The guns the Jupitains used, were Cyrisian-grade, advanced protonic laser weapons, that looked sort of like aek-971s from Earth, but were far more sophisticated, and sleeker… with a much larger cartridge that charged energy particles, and a half oval-like shape, connected to both the top and bottom sides of the barrel.
The other Jupitain ran towards Mark but was shot in the stomach and chest. The blasts of energy hit the Jupitain spot on, but they didn’t affect it. It roared and charged again. It got so close that Mark hit it with the butt of his rifle in the head. It barely slipped the visor off, but the force from the impact still caused the Jupitain to disintegrate.
Its body melted into liquid goo. In another room, six Jupitains came running out, guns blazing. Mark took cover behind the armory’s doorway and watched the red bursts of energy pass by him, inches away. His ears were flooded with the intimidating roars of the Jupitains. He took a deep breath and took a black hole grenade off his waist.
He looked at the hallway; the Jupitains had stopped shooting but were getting closer. It was now or never. He armed the bomb and threw it right in the middle of the Jupitain squad. It imploded. First, it was just a small hole, and then it grew into almost the same width as the hallway. The Jupitains were sucked into the black hole. Some of the floor and walls had been slightly pulled at and scrapped, but the damage wasn’t too substantial. Then the next thing Mark knew, he was running towards the arena. He was going to rescue his friends if it was the last thing he did.
The two hundred Jupitains that had been in the arena had left to go after Mark. All of them, so when he ran back in he found that everyone was still inside the compartment. Two Jupitain guards ran towards him, but he blasted them until he eventually hit their visors, reducing them to mere piles of black goo.
“What are you doing? Why’d you come back for us?” Lewis asked from behind the bars.
“I’m your crewmate; you think I was just going to abandon you?”
“Kind of, yea,” James said.
Mark shot the lock with his laser rifle and freed everyone inside. “How are we going to get out of here!?” An alien shouted from the group.
Mark scratched his head, “I didn’t really think that far ahead.”
Uliski looked around, waiting for someone to come up with a plan before the Jupitains realized where Mark was. No one did.
“For a Demon ship this big, there have to be multiple hangars… more hangars…” Uliski started finally.
“More ships to escape in, so where’s the nearest hangar?” Mark asked.
“How is everyone here speaking English?” Lewis scratched his head.
“I… I don’t know, I’m not very familiar with this warship’s model, but…”
A squad of fifty Jupitains was sprinting through a nearby hallway, roaring the entire way. They were headed straight for the group.
“Everybody RUN!” shouted James.
They started sprinting towards the doorway Mark had made the monster charge into. “Mark, even if we do find a hangar, how are we supposed to know how to fly one of those fighters?” James asked, trying to catch his breath.
Jupitains were sprinting behind them and shot two stragglers. They collapsed, falling to the floor. The Jupitains were out for blood; one of them had even started running on all fours, getting close enough to touch.
“We’re not gonna be able to outrun them!” James shouted.
“I agree.” Mark said, “But this might slow them down.” He hurtled a black hole grenade into the mob of Jupitains, and it sucked in almost every Jupitain near it. He threw another, and another, until the remaining Jupitains behind them scattered away, looking for a better approach. The group was down to only twelve people left; the others had been killed or captured again.
The soldier-looking alien Mark had seen earlier tore the visor of the Jupitain that was on all fours clean off. It dissolved into goo in midair. When it seemed like no one was following them anymore, the group stopped. Everybody was breathing heavily, trying to catch their breath.
“We’ve passed dozens of hallways, I don’t think we’re ever going to find a hangar,” said an alien from the group.
“Admit it; we’re lost, you have no idea where we’re going!” Another one shouted.
Mark was getting frustrated, he had just rescued these people, and they were complaining?
“What do we do now, we’re dead aren’t we?”
“Why’d we listen to you? This was stupid. We had a better chance in the arena!”
“They’re going to kill us; they’re going to kill us!”
“Everybody shut up!!” The soldier alien shouted, stunning even Mark. “Put your heads together, think! Hangar has to be by hallway checkpoints… large gaps in the warship. There should be one through a hallway we just passed, Nephor-8 I think it was.”
“H-how do you know that?” Mark asked.
The alien grimaced, “Experience.” Mark noticed his uniform better; it looked immensely beaten up and torn, but through that… like some kind of alien government, he didn’t know about. He looked like a Jupitain invasion survivor.
The group didn’t argue anymore after the alien’s outburst. They started walking, then sped into a slow jog. Then the Jupitains found them, approaching from two sides, a hallway in front and beside them.
