“I believe introductions are in order, Lt. Colonel.”
The soldier accompanying me stepped aside to allow Ka’thak to step through the gap. He pulled his lips back in a snarl but dipped his head slightly to acknowledge that he was speaking to a fellow officer.
“Captain James Dalton.” The man held out his hand. Ka’thak stared at it like it was an insect.
“Ka’thak,” he replied. Dalton hovered his hand in the air for a moment longer and withdrew it when it was clear his gesture wasn’t going to be reciprocated.
“A pleasure, Ka’thak. Let’s you and me sit down and have a discussion.”
A low growl rippled from Ka’thak’s chest as the three of us followed Dalton toward the engine room.
17
Alexandra
Was it me or could I hear the pounding of boots coming closer? I was captive yet again, but this time my killer was going to be of my own kind.
“Doctor?” One of the aliens turned to me. “You should run. If you can make it to an escape pod, you still have a shot at getting to their ship.”
“Hell no.” I shook my head. “Give me a gun. We live together or we die together.” The warrior nodded and handed me a pistol small enough for me to use. I caressed the cold metal, the weapon heavy in my hands even though it was the smallest of the alien weaponry. The soldiers chattered to each other in their tongue for a few minutes. Formulating a plan, or discussing what to do with the helpless human woman stuck with them?
“Doctor, I’m going to ask you to stand behind that terminal there. I’d like you to leave things to the two of us unless it’s absolutely necessary. If we fall, there is a self destruct protocol for the ship. It won’t give you enough time to get away, but...”
“At least we’ll take the bastards with us?” I suggested.
The soldier laughed. “Something like that. Good luck, Doctor. If anything happens, it’s been a genuine honor to know you.” His companion nodded his agreement. The soldiers typed something into a terminal and I heard the blast doors retract. They opened the door to the bridge just wide enough for a man to fit through. I would find out later that this was the same battle tactic Jackson had used to funnel Proctor’s men into one chamber in the first wave attack. It was an age-old trick, one that still worked remarkably well. Ironic that we were now replaying Leonidas’s plight. Such a small fighting force against an army of a few hundred. Tonight we dine in hell, I guess.
As soon as the door to the bridge was eased open I heard gunshots ring out. It seemed that a couple of aliens had managed to regain consciousness and were resisting the invaders. They didn’t have a chance but I admired their courage to fight a losing battle. One of the aliens outside stepped in front of the bridge door, screaming in her language. I assume that the invading soldiers must have gotten a briefing on the aliens but I would give a lot to be out there and watch them wet themselves when they saw how much damage those claws and teeth could do. I flinched as I smelled the char and wetness of gunshot wounds. Whoever she was, she was taking heavy fire to keep these humans out of the command center. It was suicide. If we made it through this, I would be sure that Ka’thak gave her the honors she deserved.
I crouched behind the terminal with the radio, taking care to position myself so that I could leap up and shoot effectively if I had to. I cursed myself for not taking a more technical interest in the ship. In a couple of minutes it was going to be very tempting to make a bolt for the escape pod. I busied myself with identifying potential weapons instead. I saw several canisters lining the walls that reminded me of fire extinguishers. Whatever they were, they were big, heavy, and removable. I glanced at the door and made a bolt for the canisters. It took me a moment or two to figure out how to detach them but I was eventually able to pull one loose, then another. The soldiers at the door didn’t even notice the extra noise. Once I had gathered four canisters I wheeled them back to the terminal I was taking shelter behind. They were indeed fire extinguishers, symbols on the sides indicating flames.
I smiled. I could use these. They could be used as smoke bombs or as a club. I yelled to the soldiers at the door and held one up. He nodded and motioned for me to throw one to him. I sprinted out from behind the terminal and hefted the cylinder as hard as I could. It rolled to a stop about a foot away from the soldier but he was able to pull it to him with a foot. He got behind his partner and pierced the canister with his combat knife. A plume of white smoke erupted from it and they both ducked as he threw the canister into the corridor. In my search for something to help the aliens, I hadn’t realized that I heard less shooting. The alien who had so bravely thrown herself in front of the door to the bridge now lay in front of it, dead.
