Battle- Earth

by Mark Harrison

  Members of the crowd looked scared. Their zealotry was being tested. John seized the moment and made a run for it. He ran ran toward the crowd, toward the stage. Rick saw John’s sudden break and knew it was time for him to make a move. Quinton was asking for hell and he was about to get it. There was no point in sticking around to meet the devil.

  With what strength he had left, Rick flung himself head first into Quinton’s back, knocking the leader off the platform of the stage. Quinton fell flat on his face. Rick didn’t wait for him to get up, he didn’t want Quinton to use the trigger. He jumped off the stage and onto Quinton’s back. He landed on Quinton, sinking the man into the moist mud below.

  As Rick lay atop Quinton, Bobby sprung to action. The two guards that were watching him, were about to run to Quinton’s aid, when Bobby stopped them. He extended one of his legs, tripping one of the guards, and flung his head back toward the head of the other, hitting the man in his chin. He then jumped on the back of the guard who he’d tripped. Both guards were knocked out. He noticed a key in one of the guard’s pockets. He knelt down, and grabbed the keys which were strapped around the guards belt.

  John, Bobby and Rick had attracted a lot of attention with their sudden moves. But before anyone in the crowd could intervene, the truck burst drove through the doors of the fort. It crashed into a wall, sending a plume of smoke into the air. The crowd nervously watched, as the driver from the truck got out and ran screaming toward one of the buildings. Seconds later, the walls of the fort shook violently. The harvesters arrived.

  The north-side of the wall collapsed. Quinton’s followers screamed in horror. They were all suddenly realizing that Quinton was full of shit and that their prayers for mercy where not going to do a damn thing. The spell Quinton had cast on them, now vanished. It was every man, woman or child for themselves.

  The guards that were moving toward Bobby and Rick backed away and ran from the courtyard. Now that he didn’t have to worry about the guard, Bobby unlocked the chains on his neck, hands and legs. He ran to Rick to help.

  Rick and Quinton were on their backs, in the mud, beside each other. They were lucky not to get trampled by the fleeing crowd. Quinton pushed himself up from the ground, he was dizzy.

  Rick got up and collected himself. He’d spent the last twenty-four hours getting tortured, he was barely holding on, but he was holding on. Rick saw that Bobby was coming to help. He shouted at the boy, “No! Help your mother.”

  Bobby stubbornly pressed on. “I can help you!” he said.

  “Help your mother,” Rick said. “I’ll take care of Quinton.”

  Bobby listened to Rick. He ran to his mother, who was still tied up to the tree trunk. She looked unconscious.

  Rick turned to face Quinton. It was time to put this cult leader to rest. Quinton was frantically trying to get his trigger to work. When Rick had pushed him from the stage, Quinton’s body weight crushed it. He no longer had the power to electrocute Rick or anybody else. He screamed at it and when he knew it was hopeless, he threw it on the ground.

  “Your going to pay for this,” said Quinton. “You brought this destruction upon us!”

  “Try me, dick bag,” said Rick.

  That got under Quinton’s skin. Quinton’s face turned red. He screamed out something in garbled english. His usually eloquent speech was undermined by his rage.

  Rick laughed. Stuck up, power hungry assholes like Quinton were easy to piss off. A little juvenile insults here and there went a long way with these types.

  Quinton ran at Rick, screaming the entire distance. Rick braced for impact, he dug his boots into the ground and waited for the full force of Quinton’s body to slam into his. As Quinton’s body rammed into him, he was knocked down and fell into a pool of thick mud.

  Quinton stood above Rick. “You’re pathetic,” he said.

  The air had been knocked out of Rick’s lungs. He was weak, not in any shape to fight someone, but he had to try. He pushed himself up. The courtyard was empty now, save for Bobby who was untying his mother and the harvesters outside. Rick wiped the mud from his eyes. Bobby was putting his mother onto his back and ran with her away from the harvesters.

  The giant alien machines were wrecking havoc all along the fort’s wall. If this fight went on any longer, Rick knew it was only a matter of time before he was either killed by a flying piece of metal or a plasma burst. He needed to end this. Those things were going to be inside the fort any moment now.

