Standing up and looking around the apartment he found some cording used for decorative fabric modification. He assumed he could tie a number of guns together and by stepping on the cord he could trigger all the laser force to penetrate the inside of the ship all at once. It might cause enough damage to keep the ship from taking off after its core was charged for lift - off. He tossed his shoulders back and looked outside for any signs of life. He didn’t detect any. Before he entered the hall he listened for any noise and was met by silence. With a deep breath Tee stepped into the hall with his gun at the ready. A large hand grabbed the barrel of the pistol and bent it back in Tee’s hand. A drooling Zellhigh monster was wrenching the gun from Tee’s hand.
He could smell the guy and he stunk. He met his eyes and saw red rage and felt heat burning from the man. Tee was being bent backward. His choice was to let go of the gun or have his wrist broken. He let go of the gun and with his forehead he butted the insane fellow in the face. It seemed to irritate the slobbery beast as he touched his face and looked at Tee and roared. At that moment Tee brought up one of the half - dozen Zellhigh pistols he had with him and shot the man in his screaming face. He stood still, smelling the burnt flesh and cooked meat of the man’s brain.
If the guy hadn’t been overdosed by the mad gas he would have killed Tee in an instant. This was a huge mistake and the Zellhigh would most likely never recover from it. Tee was visibly shaken as he righted himself and snuck down the stairs toward the ship. As he reached the bottom of the steps he listened for any sign of life. He heard machinery in the far distance. It could be the noise of Zellhigh transports crushing anything in their path. He wasn’t sure. He glanced at the ship lording over all like a resting monster. He crept toward it with a Zellhigh pistol aimed at the opening.
His wrist hurt and he had bits of the blasted attacker stuck to his exposed skin. He tried not to think about it. He could see the large laser used to sweep the buildings and destroy anything in its path. It was like a laser cannon used to fire for long distance but with some modifications. He admired it for a few seconds and then glanced at all the dead soldiers and those who had been cut in half by the closing walls of the delivery box. There was a strong odor coming off all of them. He rubbed a dead man on the floor and felt the slick wax from his skin. He smelled it and it was hideous. He knew they may be able to smell him up in the hold of the spaceship. He smeared the ungodly goo on his exposed skin. He rubbed it on his face. He hoped it would mask him from detection.
Gathering as many lasers as he could he stacked them in a circle leaning against each other on the ground outside of the box. He aimed them toward the opening of the ship just above the end of the top of the box. He threaded the triggers with the cord from the apartment. He threw the switch on all of them and each blinked with a red light. He used the remaining cord to tie the barrels together so when they were activated they wouldn’t pull apart. He guessed at the angle and stepping back as far as he could he took his foot and while pulling some tension on the cord he stepped on the cord and that pulled the triggers of the laser guns.
A large, steady beam shot into the edge of the ship. Some of the metal melted and fell onto Tee. He continued to hold the cord down tight even as bits of hot metal burned into his arms and one especially large piece baked into his foot. After a while he heard things begin to pop and shatter inside the ship. He continued to shoot. He saw movement on the far side of the box as someone was trying to aim their gun down on him. He stopped and snuck around the edge of the box and shot as he rounded the corner in the direction of the person hanging down and trying to find him. The person fell from the opening and landed on the box. When his left arm flopped over the edge of the box, Tee saw that the man wore the uniform of an officer. Tee smiled and went back to continuing to shoot into the spaceship until the lasers ran out of power. Satisfied, he limped away with his foot leaving a blood trail. He moved toward the tunnels to find his wife and daughter.
Chapter 11
An unwanted image sprang into Tee’s mind as he entered the tunnel his wife and child had hidden in. It was of both of them dead and in grotesque postures with the flying weapons sticking out of their eyes. As he plunged into the eerie underworld he listened for any sign of life. He heard a women whimpering and he slowed down. He crept in the shadows making his way toward the sound.
When he got close to the noise he saw that it was a woman cradling a dead child in her arms with a glint of metal sticking out of the child’s forehead. She looked up when he came close and Tee said to her, “You should come with me.” She looked at him lacking comprehension and he repeated his words. He extended his hand down to her as she sat with the lifeless little girl in her arms. “There was only one of those things and it chose her instead of me. Why?”
“I can’t answer that but please take my hand and follow me. We have to see if there are others in the tunnel and help them if we can.”
“What about Audis?”
“We’ll send help to come back and check on her. Meanwhile,” he coughed and stared at the floor, “let’s let her sleep.”
Reluctantly the woman took Tee’s extended hand and followed as he moved in the shadows. He whispered into dark recesses, “Lain, it’s me,” only to be met with silence. Without a bright light to shine into the dark regions he may be missing her. He moved further into the tunnel.
Eventually they came to a split and he held the woman back as he got down low and peered around the corner. He saw a Zellhigh creature drooling and mumbling as he awkwardly swung his pistol in all directions. Tee aimed and burned a hole into his face and the monster fell over with his boots sticking straight out. His breast plate was black and looked as if it had sustained several shots. Tee thought about these men on their home planet walking around naked enjoying the company of their children and wives. He was perplexed by their motivation and how much the drugs influenced their behavior.
