by Scott Baron
The advance team of Bawb, Charlie, Leila, and Rika, would sneak to the perimeter of the suspected zone of alien activity. From there, Bawb would stalk and eliminate three of the Tslavar troops, hiding the bodies and commandeering their shimmer cloaks. Once he’d provided them to the others, the four of them would then take up a position close to the downed ship.
The cyborgs, meanwhile, would split into three groups. The main body would take up positions just in from the shoreline, where the most likely route for the arriving ships would be. They’d then do what machines could do so much better than humans. They’d sit perfectly still.
With their flesh coverings providing them all the camouflage they needed, they would blend in with the other immobile people in the area by simply freezing in place. Once the Tslavar ships had passed and the coast was clear, they would then set up their heavy weapons to intercept the ships when they tried to escape.
The final group would set up for an assault on the ground forces guarding the Asbrú, providing a distraction, while the small, shimmer-cloaked team located the leaders of the Tslavar forces and eliminated them.
It wasn’t pretty, and they’d likely fall under some pretty heavy fire, but the cyborgs were game for an attempt nonetheless. Charlie and his friends were heartened by the show of confidence, their own rising to meet that of their new comrades.
“You ready for this?” Charlie asked as they quietly trekked close to their starting point, having been dropped off by Eddie well away from range of his being spotted.
“I shall forge ahead,” Bawb said.
“Great. We’ll keep an eye out for you.”
“You need not,” he grinned. “You will never see me coming.”
With that, he slid the hood of his shimmer cloak over his head and vanished.
“How does he do that?” Connor the cyborg asked, amazed at the disappearing trick.
“Just a thing he does,” Charlie replied as the rest of his small group started creeping forward. “Okay, you guys, stay back and fall into position. When we signal, start the assault.”
“Got it,” Connor said with an excited look in his eye.
“Is he carrying an axe?” Rika asked.
“Yeah, that he is,” Charlie replied.
Something tells me we might have to keep an eye on this guy, Charlie mused with a little chuckle as they set off.
The trio covered the distance to the area the Asbrú had landed in good time, despite the extra precautions they were forced to take to prevent accidental discovery. They stayed well off the rabbit-established trails, instead, sticking to the rabbit tracks that wove between the trees, staying low as they made their approach.
“We’re getting close,” Rika said, pointing to the broken treetops that signaled they had arrived at the area of the ship’s final descent.
Charlie and Leila had noted the same thing, crouching even lower than previously as they strained their ears for the slightest sound of their stealthy adversaries.
“You’ll be wanting these,” Bawb said, sliding his shimmer hood off as he stepped away from a tree he’d been perfectly camouflaged against.
In his hands were three shimmer cloaks. And he’d even been so polite as to have wiped the traces of blood off of them.
“Already?” Charlie said with an appreciative look.
The deadly Wampeh just smiled and handed them each a shimmer cloak.
“Damn, he is good,” Rika said with admiration.
“Don’t tell him that. It’ll go to his already enormous head,” Charlie joked.
“I can hear you both, you know,” the assassin said, amused. “Now, don your cloaks and follow my lead. I shall drag a small thread in my wake that you may see my path.”
“How many Tslavars are there, Bob?”
“I couldn’t tell for certain. But, Charlie, it would appear there are far more than we originally anticipated. And there’s something going on close to your ship.”
“I don’t like the sound of that, Bob. Something like what?”
“I cannot say for certain. I procured the cloaks and doubled back as quickly as I was able. But I am certain whatever they are doing is of consequence.”
“Then we need to get in close and find out what it is,” Leila said. “Right, Charlie?”
He was both proud and amused by his queen’s enthusiasm for the dangerous mission. Of the four of them, she was by far the least trained, but she was holding her own, and making a good showing of it in the process.
“Yeah, that sounds like the logical next step,” Charlie agreed. “Lead on, Bob. We’ll be right behind you.”