  Quinton waited for Rick to get back to his feet. “Come on, Mr. Frost,” he said. “I can see now that this is what the aliens want. They want you to see how devout I am. I will convert you. If don’t believe, you soon will. Let’s wait here and find out the truth about these aliens.”

  “Truth? What truth? They’re destroying your fort. They’re killing your people. The only truth here is you are mad.”

  “They’re killing the unbelievers,” Quinton said. “They are purifying the waters.”

  “Get off your horse shit,” Rick said. “You’re the only unbeliever here.”

  Quinton charged at Rick once more, but Rick was ready this time. He dove out of Quinton’s way inches before impact, causing Quinton to stumble awkwardly into the mud. Quinton landed on his face.

  The harvesters were getting close. There large frames were seconds from bursting into the fort. Rick needed to get out. He turned away from Quinton, and ran toward Bobby, who was helping his mother get into a truck. John it seems knew where Quinton kept the fort’s vehicles. When the harvesters started to attack, John ran to the garage and commandeered one, driving it back to the courtyard to pick up Bobby, Sandra and Rick.

  “Come on, Rick!” John shouted. “We need to get out of here now!”

  Rick hobbled and grimaced through the pain. He wasn’t going to expend any energy telling John to ‘Go fuck himself.’ He’d save that for when he got into the truck. That’s when he felt his legs go out from under him. Quinton had grabbed him from behind. The two tumbled onto the ground, Quinton’s arms wrapped around Rick’s ankles.

  “Oh, you’re not leaving,” said Quinton. “You’re staying right here.”

  Rick kicked Quinton in the face. “Eat shit,” he said. Quinton’s nose was crushed by the impact of Rick’s boot started to bleed badly, but he didn’t let go of Rick’s ankles.

  A plasma burst fired off from one of the harvesters and hit a nearby structure, sending shards of sharp metal, wood and nails flying in every which direction. Rick shielded his face. He wasn’t going to make it to the truck. They’d have to leave without him. If they didn’t, they’d all be dead. The harvesters were too close.

  From the ground, Rick screamed out, “leave me!” He could see John hesitate at first, but then come to his senses. John got into the truck and drove Bobby and Sharon out of the courtyard. With some luck, they’d get out of the fort alive. With more luck, they’d make it back to Colorado and Starpeak. Rick hoped that John was smart enough to grab some energy cubes.

  After the explosion, Quinton loosened his grip on Rick’s leg. He had to shield his face from the debris that was flying toward them. Rick scrambled free and stood up. He turned to run away again but stopped. He wasn’t going to run. It was time to deal with things head-on. He turned back to Quinton, but the cult leader wasn’t there. He’d disappeared in the smoke that rose from a nearby plasma burst crater. Rick walked slowly over to see if the cult leader had fallen into it. He peaked over the edge. There was nothing inside, just the smoking remains of some structure the plasma burst hit.

  Rick felt a push from behind. He stumbled down into the crater, which was deep into the ground. He rolled down came to a stop on a jagged, sharp piece of metal that pierced through his leg, spurting a thick glob of blood out into the air.

  “FUCK!” Rick cried out. A jagged piece of metal went straight through his leg. Things were going from bad to worse.

  Quinton stood atop the crater. His face was covered in blood . “Get ready to meet your alien overlord
s!” he said.

  Rick was losing a lot of blood. He tried to stand up, but collapsed back to the ground. Quinton walked down into the crater. “The harvesters are almost here,” he said. “They are about to come inside my fort.”

  Rick could feel the ground shake violently. Rock and other pieces of debris rolled down the crater, falling onto his face. He brushed them aside. The harvesters were here.

  Quinton grabbed Rick by the ankle and started to drag him up to the top of the crater. Rick screamed out in pain. The blood from his punctured leg ran like a small stream down a crevice in the mud.

  Quinton stopped, he ducked down and motioned for Rick to stay quiet. “The gods approach,” he said.