The invading humans had retreated, sending one or two men at a time to test exactly how heavily guarded the bridge was. The biggest problem with this is that the minute they figured out there were only three of us, we were going to be overrun. The soldiers at the door shared my mindset, taking care only to shoot when a human soldier came within visual range of the door. I dimly heard one of the humans call for a camera. They were going to send in a drone. Shit.
I ducked back behind the terminal and waited for the hum of the drone. Neither of the alien soldiers were likely to have run across one of these up close before, but they should know what it was when they saw it. I heard the whir of a motor start up outside and started counting off seconds. In here a drone couldn’t go much faster than five miles an hour. If the soldiers had backed up a hundred feet—I assumed they were a little bit closer to us than that but not much, I could hear human footsteps go on for too long before our answering shot came—the drone would travel at just over seven feet per second. That left me with less than fifteen seconds to time this just right.
Sure enough, I heard the call that the drone had been deployed. Thank God they were being so quiet. Anytime they spoke their voices echoed down the metal passageway. I hoped that I could accurately gauge where the drone was. The whir of the drone motor got closer and closer and I counted off, eight, nine, ten. Unclipping the combat knife the aliens had gifted me I took the point of it and stabbed it into the canister as hard as I could.
“Please don’t blow up in my face,” I said.
Thankfully the canister didn’t blow up and I was almost blinded by the white smoke coming out of it. I yelled for the alien soldiers to duck and they did. I ran from my hiding spot and threw the canister in front of them, the smoke escaping faster every second. The whine of the drone didn’t cease and I saw its shadow becoming more defined through the smoke. Something glinted in my vision and I blinked. The lens of a military scout drone poked its way through my camouflage. I was looking at a lens.
“Shoot it!” I screamed and the drone fell in a smoking heap. I heard the soldiers advance and my guards opened fire. I had faith in their ability to hold them off for a little while longer, but this wasn’t going our way. I got on the radio. “David, what’s the situation down there?”
“Not too good,” he replied. I could hear Ka’thak’s roars and the sounds of gunfire. “They’ve wired the engines with explosives.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.” He sounded tired. I wondered how many soldiers there were. Two of them against the world. Maybe more aliens had woken it up and made it down there with them. It was a nice thing to hope, but I doubted it. “We’re gonna try and disarm them, but no guarantees. Can you get out?”
Before I could answer him an explosion ripped through the door to the bridge. The alien soldiers with me fell, their bodies charred and smoking, as a torrent of human soldiers streamed onto the bridge. One of the soldiers raised his rifle at me and I put my hands up.
“Weapons down, miss,” he insisted. “Nice and slowly, if you please.” My eyes shot to the radio and the man advanced on me quickly, shoving the muzzle of his gun almost into my chest. “Come on, Doctor. No funny business now. I don’t want to shoot you, but my commander would be very angry with me if I let you touch that radio again
.” I sighed and lowered the gun. Another soldier came and retrieved it from me, retreating to where he was out of reach. “Knives too, Ms. King,” the soldier added, gesturing with his hand for me to give them to him. I knew how sacred these knives were to the aliens and though I had been the owners of them for just a short while, I hesitated. The man shot his hand forward and wrenched the belt out of my hands where I had been unbuckling it. He threw the knives behind him where one of his soldiers picked them up, holding them high aloft and laughing with his friends.
“Alex?” Jackson called over the radio. “Alex, what’s going on? Goddamnit Alex, answer me!” The soldier held me at gunpoint and shook his head. There was nothing more I could do except hope that Jackson heard everything and was on his way.
18
Jackson
I stood numb as I heard the soldiers taking the bridge. Forget what I could do. Ka’thak was fighting as many soldiers off as he could but even I knew that we would be overrun soon.