The woman sat with her head in her hands and seemed to be praying. Tee shook her and told her to follow him. Once again she reluctantly stumbled beside him. He collected the gun from the fallen soldier and saw it was still half - charged. The mother was slowing him down and at the same time he hated the Zellhigh all the more for ripping her mind apart and killing her little girl. They inched their way toward the right and moved with stealth. Tee pressed the pistol of the fallen soldier into her hand. He whispered to her, pushing his words into her brain, “Kill any of them that you see. Don’t think about it. Just shoot.”
He didn’t wait for a reply and they continued their search. All the while Tee leaned over and called behind pieces of equipment, “Lain, it’s me.” Then he heard multiple feet clumping on the hard floor moving his way. He pushed the woman behind a large rectangular piece of metal. He told her, “Get ready to shoot. Don’t fire until I do. I’ll be on the other side of the tunnel and we can kill them in the crossfire. Do you understand?” She nodded, but he had his doubts.
He moved behind her by about five meters and crouched behind a massive repeater used to move large amounts of electricity all over the planet. His neck was slick with sweat and he swallowed, realizing how thirsty he’d become. Then he saw them approach from a great distance. There were many of them, perhaps twenty, and they didn’t seem as drugged as he would like. They talked boisterously in gruff sentences that he couldn’t understand. He glanced at the woman to see if she was in a firing position and saw that she looked preoccupied and distant.
He knew that he was alone and the only way he could come close to winning this firefight was to wait until they were so close that they would have a hard time aiming at him without aiming at the back of one of their comrades. The noise they made was growing louder with every step and Tee was proud of himself for not being a coward. He assured himself that he had done his best and no matter the outcome he wouldn’t fail as a weakling. He had killed perhaps a hundred of them and those were the kind of odds that make for heroes. He had also damaged one of their ships and they couldn’t
escape even if they wanted to.
From behind the metal cover he waited to see when a shadow would fall in front of him. That would be his cue to begin firing. He was down low and would drop to his belly when the time came. He would be ripping their legs out from under them. He hoped beyond reason that the woman would join in and help. Just as he was beginning to smell their retched stench and his nerves were at a fever pitch the woman stood up and shot herself in the head. The soldiers turned and started laughing and pointing at the dead woman. Tee, buried in the shadow of the large piece of equipment, rolled out and into the tunnel and began shooting from one side to the other, then he shot up and down, always pressing the trigger and moving with speed from one standing soldier to the next.
He was filled with rage and abandoned caution. He slowly stood as he sprayed the entire group with pulses of light that burned through them and came out the back side. Men behind men were getting ripped to pieces and they couldn’t get a clear shot at Tee. He faced them as they fell and he no longer saw them as humans, only as deranged animals suffering from some kind of awful malady that had no cure. When the last of them was knocked backwards he stopped shooting, only to hear his mouth under his nose and eyes, acting as if it were a separate entity from his face as he was yelling at the top of his lungs.
From a deep and dark recess forty meters ahead in the tunnel he heard Lain call out, “Is that you?”
“Yes, Lain, it’s safe for now.”
Lain came out with Lacy folded in her arms, she looked at the carnage and then up at her husband. She stepped over soldiers two deep in the pile and tried not to look at their cauterized faces and missing limbs. She tried not to smell their internal organs exposed to the still air of the tunnel. She looked at her husband and saw in him a change. He was someone who had lost some vital part of himself, like innocence. He was still breathing hard and his chest rose and fell. She reached out her hand placed it on his chest. He nodded. They both knew what had happened to him. The whole planet was no longer filled with the teachings of improvement. They were a group that had been pushed into a new and dangerous truth.
Then he smelled her and recognized the stench of the invaders. He leaned back and looked at her, wondering if she had been violated by the barbarians. “I smeared the thick sweat off their skin onto mine and the same thing with Lacy,” she said. “The flying spikes smelled us and moved on.”
Tee’s eyebrows rose. This information was a huge leap forward. He wanted to pass this information on as quickly as he could to others. He didn’t know how. He hugged Lain and they stood like that for a few minutes. It could be their last chance. A tiny oasis chiseled out of time in this sad desert of death. Lacy had been fed sedatives and she was in her little dream world. Tee smiled for a brief moment and then motioned for Lain to follow him toward the electrical grid that fed Alex. That’s where they could find the old system used to make announcements.
If they could get the rudimentary mechanism to work with batteries there was chance they could make an announcement to their fellow citizens. Both Lain and Tee checked their laser guns for power. They collected as many weapons from the heap of dead soldiers as they could strap across their shoulders.
They moved quickly and efficiently passing Lacy back and forth as their arms were heavy with guns. They had to change direction more than once to find the correct way to go toward the computer room. It was grinding their nerves having to stop and listen to every bit of noise. Some came from the surface. Others from the equipment in the tunnel that was refrigerated and now made popping sounds when it reached room temperature. Each of those minor disturbances sent shivers down their spines and they tensed in preparation for a fight. It was wearing them down and at one point they both signaled a halt to their movement. They were exhausted from stretching their nerves.
