The Resistance- The Complete Series

by Nathan Hystad

  He spun the ship just in time as two pulse beams narrowly missed his hull, then his wing. He let out a roar as he pulled his ship around, the G force threatening to make him black out. He blinked repeatedly and arrived behind the recent attacker. He blasted it at the same time that Robin confronted his target. There was only one ship left, then it Shifted away, leaving them alone.

  Flint swung around, leveling out and heading back toward the satellite. They didn’t have much time. A message might have escaped by now, but maybe, just maybe, they could get to it first. The path was clear, and suddenly, there were no visible bogeys in the vicinity.

  “Let’s get this done, team,” Flint said into his mic, then spotted the satellite through his viewer without the use of his HUD.

  He started to fire toward it, but the pulses didn’t make it there. Six Watcher ships appeared between him and the target, taking the brunt of the assault on their shields. Robin pegged off one on the right as six other Fleet fighters arrived in time to make it a full-on skirmish.

  Flint tried to ignore them all, leaving the fight with its even odds. He rounded the ship below the lowest Watcher vessel and ducked under them, emerging beyond the fight and only seconds away from the satellite. He fired at it, his fighter’s thrusters burning hot as he bypassed the transmission unit. He’d hit it, but it might still be operational. He had to go back.

  With a long loop, he went toward it again, shooting away. Three red icons flashed in close proximity to him. They’d Shifted there, and he was all alone. He ignored them. All that mattered was hitting this tower and killing their transmission capability.

  The icons disappeared as the rest of the squadron arrived, fending off the newly Shifted Watchers. These guys were good. Well-trained. Flint would have to give Ace a hug for figuring out they could adjust the simulators to match the Shift drives. That was, if he made it out of this alive.

  His ship roared over the target, and Flint let his bombs loose. They found purchase on the fifty-foot-wide satellite’s platform, and exploded on his detonation. Flint scrambled from the destruction and headed back toward the hangar, where the others would already be arriving. He wanted to shout out in happiness at the first step being completed, but there was still too much to do. Too many things that could go wrong.

  Ace

  Ace assessed the lander and peered out the viewscreen. He was surrounded by muscles and guns as the six Marines were suited up, wearing bulky armor, ready for anything the Watchers could throw at them. Bull was among them, and Ace felt safer with that knowledge. The other four pilots who’d trained on flying the Watcher vessels were also crammed in there. Flint was the sixth, and he was supposed to meet them inside the hangar. Ace hoped he did.

  The outpost space station was getting huge in the viewscreen, Watcher fighters emerging from inside, only to be challenged by the Fleet fighters. Ace watched helplessly while people he now considered friends were taken down by Watchers, but he pushed the dread away. They could count bodies when it was all done, and grieve then and only then.

  “Everyone get ready. We’re approaching in five… four…” The lander pilot was a Marine too, and Ace gripped his stunner tightly. He was also in a suit made for planetside battles. The helmet covered his head, and the mask left room for him to see while showing him a display on the bottom right, so he knew what was going on around him.

  He took a few quick deep breaths of the suit’s recycled air and shifted his legs, trying to get the blood flowing and ready for his exit. The enemy ships would be tucked away inside, unless every one of them had been manned and brought into space. If that was the case, their mission was going to be all the more difficult. They were counting on the element of surprise for any remaining vessels left in the hangar.

  Ace watched nervously as the lander made it through the enemy defense wall, only being hit with fire once. The ship shook and lurched as it crashed into the floor of the hangar inside the Watcher outpost. Bull manually opened the lander’s door, and Ace felt the pressure change instantaneously. Marines and Fleet pilots all poured out of the small ship like armed clowns from a car, Ace in the middle, pushed to the hangar floor by their momentum.

  It was chaos around him, and Ace hardly knew what was happening. They were taking fire as the group of eleven moved across the bay, firing back. Finally Ace shook his head clear and focused. He was there to get into a Watcher fighter and bring it back to the Eureka. He wasn’t going to fail.