“I will take us in a pattern that avoids their cloaked troops. I could teach you to spot them yourselves, but with the quality of these shimmers, it would simply take too much time.”
“Later, then,” Rika said. “For now, at least, lead the way.”
The four of them crept silently ahead, Bawb taking point, the finest of threads dragging from beneath his shimmer cloak, allowing the others to follow a few paces behind.
Charlie, Leila, and Rika were moving as a unit, one hand on the person in front of them on their lower back, the contact keeping them in a tight formation but also preventing them from tripping over one another and blowing their cover.
“What the hell are they doing?” Rika gasped when the clearing beside the ship came into view.
What appeared to be a powerful caster––possibly even an emmik or minor visla––was standing beside the Asbrú, chanting a steady stream of magic words, drawing power from themselves, as well as the rays of the planet’s sun and pouring it into the casting. The ship seemed to even be glowing a little from all the magic in the air.
“Oh, shit,” Charlie hissed as he realized what was going on.
“What is it?” Leila asked in a hushed voice.
“That guy isn’t generating a new spell. He’s adding to the ones already on the ship. Remember all of the Ootaki hair woven throughout the entire hull?”
“I fear Charlie is correct,” Bawb said. “And given the sheer quantity they possess, this changes things rather drastically.”
“Meaning?” Rika asked.
“Meaning we must stop whatever they are doing, and immediately,” he replied.
Charlie agreed, and given their element of surprise, plus the sheer power of the weapons they had at their disposal, he thought they actually stood a good chance. If only Ara were with them, it would be even better.
Then he sensed her, just on the periphery of his mind, but growing stronger by the second.
“They’re here,” he said. “Fuck. I can sense Ara. That means the Tslavar ships are going to make landfall any minute.”
“Then there is no time to waste. If they reinforce their ranks, we may not have another opportunity,” Bawb said.
“It’s not the plan,” Rika pointed out.
“No, it isn’t. But if they have another high-level caster aboard those ships, we won’t be able to stop them,” Charlie said, activating his comms bud in his ear. “Attention, all forces. Change of plans. There is an urgent situation. The Tslavar craft are almost here, and a situation has arisen. All forces engage immediately. Draw the enemy from the ship.”
Charlie’s command was met not with vocal affirmation, but rather, the heart-warming sound of pulse rifle fire as the cybernetic forces charged from their positions. The Tslavar troops, despite their camouflage, were taken by surprise. They’d made the mistake of complacency, believing themselves unobserved and secure. The first of them to fall informed the rest of the error of their thinking in the form of an explosion of green gore from the hole in his chest.
A battle broke out into full force, the magic-wielding aliens rushing into the tree line to engage the hostile natives. It was a blender of pulse blasts, magic, and the occasional plasma burst rained down from above as the smaller ships made strafing runs on the alien ground forces.
“Yeah!” Charlie exclaimed quietly as he observed from beneath his cloak.
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The Tslavar mercenaries were driven back momentarily by the sheer force of the unexpected attack, but then they regrouped, pushing back with surprising resilience. And much to Charlie’s horror, he realized the other two ships had arrived and were already dumping their forces from their holds and onto the battlefield.
The ships above continued to fire, but the Tslavar casters had adapted yet again. Apparently, they’d managed to revise their defenses since the battle in Long Beach, and they were now passing the new spell through the ranks.
Within minutes, the pulse rifles were nearly as useless as the conventional ones had become, and the plasma bursts from the air were likewise being batted aside with relative ease.
“We’re here,” Ara called out to her friend.
“I noticed. Where are you?”
“Just a minute behind them. They were moving faster than I could fly within the atmosphere. It was all I could do to keep them close enough to track.”
“Well, they’ve got a new trick,” Charlie said. “They can block the pulse and plasma weapons now.”
“This does not bode well.”
“No, it doesn’t. Do you think they’re still susceptible to your flames?”
