explosive force. They tumbled together, Powerhouse striving to wrap his arms around its torso, but the creature was too large for his hands to meet at its back, frustrating Lincoln’s desire to crush the damn thing once and for all. Instead, he settled for a series of quick blows to its belly and an uppercut to its chin; neither area seemed as vulnerable as they would on a human, but as far as he was concerned, every shot counted. He wanted to keep going, but he was mindful of the Lieutenant’s assessment that only he could survive the walrus’ gravity attack. Settling for one final kick to its knee, he shoved away from the triclops with enough strength that he was airborne for a moment before landing on his feet. The timing worked out well — the instant they separated, the triclops’ extra arms extended from its torso and just missed grabbing him.

Scanning for the walrus, Powerhouse found it standing over Shining Star’s brother as the triclops had been over his sister. Shockwave was attacking from a short distance away, hitting the bulky alien with kinetic waves strong enough to keep it from advancing but not enough to push it back.

Hold him off a minute longer
, he thought to Shockwave as he hustled over to the shallow crater containing Shining Star’s helpless sister.

Not so helpless, as it turned out. She was on her hands and knees by the time he got there, straining to get up.

As he knelt beside her, her energy sheath flared again. “Della!” he said, drawing back. “It’s all right, it’s me.”

Della lifted her head, a clearly painful effort, and said something to him in that Russian-sounding language of theirs. If she’d been wearing her translator going into this fight, it had been destroyed.

“Sorry, I can’t understand you,” he said, trying to figure out the best way to help her up. He fell into the mode that most people unconsciously did when speaking to a foreigner — he spoke louder and slower, and used lots of gestures. “I’m going to get you back to your ship, but I have to move fast.”

Della said something else, the word “lipat” included more than once, and she sounded desperate. She raised a hand to point, only to collapse forward upon losing its support.

Powerhouse thought he got that one. “I’m going to help your brother, too. I promise.”

Then she looked past him and her eyes flew open wide.

Powerhouse whipped around toward the triclops, but it was still recovering — a loud buzzing told him that he had turned the wrong way. Lincoln hunched his shoulders, prepared to take the brunt of the wasp’s attack, to protect Della, even if it meant getting stung ...

Ten feet away, the wasp’s power dive came to an abrupt halt — the air around the insectoid rippling and wavering in a familiar way.

Smiling, Powerhouse called out, “Thanks, Vortex. Good timing.”

Between running on his bad leg and generating the vortex, his costumed colleague was already winded, but Vortex called back, “Get her clear. I got this.”

Nodding, Powerhouse carefully worked his arms underneath Della’s torso, trying to help her up without undo pressure. “I won’t be long. I think the gravity attack is already wearing off. I need to help Mark with the ugly bastard before it gets close enough to use it on
him
.”

“Shockwave’s keeping his distance,” Vortex panted. “I will, too. Go, get her out of here. And as for
you
, you creepy son of a bitch ...” He advanced upon the writhing wasp. “Let’s see just how tough that exoskeleton really is.”

The wasp twisted around and around, bending in ways that its Terran equivalent could not have matched. And despite his bravado, Vortex learned that it was strong — really strong. The triclops had done the bulk of the physical combat and the walrus had stood up to a few blows from Powerhouse, but it looked like the wasp had Class One strength to match the rest of them.

To make matters worse, he could also see with his exceptional peripheral vision that the triclops was on its feet again and moving this way — the beast was a little unsteady from its tussle with Powerhouse, but it was coming.

Damn
,
I really wanted to squash this thing into oblivion. How do they keep foiling us, over and over? Why won’t just
one
of them stay down?!

Giving the wasp one final surge of pressure, he used his vortex wave to drag the insectoid over until it was between him and the triclops, then switched his attack from compression to repulsion. The wasp turned into a projectile weapon, slamming into the triclops and bowling them both over. And this time they didn’t just tumble a few yards away — they rolled and rolled, driven by his vortex wave, away from the Taalu ships, out of sight into the Montana night ...

PCA

Shockwave was having increasing difficulty keeping the walrus away from Charl. His head was aching a lot worse than he had let on to the others, and he could feel hints of the predicted nausea creeping around the edges. His fists, extended forward as the focal points of his shockwaves, trembled. If he could get closer, he was sure he could give the bastard a better run for his money, but that would also mean getting within range of its gravity attack — he didn’t know what its range was, exactly, but the fact that he was still standing showed that his current thirty or so yards was safe enough. Testing his luck, he took a tentative step forward, then another ...