  Ace scanned the room, which was at least forty meters in height. It was six times as long as it was tall, and there were still dozens of Watcher fighters lined up along the room’s distant right edge, about as far away from the team’s current position as they could be. He noticed there were five or six Watcher soldiers inside the room with them. He expected there’d be more, and soon, if they didn’t rush.

  “I don’t think they realized we’ve brought the fight inside. Everyone separate,” Bull said, his deep voice echoing in Ace’s helmet’s speakers.

  The enemy soldiers were firing toward them, but they were too far away for accuracy. Ace guessed they didn’t want to destroy their own hangar, if possible. The Marines led the pilots to the left edge of the room. Ace noticed two of the Marines slipping away behind them, armed with explosive devices. None of the Watchers saw this as Bull and the others fired at the defenders.

  The next two minutes were a blur to Ace. At one point, the Watchers were close enough to take aim, and one of the Marines fell back after being shot, the energy blast foreign and deadly. It took off the man’s arm, his suit instantly sealing itself off. Ace heard the man’s tortured screams in his earpiece and wished they would stop.

  Bull took down a Watcher with his rifle, and soon there were only two of the enemy left. The man who’d lost his arm let out a scream and ran at the Watchers with a death wish. He fired away with his rifle, one-handed and on a mission. One of the Watchers went down, then another. Ace tried to watch as they sprinted across the room toward the enemy ships idly waiting at the end of the hangar. Eventually, both the Marine and the enemy soldiers fell to the ground in heaps.

  The room went eerily silent for a moment, the only noise the constant whining of an alarm. Ace thought they were in the homestretch. His legs pumped as he followed the others toward the ships; his suit weighed him down, but his practiced muscles went through the motions with ease.

  They were fifty meters away from their destination when a door slid open and enemy soldiers poured through, running between them and the vessels they were sent to steal. Ace was able to see them in detailed action. They were all tall, maybe even taller than the captured one Wren had tested the virus on. Long arms suckered to immense weapons, hell-bent on killing each and every human standing in front of them. Ace knew it was over.

  These creatures weren’t just imposing, they were out of a nightmare, alien soldiers from the dark imagination of a faraway god. Ace felt fear. Not the fleeting kind from his childhood, but a deep resonating fear he knew he wouldn’t shake until they’d killed as many of the enemy as they could.

  The Watcher soldiers hadn’t moved, maybe surprised by what they’d found waiting for them inside their invaded hangar. Ace wanted to tiptoe around them, get into a ship, and fly away, never looking back, but didn’t get the chance. They started shooting toward the Marines and pilots as their senses hit them, and Bull stepped in front of everyone as the others ran for cover behind a stack of large metal crates.

  Ace could hear them advancing, their heavy footsteps clanging out on the metallic floor.

  “Incoming!” a voice called into Ace’s earpiece, and he craned his neck back to the bay entrance. An EFF-17 entered the hangar and began firing at the soldiers in the center of the floor. In seconds, there was nothing but loose wiring and a charred black hole where the Watchers had been standing. The fighter lowered on top of the messy destruction, and the cockpit flew open.

  “Flint!” Ace yelled as the man hopped down from the Fleet vessel and headed toward the alien
ships. Bull grinned at Ace and set down an explosive behind the crates.

  “Go now! Move to your ships and get out of here!” Bull shouted. Two Marines ran with them, and Ace felt protected for the time being. Flint was the first to arrive at the destination, and he didn’t stop for small talk. He entered the vessel as he’d been taught, and Ace watched as the ship powered up.

  Ace took the ship next to it, setting his gloved palm on the outer edge of the door and forcing it open. He stepped in, hoping there was no waiting pilot inside, ready to strangle him with those five-foot-long sucker-covered arms. It was dark and quiet as he entered the cockpit. It was oddly familiar to him after the countless hours of training. He heard chatter through his speakers. More Watcher soldiers had arrived. Many more. They had to get out now!