  One of the harvesters appeared over the crater. It’s large metal body cast a dark shadow over everything inside. Its thrust, keeping it hovering a few feet above the ground, made the crater feel like a wind tunnel. Rick could feel his skin being pushed back by its force. As the harvester moved over the entire breadth of the crater, Rick mustered up the strength to pull out the metal shard that had punctured his leg. He used his jacket as a makeshift bandage and wrapped his leg up in it. He’d have to cauterize the wound soon, but this would do for now. He it did all this while laying on the his back. He was slow and deliberate, as not to get the attention of Quinton. When he was done tying up his bandage, the harvester had completely moved over the crater. The darkness created by its presence was replaced by the light from the afternoon sun. Quinton stood up and began to drag Rick again. While the wound on his leg was somewhat bandaged, it still hurt like hell to be pulled by Quinton.

  Quinton dragged Rick to the top of the crater.

  “Why don’t you kill me?” said Rick.

  “Because I am going to sacrifice you.”

  Quinton stopped dragging Rick. They were now both out in the open in the courtyard. Exposed to the harvesters and their destruction. Quinton picked up a stone. “It’s time to get the harvester to come back,” he said. “It’s time for you to see the truth.”

  Quinton threw the stone at the harvester. The stone bounced off the metal chassis of the alien vehicle. The harvester didn’t turn around. It just kept destroying the metal structures that Quinton had ordered his followers to create.

  Rick started to laugh. “Your gods don’t seem so interested in your sacrifice,” Rick said.

  “Shut up,” said Quinton. He picked up another stone and threw it at the harvester. Once again, the alien vehicle ignored the stone.

  Quinton grew frustrated. He ran closer to the ship, leaving Rick by the crater. He trusted that Rick didn’t have the strength to do much else. He was right. As Quinton got close to the harvester, he picked up a larger stone and threw it. Like the other ones, it bounced off the metal body of the harvester and plopped onto the ground.

  “Hear me my gods,” he cried out, he fell down to his knees. “Hear me!”

  The four harvesters that had broken through the walls of the fort had destroyed about half of the fort’s buildings now. Quinton’s followers had mostly fled. The few that hadn’t were lying on the ground. They’d most likely been trampled to death during the initial panic.

  Quinton continued to cry out for the aliens to listen. Rick started to laugh. He thought the whole situation was funny. That might’ve been due to the blood loss.

  “Looks like you don’t have the stones for this,” Rick said.

  “Hear me!” Quinton screamed. He sounded like a petulant child. He then got up from the ground and made his way to a pile of rubble close by. In the rubble was a box, he opened it, and pulled out a grenade. If the stones didn’t work, then a grenade might. He pulled the pin on the grenade and tossed it under the harvester.

  The grenade exploded. The harvester’s thrust was briefly affected by the explosion. It’s back right side dipped down and scraped along the muddy ground. The giant alien ship turned around.

  “Yes, yes!” Quinton cried out. “Hear me,” he said.

  As the harvester turned around, Quinton stood in front of it and bowed down.

  “Accept my sacrifice,” he said, pointing to Rick, who was on his back giving Quinton the finger.

  The mouth of the harvester opened. “Yes,” cried Quinton. “Yes!” As the door fully opened, it revealed what was inside. From Rick’s perspective, it looked like a ton of garbage. The two prongs that the harvester used to pull debris into its mouth started to move. “They hear me,” Quinton said. “They hear me!”

  Quinton walked backward, guiding the harvester toward Rick. Rick was stunned. Was Quinton guiding the alien vehicle? Was their a method to his madness?

  The harvester moved toward Rick in a slow and deliberate manner. As it did so, its prongs filled its mouth with debris.

  After pulling in a ton of debris from the ground, the doors closed. Quinton’s face turned from one of glee to one of confusion. “No!” he shouted. “Why are you closing your doors!? Why aren’t you accepting my sacrifice?”

  “Looks like your gods don’t hear you,” said Rick.

  Quinton screamed out in rage. He ran up to the harvester and started hitting it with his fists. The large alien vehicle didn’t even notice. It turned away from Quinton and startec to make its way toward another pile of debris. It didn’t give a rats ass about Quinton. It was just interested in levelling the fort and collecting the debris.

