Authors: L. Woodswalker
Good thoughts for a man who might be killed today.
So quiet here in the forest
...closer to God than any cathedral. He ignored the moisture seeping into his clothing from the damp ground, and fixed his eyes on the sky...waiting.
Then came a piercing whine that filled his skull.
They're here!
His heart pounded.
Scared?
Maybe. Every cell was primed and ready.
In the next instant three bullet-shaped Martian ships burst over the ridge, larger than any ships he had yet seen. Tiny projections, like stingers, showed from points on their flanks.
Weapons
.
The first one roared right overhead. Two others followed, making a triangular formation. They passed by with blinding speed, wheeled around and returned more slowly: searching for him.
They think this will be easy. An afternoon's sport...like when the bastards hit the Stock Market.
By recovering his memories, he had conquered his unreasoning terror of the invaders. Now he could analyze their behavior.
They think of us as helpless little creatures that they can twist and use. They'd never believe that we can hit them back. That's their weakness. Arrogance!
With Niko's sharpened senses, he could detect the change in the ambient electromagnetic field. The alien weapon was charging up...
He wrapped his hands around the barrel of the Teleforce gun...aligned the aiming mechanism. The reservoir of charged tungsten pellets waited to be released.
He called up the billiard player's instinct for the perfect angle...he held his breath, awaiting the perfect moment. He could not afford to miss. As soon as he fired, they'd know his location.
Here came the U'jaan ship: a whining shadow streaking closer—
Get ready, my Dragon
.
Ready to spit fire!
He pressed the contact. A circuit closed and a stream of particles hurled outward in a fiery red line.
A surprise for you, U'jaan
.
The dark shape zipped past too quickly; Niko merely grazed its outer edge. Yet that packed enough force to knock the ship sideways. It wheeled away, firing. Its shot went wild, lancing up at the clouds.
Now that Niko had betrayed his position, another ship swooped in like a bird of prey. A shot from Clara just missed it. It spat out a row of fire and veered away into the sky. Treetops burst into flame. Yelling in panic, Niko grabbed the gun, dove to the ground and rolled away just as a salvo from another ship fried the ground next to him.
He brushed at his jacket, extinguishing sparks.
They were just so fast...his brain raced to compute trajectories and and firing times.
Meanwhile the third ship zoomed at them. “Clara,” he yelled into the signal watch, “when it comes back, hit it from behind!”
The two ships came in one after the other, swooping so low they almost grazed the trees. Their fiery rays swept out and engulfed the cabin. The already-shaky structure went up like a pile of matchsticks.
That's another one of my labs burned.
“Now! Get him!”
Clara and Niko both fired at once. The supercharged particles from both Teleforce guns struck the first ship's hull, at many times the speed of sound. They punched a hole in the shielding and tore right through, ripping a great crack in the vessel. It began to spin away, with smoke pouring from the rip in its side.
Got him!
The second ship came right behind, and opened fire on the radio tower. The tower shattered, its parts hurled in every direction, and the invader laid down fire on the entire mountaintop. The force of the enemy ray flung rocks skyward. Trees became splinters. If it hadn't rained recently, the whole forest would have burned.
Coughing and choking, Niko cowered behind a boulder. A tree fell, just a few feet away.
With shaking hands, he tried to set up the weapon again. Before he got a chance, the merciless U'jaan ship came back and pounded them with another blast. The hills trembled with continuous thunder. Niko cringed, hugging the ground as debris fell around him. He saw Clara scurry for cover and take aim...but she missed.
St. Sava preserve us,
thought Niko, rubbing his eyes, blinded with the smoke.
The first ship returned, a bit slower.
Looking for the headquarters of the arch-enemy Tesla,
Niko guessed.
Maybe having trouble navigating. The jammer oscillator has confused the enemy. They don't want to get too close. They're really scared of the little humans who can bite back.
“Looking for something, Angel bastards? Come and get it.” He held still for a moment of clarity, eyes fixed on the details of the ship: the smooth surface, the viewing ports, weapon apertures, faint hatchway markings at the vulnerable underbelly.
“Clara! On my signal.” He held his breath and listened to the whining ships' engines, while his brain computed the moment. And there he found it: the angle like the perfect billiard shot. “Now!”
They fired together as the ship streaked past. Two streams of particles clipped its tail end, crippling its navigation. The stricken vessel wheeled about, trying to avoid destruction, shooting randomly at the mountain. “Again,” Niko cried at the top of his smoke-seared lungs, and the Teleforce dragons spat out particles of death.
A large hole appeared in the ship's midsection. “Direct hit! We got him,” Niko cried. Emitting a tremendous shriek, the invader fell toward Earth. The blasts must have punctured the ship's engine or power source. Just beyond their sight, it exploded with a sound like a hundred thunderbolts.
The sound echoed across the ridges for several minutes before it died away. Clara emerged from her hiding place, soot-covered, grinning in triumph.
Niko scurried away from the brushfires on hands and knees. “There's still another ship out there,” Clara's voice came from the signal watch. He saw her stand up and point across the clearing. “Sky Flivver's still intact.”
“Right.” He grabbed the Teleforce gun and made a dash for their air vehicle. Jumping aboard, he started it up with auxiliary battery power.
Clara came running and he reached to pull her on board. Burned strands of hair hung about her soot-streaked face. But her eyes blazed with a fierce joy.
Not a soldier? Today we are both warriors!
“Hold on tight.” He let the Sky Flivver drift away from the burned clearing, keeping under the tree cover. When they rose up above the ridge, they could see the shell of the U'jaan ship that had fallen into the valley below. Black oily smoke streamed up from the hole in its midsection.
