In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater

by J Alex McCarthy

  Julio squeezes his fist, he can feel the power coursing through him.

  “With your ring on, you are at your current strongest strength, it will grow with time and experience.”

  Jahum takes one step forward. A force field pops up in front of him like a light blue wall. “Your power is malleable you can make many shapes based off of your imagination. The more complex it is, the harder it is to make. To start off, make the simplest but most useful object. A shield.”

  Julio thinks on it, he puts out his hand. He focuses hard. A small orb appears in his hand.

  “Come on, Julio.” He focuses harder.

  Bead of sweat trails down his forehead. The orb shifts and morphs into a small blue shield. Just a 4x4 square.

  “Fuck yeah!” Julio yells. The shield disappears.

  “Very good, now put back on your ring.” Julio puts it back on. The sudden surge of power almost knocks him off his feet.

  “Holy shit,” Julio mutters with shock on his face.

  Jahum steps back.

  “The quickest way for your power to grow is to fight. I will be your sparring partner.” Jahum says. He lights up and floats off the ground.

  “Are you ready?” Jahum asks.

  Julio braces himself and smiles.

  “Come at me, bro.”

  It’s an hour later, the gym is wrecked. The lights hang from a cord in the ceiling. The wall is filled with holes and tears. Jahum still floats, he has five individual force fields in front of him. He throws them at Julio across the room.

  Julio runs incredibly fast and dodges them. Julio swings his arm and flings a energy blast at Jahum. Jahum simply swipes it away and sends another force field his way.

  Julio swings his arm down, a force field appears in front of it and he screams. He morphs it into a sword. He grabs it and cuts the force field in half and hurls his sword at Jahum. Jahum puts up a hand and it stops in midair.

  Julio falls to his knees.

  “I think that’s enough for today,” Jahum says.

  “I was done anyway,” Julio says through his teeth, he’s covered in sweat, his breaths are labored. Jahum flicks his fingers.

  The gym starts to heal itself. The holes in the walls fill, the knocked over equipment uprights itself, and the lights morph back in place.

  “Good job, you show promise.”

  Julio gets up.

  “Thanks,” Julio replies. He’s never going to stop being amazed at what Jahum can do. He suddenly feels less tired and lighter on his feet.

  “Shower and get dressed because we’re going to launch soon.”

  He leaves.

  Julio looks at his hands. With this power, maybe he really can fight. He’s going to save the world.

  13 - Attack on Washington

  A bus stops in front of a barricaded gymnasium. The windows and doors are covered with thin aluminum sheets. Twenty soldiers patrol the entrance. The bus door opens and the civilians start to file out and head toward the entrance, carrying all their belongings with a lack of vigor.

  Inside the gymnasium, the floor is filled with emergency beds. The beds are made out of barely a sliver green polyester, wrapping around the metal bars that makes its frame.

  Not comfortable.

  But the civilians come in and pick and choose their beds, settling down for a fight that’s out of their power, even though it really doesn’t matter where they lay, if the roof comes down, it’s coming down on all of them.

  “Here is good,” Arnold says.

  The metal legs of the bed squeaks against the polished floors as he throws down his bags on the farthest bed from the entrance. Thora, beside Arnold, hands him Neil.

  Thora picks a bed near his, she only has a bag on her back, everything she could carry. She throws her things under the bed and sits on it. This is where she’ll be when the battle ends, win or lose.

  She pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them and starts to rock back and forth. She’ll do anything to stop thinking about what’s about to happen. Anything to block out the world around her.

  …

  Julio stares into the cloudy sky, the rest of his team next to him check their own equipment. Most of them have never held a gun before, he doubts they’ll even hit the broad side of a barn.

  He doesn’t know what in the hell Jahum was thinking giving them those. He probably expects them to use their powers instead of the rifles.

  Julio looks around, they’re at Bolling Air Force Base. The Eliite put the battle lines directly surrounding the base but left the front of the base toward the capitol open so they can get to the battle.