  Quinton ran back to the box of grenades and pulled one out. He pulled the pin and threw it at the harvester. Itexploded and knocked out the thrust system below for a few seconds. As before, the harvester turned around. Although this time the mouth didn’t open. Quinton waited, holding his breath. “Do you hear me?” he asked. “Do you hear me!?”

  He got his answer. The harvester didn’t like being bothered like that. It fired off three plasma bursts one after the other. All in the direction of Quinton.

  The ground on which he’d been standing turned into a crater of dirt, rocks, and flesh. There was nothing left of Quinton.

  Rick didn’t have the strength to get up and run. He lay on the ground.. He rolled over and crawled down into the crater Quinton had dragged him from.

  Once he got to the bottom, he closed his eyes. The sounds of the harvesters dismantling Quinton’s camp was all he could hear.

  Chapter 51

  The waiting was exhausting. The results would be in any minute. The anticipation was killing Felix. Oleksii didn’t seem too bothered. He was just happy to have some access to satellites again. He busied himself with scans of the Colorado landscape. He was looking for any signs of motherships, AOJs or harvesters in the area. There was nothing. He was happy.

  Felix got up from his chair and told Oleksii he needed a break. What he needed was an answer, but he couldn’t control when he was going to get it.

  He decided that if he went down to the lower levels of the bunker, he could grab a coffee and check on Sharon. He made his way down to the lower levels, grabbed a coffee and walked to Sharon’s quarters. She was alone. Part of him wondered if it would be better to leave her alone, give her the space she needed to grieve. She saw saw him outside her quarters and noticed that he was about to walk away. She called him.

  They’d spent months travelling together. They had taken care of each other, looked out for each other, and did their best not to talk about depressing subjects. Their chief goal was to get to the SpaceForce bunker. She wanted to find her husband. He needed to use their radio tower. He got what he wanted. She didn’t.

  “Sorry to bug you,” said Felix.

  Sharon looked at him, tears streaming down her face. “It’s no problem,” she said, moving over the bed she was sat on, giving Felix a place to sit. He sat beside her.

  “I heard about what happened to Chris,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she said, wiping a tear that had just fallen.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  She looked around the room, sighed, and lowered her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess, I’ll stay h
ere. Help them out anyway I can.”

  “They’re going to need it,” said Felix. “If it wasn’t for us, this bunker would be gone.”

  “If it wasn’t for you,” she said. “You saved the day down there.”

  “I did what I had to do.”

  “You saved me, too,” she said. “But in some ways, I wish you would have left me to die.”

  Felix didn’t like hearing Sharon say that. She survived years of torture and abuse believing in the hope that her husband was still alive. It was that hope that pushed her on.

  “You saved my ass a couple times, too,” he said. “I know it’s hard right now, but it will get better.”

  Sharon smiled. She appreciated Felix’s effort. “You want to know the strange thing,” she said.

  “What?”

  “My ex-husband survived.”

  “You were married before Chris?”

  “Yes,” she said. “To an arrogant, workaholic.”

  Felix laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Have you talked to him yet?”

  “No,” she said. “I haven’t. He’s not here right now. He’s off on some adventure to get some alien tech, some sort of energy device. Apparently, he thinks he can find a way to harness it.”

  “Interesting,” said Felix. “The ability to harness alien energy would give us a fighting chance.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I want him to come back, but part of me doesn’t. We broke up on bad terms.”

  “I’m sure he’s change,” said Felix.

  “I’m sure he hasn’t.”

  The two of them laughed. Felix got up and left Sharon alone. What she said about the energy cubes hung in the back of his mind. If they could somehow harness the alien tech, they could design weapons and ships that were much more powerful than what they’d been using. The only problem, they’d need a place to manufacture it. The bunker base running out of supplies and was small. If they really wanted to use that tech to their advantage they’d have to find an assembly plant. Felix’s mind raced. Before the invasion, he’d built a huge underground assembly plant just outside of Seattle. If it was still there, it’d be the perfect place to use the alien technology. The plant was meant to be used to build next-gen satellites, but it could easily be repurposed.