“We
did that, Niko.” Clara raised a thumb, grinning like a she-wolf.
“Look—there's the other one.” They had grazed it, maybe knocked its navigation out. But it was quietly waiting for them on the other side of the mountain. He pictured the aliens inside.
Scared enough to wet their pants. But still hoping to bag their greatest enemy, Devil Tesla.
“You had better pray to whatever deities you've got, U'jaan,” Niko growled.
The enemy ship's navigation and firing apparatus may have been disrupted...but it had enough juice to launch a weak blast in their direction. The charge missed their heads, but flung the Sky Flivver against a tree. The crash impacted one of the the lift turbines of the Sky Flivver, sending it spinning. Niko tried frantically to compensate, but the little craft began to lose altitude.
Even as the Sky Flivver fell, Clara took a kneeling position on the platform. With her cap fallen off and her braids flying, she faced the enemy with fearless abandon, raising the Teleforce gun to her shoulder. “Take that, Space Cossacks,” she cried, and fired directly into the nose of the ship: right in the face of its alien pilots.
The alien ship spun away and she aimed another blast right up its hindquarters. Shrieking and howling, the ship dropped out of the air and smashed against a rock outcrop. Flames and smoke gouted from the destroyed craft.
Only then did she notice: “Niko! We're falling!”
Niko worked the controls furiously, trying to avoid hitting any trees as they sank down. The crippled Flivver spun wildly, and finally snagged on a tree branch, about ten feet off the ground. The Flivver's engine ground to a halt and dumped Niko and Clara out onto the forest floor.
Yelling, they fell through the branches to land on top of each other. For a moment they lay that position, entwined.
The hills were silent, except for the crackle of flames.
“Did we get them all?” Clara asked.
“I...I think so.”
In the heat of strong emotion and closeness, he was seized with a powerful urge to clasp her tightly.
No...not now.
“C...Clara...are you all right?”
“S-sure.” She struggled to sit up, brushing leaves and dirt off herself. For a second he saw the response in her eyes. She had felt it too.
His body ached as if the Martian ship had landed on him. He tried to get up. One knee refused to work properly...he couldn't remember when he had injured it. His eyes stung and his lungs ached from the smoke. Agonizing pain shot up his back. Ignoring it, he struggled to his feet. “We survived,” he managed to say.
“Are—” she broke off, coughing. “Are there any more of them?”
“I don't know.” He kept his arms around her as they hobbled away. “Let's get out before they come back.”
The tower had been obliterated; the cabin was a smoldering wreck. Nearby trees were blackened skeletons. “Hurry,” he urged her, but as they staggered across the smoke-filled clearing, Clara stopped to pick up a fragment that had fallen from one of the enemy ships.
“I'd like to run some tests on this material.”
They made it to the concealed Roadster. He pressed the accelerator and they raced down the dirt road, spraying mud behind them.
“Did you see what happened to the third ship?” Clara said.
“It must have fallen a few miles away.”
“Probably fell right into some poor farmer's field. Imagine—” she broke off, coughing again. “Imagine their faces!”
“Let's hope the farmer's dogs chew those bastards to pieces.” Niko had begun to shake now with a delayed reaction to the battle. His senses reeled with the afterimages. Thunder...explosions...blinding rays of death.
They raced up and down the mountain roads, as fast as they dared. A deer leaped away to avoid being hit.
Clara checked the pulse screen. “I don't see any more coming. Maybe that was all they've got?”
He grasped her wrist as it sank in. “Clara, we did it. We
destroyed
the filthy whoresons!”
They looked at each other and gave a whoop of joy.
26: The Temple of the Phoenix
A burning ship fell out of the sky and into the farmer's cornfield. “Lord have mercy!” cried farmer Julius. “There's a war in Heaven!”
Dogs howled and barked. People from the village of Oak Hall came running. “God save us! What is it—a ship from outer space?”
Out of the great, smoking hulk came a tall, hideous monster with a deformed head—like something out of a nightmare. Some of the villagers fled. Others took cover behind the barn.
Julius' German Shepherds approached the monster, their white teeth bared. The Deputy ran for his shotgun. “It's a devil,” he cried.
The reporter from the Call ran to get his camera. He set the box up on a tripod and began shooting film. “Wait till this gets out! It's Armageddon! The end of the world!”
The monster took a few steps, and fell. Julius and the Deputy took one look at it and began chopping at it with shovels and pickaxes.
“Let us pray for deliverance,” said the Reverend.
***
Clara steered the Roadster over the rough mountain roads, some of which were little more than wagon tracks. The worries haunted her:
Did any of the Martians survive? Did they locate the transmitter array...will another squadron come to lay waste to all that we built?
“Any sign of them, Niko?”
He checked the pulse-screen. “I'm not seeing anything. We must have put a scare in them.”
“Hope so. What if they come back and punish State College—will Dr. Davidson suffer because he helped us?”
“Dear Lord—Dr. Davidson!” Niko smacked his forehead. “Stop the car! We must send him a message. He'll need to power up the network!”
Niko set up his radio equipment on the car's hood. “Hmm...they wrecked one tower...so the rest will have to be reset.” He put a finger against his lips, calculating, then spoke into the radio transmitter. “Slate to Norman. The Storm has come. Flag One is down. Reset Flags Two through Nine to the following heights...” and he recited a series of settings and instructions for the Professor to follow. “I just hope he remembers the code, and what to do. I wonder if he's had his shot of brandy yet.”