  All of D.C. is game.

  He doesn’t know why they didn’t prevent them from having air support, maybe this is just a game to those fuckers. The world’s air crafts have no outer limits, it’s free rein for them too.

  He hears Lance behind him.

  “I have three grenades as well,” he says.

  It’s eerily quiet here, even though the engines of the jet roar off beside them. Maybe he should check his equipment too, not that it would really matter.

  The sky flashes white and then there’s a loud screech. Hundreds of giant pods fall from the sky, raining down from the sky like black tear drops, crashing over the city.

  A pod crashes a couple miles away from Julio. The pod is shaped like a one hundred foot spherical egg; its middle opens up and a hundred grunts leap out. Afterward, its top collapses in on itself.

  After the pods fall, twenty faire descend down from the clouds. Its sides open releasing out a swarm of Peons. Then only four angels trickle from the clouds, they don’t have their halos, they’re docile.

  And at last, the one and only Damon descends to join in. Ulbe, the general of this battle. He slowly descends from the sky. A golden energy crown floats over his head; it has four large spikes that drifts and waves with the wind. He’s the same Damon that watched over New York City’s attack and the one who controls the angels.

  He lands on top of the Washington memorial. He sits on the spike, legs crossed. He puts his hand together for a quick prayer.

  “Deny the perfect. Prevent the end. May Numenwolfe save us all,” Ulbe says in Serephin. His eyes light up white. He envisions it, he envisions the battlefield, every angel, every faire, every, Peon, grunt, every single one of them flashes in his eyes.

  The spikes in his crown each shoot out and zaps to the angels. It wraps around them and then disappears in a flash. A golden energy crown appears over their head. Ulbe has taken control of the battle.

  He is the commander.

  He is the watcher.

  It begins.

  Julio has never seen anything like this before. There’s thousands of them, how in the hell are they supposed to fight that?

  “What now?”

  A large booming sound approaches from overhead. A pod hurls down over them. It explodes as itis hit by an artillery round, the world’s forces, snapping Julio out of his daze and reminding him that they are not the only ones in this fight.

  “There!” Julio screams as he points up to the sky.

  From the hell fire above, ten grunts fall from the flames. Julio’s team lights up the sky, bullets flinging into the swarm of grunts.

  Aiming with surprisingly good accuracy they take out five of them. But it’s not enough as they crash down in front of them. One of them lands in front of Julio.

  It kicks him hard in gut and he’s sent flying. It turns around to the others and—

  Headshot. Lance litters him with bullets. The other grunts land but Julio’s team makes quick work of them. They were picked as an attack team for a reason.

  Julio runs up to them, practically unharmed. Looks like he was wrong to think they couldn’t stand up on their own and that he would have had to pick up the slack, especially when they got first blood.

  “Are you alright comrade?” Lance asks.

  “Yeah, just fine.”

  A boom bellows in the distance, they all look toward its
direction. Another pod crashed down only a few miles away from them.

  “Well what are we waiting for?” Julio asks. With this group, maybe he can defy the gods, maybe he can stop the apocalypse. They run for the pod, ready to take on anything.

  The battle rages on on all stages of the battlefield, humans and Eliite clash, fighting to the death.

  In the air, angels spit out beams of energy suppressing the Earth’s forces, while Peons pick off the jets when they are in dismay.

  In front of an auditorium in a safe zone, Noata’s team overlooks the battle. The fighting is a lot closer to them than they would like. Noata leans against the auditorium wall, trying to calm himself down but his thoughts are racing.

  “How…can we beat that?” Noata asks. Wilker and Serena stand next to him. An ill equipped squad of soldiers are the only ones with them.

  There’s only five of them, and they barely look out of high school. One of them throws up.

  “Come on men, pucker up, there is a war going on.” The squad leader says, he looks fresh out of ROTC with his newly polished lieutenant ranks.