  Ace didn’t worry about anything but the mission, as he’d been taught. They needed these ships. Flint was already bobbing away and through the exit. Ace activated all the switches and tapped the right icons, his muscle memory taking over at this point. He flew over Flint’s vacated fighter and made for the exit, where a couple of the remaining Marines were getting back into their lander.

  Minutes later, Ace was halfway back to the Eureka, his heart in his throat, with only a partial memory of what had just happened. He heard Bull say, “All clear” in his helmet’s speaker, and the outpost began exploding in the viewscreen’s lower-left-corner rear-view. It started out in the hangar side, but soon the entire wheel was decimated.

  Ace counted the ships beside him. Five. They’d done it. They’d stolen their six enemy ships. The question was, had the Watchers gotten a message away in time to warn the others?

  25

  Flint

  “Do we go now?” Flint asked. They were on the bridge.

  Captain Barkley shook her head. “Let’s rethink things, Flint. We just lost a lot of people. We need to make sure each task is being handled properly.”

  “If they got a message out, they’ll have too much time to prepare if we delay at all,” he argued back at her.

  Wren witnessed it all with interest. She saw it all unfold from the bridge and felt like a coward, hiding under her mother’s skirt as the real war was fought. Ace and Flint had put themselves right into the heart of it, and she’d done nothing. She wouldn’t be hiding forever, though. Barkley hadn’t approved this yet, but Wren was determined to be the one unleashing the virus when the time came. It had to be her.

  “If,” Barkley started, “if they got a message out, we’re probably screwed either way. Harry, what’s the count?”

  “We lost seventeen fighters and pilots, as well as four of the Marines,” Harry Tsang said, and Wren glanced over at Ace. He hadn’t looked well since she’d met them in the hangar upon their return.

  “Considering the results, I’d say we couldn’t have asked for better,” Barkley said. Wren noticed the woman was growing a hard exterior, which might be needed to get things done, but it didn’t seem like the wide-eyed woman she’d met just a few months prior.

  “You couldn’t have asked for better?” Ace asked quietly. “How about nobody dies? That would be asking for better!” His voice went from that of a mouse to a lion in mere seconds.

  Flint raised a hand, looking like he’d step in, but decided against it and sank back to his seat.

  “Ace, I understand you lost friends today. I did too. We all did, but we’re all gone unless we do this. You understand that, right?” Barkley’s voice had lost its edge. Wren was happy she still had some common sense left in her.

  Ace lost his fight and stared at the viewscreen. Wren wanted to go over and hug the young man but stayed put. It wasn’t the right time to treat him like a child.

  “What’s next?” Ace asked, resignation in his small voice.

  Barkley perked up. “Chief Engineer Tomas is going to show us the final product.”

  Tomas adjusted his collar, where white wispy hair crept out from his chest, trying to escape the confines of the Fleet uniform. The man’s hair was receding, and he ran a nervous palm over his head a few times as he stepped toward the large viewscreen.

  “Their communication tower is on the opposite end of the moon outpost. The moon is the farthest one of three revolving around the Watchers’ planet. By Earth-to-moon standards, it’s distant but large. With twice the diameter of our own moon, it’s four times as far away from its planet.” Tomas tapped a console, and a blueprint image of the tower appeared on the screen.

  It was huge, or at least larger than Wren would have guessed. It looked like a city block, with small buildings erected on the crammed square, as if real estate were costly in that part.

  “The technology seems fairly archaic, even more behind than what we’d use, but it works, and sometimes if it isn’t broken, you don’t fix it.” Tomas tapped the screen again, and a small device appeared front and center.

  “How do we stop it?” Flint asked. They’d been through this a few times, but only in the early stages of planning, so Wren understood the gist of what Tomas was going to tell them.

  “We have four of these.” Tomas pointed to the image of a hand-held device on the viewscreen and continued. “When triggered, the spike will shove out of the lower half of this hardware, fixing it to the surface of the moon. We need all four of these devices to be planted at the corners of the tower, one meter away from the edge, and when they’re all down, we’ll activate the field. This will allow transmissions to arrive and give the impression that their transmissions are still leaving.”