They neared the correct opening with the rebuilt electrical gear and they heard voices and soon recognized them as members of the engineering and electrical teams. The men were armed to the teeth and lowered their weapons once they saw who it was entering the room. Tee quickly relayed what he wanted to do. The men had reached that same conclusion. This meant that there were others in different parts of the planet that had also come to the same realization and adopted the smearing of the stench on their skin to survive. It was beginning to dawn on Tee that the Zellhigh, in their zeal to wreak havoc on his people, were propelled by anger and overcompensated with too much gas and had underestimated the determination of the people of Triolux. It was a flaw born from anger and pride and they hadn’t realized the first step for the Triolux was to be armed with lasers.
The men quickly stitched the wires and the batteries to the speaker system that went out across the entire planet. Tee spoke into the tiny microphone. “To the brave and intelligent people of Triolux North: smear the slime from the skin of the invaders on your exposed skin. This will offer protection against the flying spikes and will also slow detection of the Zellhigh soldiers. Use multiple guns spliced together in a group to fire upon one spot of their ships. This will render them incapable of flight and we will one day soon deal with their officers. Be strong. The fight is in our favor.” With that Tee set the microphone down.
“I think we should get Alex up and running, if nothing else just to advise this group,” said Lancho, one of the older members of the electrical team. There was rapid agreement among the men.
Tee asked, “Where are your wives and family members?”
“We moved them into the dome in the mountain and they are hidden and heavily armed.”
Tee looked at the men and realized this had been preplanned by them in the event that this exact scenario was to unfold. He was proud of them and knew if they had suggested to others this same course it would have failed from detection. Sometimes secrets are best kept among a few. “We have teams moving the large weapons from the islands to the land in an effort to shoot the Zellhigh ships on land.”
“Good idea,” Tee said. He was filled with pride in the quick and brave thinking of these men.
“We heard that in the outskirts of Gorton a ship was blown to pieces before they even unloaded.”
Tee watched Lain put Lacy in a corner and drape a piece of cloth over her eyes. She stretched and both Tee and she shared a smile that held hope and momentary relief. “The invaders may have called for more ships or men, we don’t know. We need to interrogate the officers as soon as possible.” This was suggested by Velm, a junior on the engineering team. The other men looked at him and began to see the wisdom in what he said. They had no way of knowing if the ships had sent out a distress call and if so, was there another invasion force coming. Did the Zellhigh even have more ships?
Tee told them about the ship outside his apartment and what he had done. It was then that the others suggested he sit. He was turning white and his foot was leaving a small puddle of blood. Adrenalin had pushed him this far but it was beginning to deplete and suddenly he felt weary. Lain had him sit on a box and raise his foot and prop it on another box. She removed his shoe and he winced. She dug around in her bag and applied some rejuvenating cream and wrapped his foot in a clean cloth. She asked the men if they had any water and they shook their heads no.
Two men left in search of water for Tee while the others discussed plans to get the officers out of the damaged ship not far from where they were. Tee leaned back on the wall behind the box and passed out. Lain kept an eye on him and listened to his soft breathing. She was never as proud of her husband as when he told the other men what he had done to the invaders ship. He was truly a mild mannered hero and she knew at that exact moment her acceptance of him as a father and husband had moved into the arena of love. She was overwhelmed with a desire to protect him at all cost. She would lay down her life for him as much as she would for Lacy.
In that dimly lit room, surrounded by men talking about different methods of getting the elite officers of Zellhigh out of their ship, Lain was experiencing feelings and emotions she thought had long died and
would never return. She looked at her sleeping husband and put her hand on his forehead to check for a fever. What she felt was alive. Until that moment she had been going through motions. She had played a part, the part of mother and wife. Now she was no longer playing a role, she was in fact awake to the idea that she was the wife of Tee Calmwater and dedicating her life to him and Lacy whose biological father was a rapist and a murderer. She was committed to both of them and in so doing needed to keep safe and strong. She knew Tee was already there and had been in love with her from the beginning. He had suffered from her distance and as she stared at her husband’s face she wanted to convey her emotions as soon as she got the chance.
At that instant a large explosion went off in the tunnel system. The room was filling with dust and Lain looked around in a panic. The men took up positions at the two openings. They lay low and waited in silence. Lain made sure Lacy wasn’t breathing in the dust and covered her mouth and nose with a delicate cloth. She gently shook Tee until he woke. She said, “We’ve been found out and they’re coming.”
He rallied himself and took in the position of the men. He glanced at Lacy and back at Lain. He made sure Lain was in front of Lacy with a charged pistol and then he limped to the opening where the most dust was coming into the room. They peered into the dim light trying to see into the tunnel. They listened as they felt the tension in the room reach a fever pitch. Then they heard what they dreaded - a large piece of equipment driving their way. Tee quickly suggested they aim two guns each at the same exact spot as soon as they could. “If we all concentrate on one tiny area it will eventually melt into the machine.”
Ths Sacking of Triolux North Page 7