  “Look at them,” Wilker says. “They’re barely old enough to get their peckers wet. What in the hell was the military?”

  “Look over there,” Serena says. She points to a team of grunts only a couple hundred yards away, advancing toward them.

  Jahum said the safe zones won’t be the main targets, but he didn’t say that they wouldn’t attack them. To think Noata thought just for a second that he could escape the fight.

  “Do we—“

  “Charge!!!” Serena is cut off as the squad leader screams. The soldiers run toward the grunts. They were throwing up just a minute ago; they have moxy Noata would give them that.

  “Wait!!!” Serena screams for them. Noata jerks his eyes away as they’re massacred. The grunts didn’t even use their weapons, they just drove their hands in and tore them apart.

  A bloody mess.

  The grunts leave their remains as they turn back to Noata’s team. They’re happy, cheering, delighted to finally spill blood.

  They advance toward Noata’s team, they have no formation, no order, they’re too confident in their overwhelming strength that there will be no need for tactics.

  We’re too below them for that, too beneath them for a true strategic battle. This is a game to them.

  Serena lets off a smirk. “Protect the auditorium,” she says as she cocks her gun.

  “What?” Noata asks. She pats him on his head and charges the grunts.

  “Are you going to let a girl fight your battles for you, boy?” Wilker asks.

  What?

  He can’t, he doesn’t have the confidence she does. After what happened to the soldiers he’s not sure he can do anything anymore.

  Serena fires at the grunts. Noata doesn’t answer Wilker.

  “Well I’m all up for equality and the such,” he says. He cocks his gun.

  “I thought you didn’t want to fight!?” Noata yells.

  “I don’t but I’m not an idiot, its kill or be killed. They think we are so far below them that they are leaving openings all over the place. If they keep under estimating us I can see right through them.” He steps forward. He looks like he’s concentrating in their movements.

  “A little word to the wise, when you load your clip, make sure you rack your gun, it can lead to an undesirable scenario.” Wilker charges in after Serena.

  Leaving Noata alone to protect the auditorium. Both sides clash, no rules, no order, just a fight to the death.

  The battle rages on in another part of the city. The sky is thick with smoke.

  Julio’s team fights in the streets. A group of grunts shoots at them from the distance, they both fire at each other, using over-turned vehicles as cover. But both of them aren’t hitting a damn thing.

  “Fuck it,” Julio says.

  He crouches on the wall in an alleyway, his team is next to him firing at the grunts. He tosses his gun to Lance and walks into the street.

  “What are you doing?!” Lance snaps.

  “Winning.”

  “What the?” one of the grunts says.

  The human doesn’t want to play anymore.

  The others notice and turn their barrels toward Julio. Julio stands off against them, he hopes this works.

  They fire, bullets rip through the air. Julio launches off, he ducks and weaves through the hailstorm, and sprints toward the grunts. Dodging the bullets like a jackal, he closes in and swings down.

  In a flash, his force field forms around his hand, it quickly stretches out into a long plank. He opens his fist, the plank suddenly smashes razor thin. Julio grabs it.

  He slices the top half of a grunt off, a clean cut. Another grunt comes from his right, Julio moves fast and kicks it hard in the head, dislocating its neck.

  A third grunt lands in front of him, Julio throws his hand forward, his sword flies forward. It melts in the air and melds into a wall and crashes into the third grunt.

  Julio turns around, the last grunt swings for him. Julio tries to duck but it’s too late and—

  Its head is blown straight off. Lance and the others advance toward him. Julio barely broke a sweat. He sees the pod they were after.

  Some grunts still attempt to get out of it.

  He grabs a grenade off his belt and lugs it hard. It smacks against the pod and sticks. It explodes and takes the grunts with it.

  Another rumbling, above them another pod zooms over. Heading toward the Airfield.

  “It’s going to be a long day,” Julio sighs. “On me!” he yells to his team. He runs back toward the airfield.

  Noata stands in front of an auditorium.