  Barkley cut in, leaving Tomas standing there wiping his brow. “If we do this right, the outpost won’t know they’ve been tampered with until it’s too late, and they’re all dying in their beds.”

  The sentiment left Wren feeling cold.

  “I’m ready to soar in and drop the virus,” Flint said.

  “We’ve realized it won’t be so easy,” Wren said, taking over. “Once we calculated the sheer size of this outpost, the number of Watchers down there, and the ventilation system’s true patterns, we now know we need to drop the virus from two entry points.”

  “Two? That means someone else needs to come down. How likely will it be to have two broken-down Watcher fighters from the faraway base show up at once?” Flint asked, clearly not liking the change of plans.

  “I’ll do it,” Ace said without hesitation. Wren could tell the young man was anxious to get moving, feeding off Flint’s energy and vibe about the mission.

  Barkley shook her head. “No. We need someone trained for this. We were thinking Bull, but he’s going with you to the tower.”

  “Me?” Ace asked. It was the first Wren had heard of it, but she wasn’t surprised. Ace had proven himself over and over, and Barkley was going to send her best chance on each mission, whether they lived or died. Wren couldn’t fault the woman in a time of war.

  “Are you okay with that?” Barkley asked, and Ace nodded, keeping quiet. Bull was standing behind Flint, cross-armed, looking larger than ever. He gave a prompt nod as well, and the subject was over.

  “Who, then?” Flint asked.

  Charles had been so quiet, Wren had forgotten he was even there. “I’d like to go.”

  “Wait, Charles. I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Flint said.

  “They will be expecting life forms. The secondary ideal virus drop is nowhere near the hangar you are planning on entering. Drop me from the lander. I will time off for ten minutes, preprogram a chute, and when I power on again, I’ll be near the virus zone.” Charles laid it all out, and the room sat silent for a moment, contemplating it.

  “Done,” Barkley said, and Wren felt her chest tighten. This was getting too real. Flint, Ace, and Charles were all going to the surface this time, while she once again stayed in the relative safety of the Eureka.

  “What else do we have to go over?” Flint asked.

  They zoomed in on the air intake stations from their blueprints and carefully went over the plan once again. Wren watched silently, hoping her ca
lculations were right. But first, they needed to get to the surface and unleash the virus to see.

  Benson

  Benson coughed a wet gurgling noise and wiped his mouth with a forearm. The room was hot and stuffy, but he found it comforting now. He was like a strange zoo animal, acclimating to his new surroundings. He often thought about escaping or being rescued, but each time, he dismissed it, fully aware that he’d miss his cell too much if that were to happen.

  It was the first time in his life that he could just exist. He hadn’t given up completely, but a large part of him did think this was his new reality. He’d eat here on this dirty floor and sleep in this crusty corner of his cell until his brain turned to mush and his ambitions sweated out of his forehead, until he was nothing more than a simpering fool on the ground.

  His often-animated discussions with himself told him he wasn’t far off. One more day, maybe. One day from finally losing his mind and giving in to the Watchers. Was that what they wanted? He wasn’t so sure, since they didn’t talk to him.

  “Benson, old buddy, you still have a lot to do. A lot indeed, if you want to lead the human race from the bowels of their current predicament.” He spoke and found he wasn’t sure if he’d said it in English or the alien language. He was losing it; that much was becoming abundantly obvious.

  A bang reverberated off his cell door, and Benson sat up straight. It had been a long time since anyone had come to bring him from the confines of his room.

  He stood on wobbly legs and took a moment to assess his situation. His thighs were so skinny, his calves emaciated to sticks. What had he let himself get into? He’d had such grand plans, and he’d been epically foolish to believe these creatures would negotiate with the likes of him. His hands darted out in front of his body, and he stared at the unfamiliar hands before him. Were those his long, skeletal digits? The speckled skin didn’t seem like his own; more like that of an old man.

  Something snapped inside Benson as the door swung wide open, revealing a hefty Watcher. He didn’t even bother to point his immense weapon at Benson any longer. It was pointless. They all knew Benson was weak and helpless.