A familiar shadow flashed overhead. “Only one way to find out.”
“Just remember, steer clear of the Asbrú. With their fail-safe, any hit to the ship might cause it to go off.”
Ara did not hesitate, dropping into a dive right at the Tslavar ships. Flames erupted from her mouth, engulfing the craft. But while her attack had landed squarely on the two vessels, both seemed to have remained unscathed. Their magical defenses had been shifted against her particular type of magic as well.
“Oh, this is not good,” Charlie said. “This is not good at all.”
Chapter Fifty
Bawb and Charlie cast together, the Wampeh leading the human in the very specific spell. “Rika, Leila, come join us,” he urged. “We need more power.”
The two women quickly ran to their friends, took in the words to the spell and their function, and joined in the casting. Their addition was not perfect by any means––they hadn’t the time to practice and perfect the spell––but the additional power was enough for Bawb’s purposes.
Previously, Ara had incinerated every scrap of the invaders and their tools, but now, having captured several of the invaders’ shimmer cloaks intact, the Wampeh was in possession of precisely what he needed to work a counterspell. He knew the shape of their magic.
It would make the wearers mostly visible, while not alerting them to the fall of their camouflage. So long as you wore the shimmer, you would not notice your own comrades around you. Only in shedding it would they realize their clever defense had been defeated.
The spell burst out, the wave of power catching the attention of a few of those mercenaries more attuned to such things, but with no visible effect. They ignored it and kept fighting.
To the small squad and their cyborg forces, however, it was suddenly a target-rich environment. One at which they began firing with great accuracy.
Unfortunately, and much to their surprise, the majority of their targets were unfazed by the barrage.
“Why are the plasma rounds suddenly not working?” Leila shouted out over the increasing din of battle as she fired off a futile shot at the Tslavar in front of her before discarding the rifle for the sword on her back.
“They have adapted,” Bawb said, plainly as they charged into the fray. “And so shall we.”
He then did something a bit unexpected, heaving his useless pulse rifle toward the powerful man casting his spell, ramping up the magic within the downed Asbrú, while safely ensconced in his magical protections.
“Give me your rifles,” he told the others, snatching them up and throwing them along with the others.
Being a lobbed projectile, each had merely bounced off of the man’s magical shielding, the way a metal bullet would have been, but at a much lower velocity. The effect was that each of the weapons had landed at the exact same place when the magic stopped them and dropped them to the ground.
“Perfect,” Bawb said with a smile.
“What about the emmik?” Charlie asked as he disarmed––literally––a charging Tslavar whose shimmer had been disrupted. “His spell won’t even let us get close.”
“We do not have to,” Bawb replied. “Oh, and this is a visla,” he added. “A lower-tier one, I believe. In any case, a potent power user.”
Charlie saw the look in his friend’s eye. They’d kill the man if they had to, but not before he sucked his power from him, if he could. Doing so would allow the Wampeh to use the incredibly rare talent he bore, that of draining another’s power by drinking their blood. It would not only provide Bawb with an incredible amount of power to tap into, in addition to his Ootaki-powered armor, but would also leave the visla weak enough to be contained. That was, if they could somehow reach the man.
The visla, for his part, seemed unconcerned by the goings-on around him, focusing all of his attention at ramping up the spell already underway. Whatever he was up to, Charlie had a very bad feeling in his gut about it.
The two other Tslavar ships swung in, flanking the cyborg forces and dropping low, spewing out dozens of additional troops into the battle while simultaneously launching powerful spells into the sky, knocking the smaller ships from the air when the magical attacks flew true.
“Whatever you’re going to do, do it quickly,” Charlie shouted to the Wampeh.
“You’d best duck,” Bawb told his friends as he slid a particularly sleek slaap onto his hand.
Charlie had seen him use this one before. It was a device used for longer-range attacks, capable of focusing a spell with pinpoint accuracy rather than the usual wide-reaching blast of power from a regular slaap.