  Alone.

  The rest of his team fight off in the distance, taking cover behind an armored truck only a mile away from him.

  Wilker takes lead, suppressing the grunts while the others flak them. The grunts are laughing. Are they not serious? Noata wonders how well they actually could fight if they were serious.

  He thinks they can end this quickly if they wanted to. It’s all a game.

  A screech comes from above him, he looks up and takes a step back. The sky above him is a swarm of metallic death.

  The air battle is intense, an angel right above him screeches as it releases hellfire. The beam cleaves right through the world’s air force.

  There’s a rumble.

  “What was that?” he asks himself. His advance down the street, away from him, past piles of dead grunts.

  Their plan worked but he looks farther down, and more grunts advance for them. Then he sees something appear over them.

  A booming sound is heard. A deep consistent ratta-tat. Noata feels it in his chest. A faire hovers over the grunts, only a couple hundred of feet in the air.

  It slowly approaches the auditorium. Small slots opens on its sides. Energy based bombs rocket out and into the buildings under it. It sieges everything in its path, heading toward him.

  A sense of fear hits him. He looks around, looking for his team, they’re far off, too far to do anything.

  It looks like it’s up to him.

  This is his fight.

  He pulls up his gun and aims it at the faire, staring down the iron sight.

  It seems to slow down sensing his gaze. It doesn’t deter him, he has to do this, it is his duty as a chosen.

  “Aim...” he speaks to himself, to calm his nerves. His gun shakes. The Faire moves in and out of his sights.

  “Aim, breathe in, breathe out, hold and…fire.” He doesn’t fire, he just repeats what the Astrons told him to do to steady the gun.

  He stares harder down his sight, he stares into certain death. The faire isn’t close enough to fire. He tries to calm his breathing.

  “Aim, breathe in, breathe out, hold and…fire,” he says faster. Sweat drips into his sight as—

  The faire flashes white, Noata blinks, it’s back to normal.

  It must just be in his head. He starts to brea
the in steadily and calms down.

  “Aim, breathe in, breathe out, hold and fire,” he repeats.

  He can do this, he has to. The calmness runs down his entire body, like warm hands kneading his muscles. The faire closes in, his finger grips the second trigger.

  “Aim, breathe in, breathe out, hold—“

  He slowly pulls the trigger and—

  “Fire!”

  An angel thumps down in front of him as he fires. He stumbles back. Two of his rounds shoot into the sky, completely missing the faire.

  “No!”

  The angel rips from his chains and kicks Noata in the gut.

  It berserked.

  Why?

  Noata flies into the auditorium. The wall crashes down as he smashes in.

  The dust settles, Noata lies in a pile of rubble. He coughs and he raises his head. He’s covered in dirt and debris. Dust clings to his sweat covered face.

  He struggles up to his feet. Behind him, the room is filled with civilians, black, white, tall, short, men, women and everything in between, holding the only belongings they have.

  The people he’s supposed to protect. They all stare at him in fear. The angel lands in front of him and kicks him again. Hard.

  He crashes through the wall again and he hurtles out the building.

  Outside Noata lands face down on the street. He struggles to his knees.

  He has to protect them. He shakes but he’s not hurt. He has to protect them with this power.

  The angel lands in front of him in a poof of dust.

  It screeches, getting ready for a kick.

  “Run!” One of his teammates runs and leaps on the beast. He hangs on for dear life.

  “Go to Serena!” He says as the angel kicks and buckles. The angel shoots off into the sky. Maybe he isn’t alone in this after all. Noata jumps to his feet.

  He looks around, where to go?

  What to do next?

  “The ship!” he yells. He turns and runs toward the auditorium and—

  An explosion forces Noata back as flames consume him. A low thundering boom is heard over head. The flames disperses and the smoke clears.

  Noata is curled up in a ball under his shield’s protection. He’s not that hurt, just a few cuts and bruises. He has fast reflexes.