“David,” he yelled, “if they take over the bridge, none of this matters!”
No shit! I wanted to call back. Hearing Alex getting captured again was already fogging my brain enough that I was having trouble working through how to deactivate each bomb. They were pretty simple mechanisms, but there were a lot of them. I prayed that whatever the hell that gas was had started to wear off by now. We needed bodies. Preferably with guns in their hands.
Unfortunately, no such miracle presented itself. The gas the humans had released had done its job very well. Even with the ship’s systems filtering out the gas, its effects were too powerful. We’d be lucky to see anyone else wake up before the engines fired.
“You’ve got to give me some more time, captain!” I yelled back to him. “If I don’t get these disarmed, it won’t matter if they take the bridge! We’ve got to keep fighting!” The alien captain opened his mouth in a roar and charged the incoming humans. One of the soldiers with us traded spots with him and ripped pieces of metal plating from the walls. He tossed one to me and piled up a few others. These would serve well enough as rudimentary shields. They wouldn’t stop a hail of bullets but they would deflect fire for a brief time if it came to that.
All of a sudden, the twenty or so soldiers trying to press into the engine room disappeared. We waited, holding our breath as we waited for the sounds of gunfire and shouting to return, but they never came. Ka’thak stuck his head into the corridor and swore in his language. He suddenly appeared at my side and started working on the explosives alongside me.
“They’re gone,” he reported, ripping the wires from one of the charges.
“Shouldn’t we go after them?”
“Yes.” His eyes searched the space in front of him and I knew he wasn’t seeing the explosives anymore. He was running through the scenario in his mind, weighing our odds of taking on an ever-growing number of humans versus the bombs. There are just three of us down here, and hopefully two more alive at the bridge. There have to be several dozen humans on board and if we wait much longer, there will be many more. It’s time to do what’s best for our people.”
“To the bridge? That’s suicide!” I would follow the orders of my commander, but I wondered if he had taken leave of his senses. If we went to the bridge all we would do is cause a small disturbance while we perished. A warriors death to be sure, but I wasn’t ready to die just yet. Not when we were so close to survival.
“No, friend. We live to fight another day. I wish with all of my heart that we could go help Alex, but I have run dry of options. She can take care of herself and gods forbid something has happened to her, I know that she will go to the next life with bravery and honor in her heart. Come, we will save those we can.”
“But where will we go? It’s not like we can go to Earth, and trying to assault the human ship would be like throwing a wet towel at a tiger.”
“There is another cloaked shuttle, much like one that was destroyed when you took on Proctor’s men. If we can revive anyone along the way, we can put them on that ship. This is the only option I have, Jackson.”
“Fuck.” I clenched my fists at my sides and ground my teeth together. This was the moment of truth. I would be abandoning the woman who had had my back for a year now, but in return, I would get the chance to save my chosen people. Perhaps enough to even fight back again, somehow. There really wasn’t a choice. “All right. We live to fight another day. Most of the enemy has gathered at or near the bridge. If we move fast we shouldn’t encounter too many enemy soldiers.”
“Indeed.” Ka’thak called the remaining soldier into the engine room and we took quick stock of our weapons and ammunition. It would take us less than ten minutes or so to get to the hangar with the cloaked shuttle, which was lucky. The engines were almost ready to fire and I didn’t want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time if one of those bombs did go off.
My fellow soldiers and I decided to go with a two-abreast formation. Ka’thak would be kept in the middle of the group and the two soldiers in the rear would advance backward, guarding the rear. The captain didn’t protest. At this point, the chain of command was still intact and we had to do our best to keep it that way. I mentally recalculated that ten minutes into fifteen if we were going to be so cautious. We’d have to send one of the soldiers ahead to prepare the ship. With a lot of luck, we could make this work.