Bawb blurted a single word under his breath––he had not quite mastered Ara’s manner of silent casting yet––blasting forth a very specific spell. But rather than targeting the visla casting within his little shell of power, he landed a direct hit upon the pile of pulse rifles. The fully charged pulse rifles, to be precise.
The explosion of all four of them going up as their power cells were simultaneously overloaded despite the layers of safeties built into the devices was substantial. More importantly, it was a type of energy the invaders’ shielding spells had not been designed to repel, and thus, were not entirely efficient at dissipating.
The visla was blown from his feet as the impact tore through the rear of his spell. The frontal portion managed to contain nearly all of the residual blast, keeping it from reaching the Asbrú’s hull. All around them, the Tslavars nearest the blast had been thrown like toy dolls.
“The path is clear,” Bawb said with a satisfied grin as he pulled his wand from its holster. It was already beginning to glow with the brutal disabling spells on the tip of its owner’s tongue. “Cover me. I shall incapacitate the caster while he is stunned.”
He took off at a full sprint, Tslavar limbs and heads flying as he dispatched the dazed enemy mid-stride as he raced toward the visla before he could recover. The other mercenaries turned their attentions rearward, no longer focusing on the cyborgs, but rather the lone man at the rear of their lines.
“Leila, get on defensive spells with me!” Charlie called out. “Rika, throw them something nasty while we cover Bob’s six!”
Rika already had the new slaap on her hand, its power begging to be unleashed. And unleash it she would, but this time, she was in control. A brutal wave of power attacks flashed out from the human, an attack the Tslavars had not been expecting. Quickly, they shifted to magical defenses, but not before several had been thrown through the air by the battering power unleashed into their midst.
Meanwhile, Leila and Charlie cast together, weaving their power as only connected beings were capable, feeding into each other’s spells, blocking everything the mercenary forces threw their way.
Leila had always been a quick study, and it was defensiv
e spells Charlie and Bawb had first drilled into her with mind-numbing repetition. And now that repetition paid off as she effortlessly shifted from one spell to the next, varying her defenses as needed to buy their friend the time he required.
Suddenly, a massive surge of magic hit their defensive shield, knocking Rika from her feet and forcing Charlie and Leila to their knees with its intensity. Another player was on the board, and they’d turned their attentions to the magic-wielding trio.
“That was massive,” Charlie said, tasting blood in his mouth where he’d bitten his cheek. “A visla for sure.”
Leila locked eyes with him, still casting as best as she could. But she knew as well as he did. They couldn’t stop another visla in the middle of this battle. They’d be overwhelmed. And if both of the Tslavar ships possessed casters of this power, they were doomed.
The front hatch of the nearest Tslavar craft opened, its shimmer disrupted as well by the spell they’d cast. A tall, thin man stepped into the doorway, an air of power crackling around him.
So this is it, Charlie thought as he watched the visla pull power to him, focusing for his coup de grâce that would end their attempts once and for all.
Then, without warning, the man exploded into a mist of bone and blood. The rest of his ship, likewise, torn to pieces as holes silently appeared in its hull. Only a few seconds later did the sound waves of the projectiles reach them with a series of loud booms.
A moment later, the ship erupted in flames, engulfing the troops nearest, while the force of the blast knocked down those farther away.
“What the hell?” Charlie gasped in amazement. “Was that a freakin’ rail gun?”
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that it was,” Rika said, brushing a strand of sweaty hair from her eyes.
“Those weren’t even fully functional in our time. And now? It’s all pulse weapons. Where’d that come from? And who’s shooting it?”
The other Tslavar ship didn’t care what the attack was, only that it got the hell out of there, and fast. The power signature around the vessel surged as it spun on its axis and set off at top speed for the waterline. As fast as it was moving, and with its defenses tuned to pulse weapons, the waiting cyborgs on the shore would stand no chance of stopping it.