We advanced into the hallway in tight formation. I kept my head on the swivel, ears straining to hear any noises other than the clump of alien feet. Our little group settled into a steady pace and it looked like it was going to be an uneventful trek. When we were within visual range of the hangar a shot rang out past us. The two of us raised our shields and backed Ka’thak behind a structural beam in the passageway. I poked my head out from behind the metal. Three human soldiers stood at the other end of the corridor, their rifles raised.
“I really wouldn’t do that if I were you!” I shouted to the men.
“Fuck you!” one yelled back.
“All right, if that’s how you wanna do it!” I turned to the soldier next to me. “I’m the better shot.”
He snorted. “That’s debatable.” Ka’thak rolled his eyes and let out a growl. “Fine, fine. What do you need?”
“Cover me?”
The soldier nodded. Ka’thak pressed himself against the side of the corridor so that his profile didn’t stick out beyond the edge of the beam.
“Ready?” I asked. “Three, two, one!” We jumped out together, the soldier holding both our shields in front of us. Stacked together, they almost covered his height, but he still had to duck as the humans fired.
“Hurry it up, Jackson! These won’t hold up forever!”
“Yeah, yeah, hold your horses,” I insisted, getting myself into position.
“If I knew what those were I’d fucking throw one at you! Take them out!”
I pressed my gun to my shoulder and breathed in. I felt my heart rate slow. I held my breath for a second and then exhaled slowly, squeezing the trigger. The shot hit the first human center mass and he went down. The other two jumped aside, letting off just a few rounds. I waited until number two peeked his head out and squeezed off another shot. This one hit him square in the face. Very satisfying. I tapped the warrior in front of me on the shoulder and we advanced together. I heard Ka’thak step out from his hiding place and he joined us, taking care to crouch behind us. The final human soldier leaned out of his hiding place just long enough to get a shot off. The bullet pinged off our homemade shields and buried itself in the metal of the corridor. The soldier leading us rushed forward and crushed the human against the wall with them.
He yelped and started coughing.
“If my knowledge of your physiology is correct, I believe I have likely broken several of your lungs, human,” he mocked.
“Get—“ He coughed. “Get the fuck off of me, you alien scum.”
“Only if he says to.” He nodded toward Ka’thak.
“I can take it from here.” Ka’th
ak stepped out from behind the two of us and wrenched the soldier’s rifle out of his hands. He tossed it on the floor. “Soldier, move your shield.” He did so, staying close in case we needed to trap the human again. I had to hand it to the man, he did try to land a punch on Ka’thak. Unfortunately for him, powered armor hurts like a bitch. Ka’thak smiled. “A warrior to the end,” he said, handing me his gun. “I have to admire that. Any words before I send you to your god?”
The soldier spit at Ka’thak’s visor. “Fair enough,” Ka’thak said. He pressed his claws against the man’s neck and drew one deeply across his throat. A red line appeared on the man’s neck and he coughed, red spattering the captain’s helmet. Ka’thak let go of the soldier and tossed his body to the floor. “Come, we haven’t much time.”
We didn’t encounter any more enemies and arrived at the hangar not a moment too soon. I jumped in the co-pilot’s seat while the soldier with us initiated the takeoff sequence. Ka’thak closed the shuttle doors and strapped himself in. We managed to escape the mothership without the human forces noticing. Once we were out of range of the ship’s weapons, we spun and watched as three more shuttles with human forces landed in the main hangar bay.
The ship was lost, and we had thousands of aliens aboard who would never know they were about to die. There was no chance that three of us could do a thing to save them. I had escaped with my life, but at what cost?
19
Captain Dalton
Despite the setbacks, the mission went far better than expected. The gas had done its work and my men reported that they encountered only a few aliens who were awake. Between the complexities of invading the ship and the sheer amount of crap he had to organize on the fly, Captain Dalton was exhausted. They weren’t expecting any kind of a fight and getting to the bridge had taken more brute force than tactical strategy. The beasts had fought with more ferocity than he expected. Losing a third of his force in the first ten minutes of the mission only fueled the rage inside him.
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