“Take a left; move move!!” The soldier alien ordered. When the group ran into the hangar door, it was almost shocking that they hadn’t found it earlier. It was huge. A doorway, tall enough to be a three-story building blocked them from being able to go in.
“It’s a dead end!” Mark shouted.
“Maybe not.” Uliski pointed at a control panel next to the door. Jupitain roars echoed through the hall.
“I’ll keep them busy,” Mark said. He ran towards the source of the roars and started throwing black hole grenades. Uliski kneeled next to the control panel.
“Can you open the door?” James asked.
“I can try,” Uliski replied. He ran over to the panel and started pressing buttons. “Maybe we can use one of Mark’s black hole grenades to suck in the door?”
Mark came sprinting back over to the group, “I’m out of grenades, they’re coming!” A Jupitain approached the open entrance and roared. It rushed towards them, claws ready to impale the closest victim. Someone kicked at it but was quickly dragged away. Mark fired aimlessly at the mob, only able to slow them down.
“Let me try,” Lewis said. He looked at the control panel but had no idea what any of the strange symbols meant, so he opened the panel’s energy chamber and pulled out everything he thought was important. The door let out a loud screech and started to open.
“Huh… didn’t expect that one to work…” Lewis said to himself, sarcastically.
“Come on everybody run!” The soldier alien shouted. He didn’t need to tell them again. Everyone scrambled inside. Six Jupitain fighters were lying on their engines, looking like filled in arches with a door. James ran over to the nearest one, looking back to see Mark throw his rifle at the mob of savage Jupitains.
“It overloaded; get inside now!” Mark shouted. He ran next to Uliski, who put his sphere up to the ship’s door panel, deciphering the language. He pressed the panel, and the door slid open. Aliens were frantically trying to figure out how to get inside their only escape.
Uliski sighed, “Go get your friend Mark; I know what I need to do.” Uliski ran towards the nearest group of aliens and started helping them. Without his sphere to interpret language, all the alien shouting sounded like gibberish. Before Mark entered the ship, he looked back at the Jupitains, who had stopped chasing them.
They had left to arm themselves. One was carrying a high-powered rocket launcher. It fired, and Mark watched the ship Uliski was on explode. Debris flew everywhere, hitting the ships, and other people, including the soldier alien.
“No…” Mark whispered. “We… we need to go,” he said, trying not to tear up, “We need to go now!” James was already at the contr
ol seat, pressing random buttons. Lewis was sitting on the ground, crammed. The fighter was only meant for one.
“How the hell are you supposed to turn this thing on?!” James yelled. Another explosion roared through the hangar. Lewis tried to squeeze through to look, but James pushed him back.
“Just swipe your hand across the entire control pad!” Lewis shouted.
“I did that already, twice!” James yelled back.
Another explosion.
“They’re getting closer!” Mark shouted.
“Not helping,” James mumbled back.
James swiped his entire hand upwards, and the control pad and the engine roared to life. The ship flew upright, but quickly smashed back down into the ground, crushing nearby Jupitains. It screeched across the floor of the hangar, creating sparks.
“I think that when you fly, you’re supposed to go up!” Lewis shouted, hanging onto James’s seat, trying not to fall.
“This is harder than it looks!” James shouted back. He was holding down two buttons on the control panel that seemed to be the reason they were moving. They bumped into the Jupitain who was holding the rocket launcher, causing it to miss another high-jacked fighter that flew out of the hangar. “How about this?” James pressed a button that looked somewhat like a stabilizer. It wasn’t. The ship burst upward, smashing into the hangar roof. Red lights were flashing in the cockpit.
“Um guys, I think whatever defense systems this thing had are gone,” James said.
“Wait, point us towards the exit, and press that button again!” Mark yelled.
“Again?” James asked, concerned.
“I know what I’m doing,” Mark said firmly.
James pushed the controls up with his finger, and the ship lowered itself. “Are you sure about this?” An explosion from the hangar sounded again, blasting debris everywhere.
“Do it,” Mark said, without hesitation.
James pressed the button, and the ship’s engine ignited, launching them out of the hangar. Lewis whooped.
“We need to get to Mars, they’ll gather the fleet, and we can rescue Imp and Claire,” James said.
Then the agonizing horn of the Jupitains blazed through their ears. Laser turrets from the warship started to fire red blasts of energy. One passed right by them. The turrets looked like a bulky, and thick black metal box, with two barrels poking out of it, that shot out red beams of energy, their power based on the power-level and class of the turret.
“Crap, they’re shooting at us!” Lewis yelled, the hope in his face washing away. The ship that they had seen escape before them exploded before their eyes. James started button mashing the control pad, and suddenly, the interior of the fighter turned blue, and the ship started to turn towards the far reaches of the Galaxy.
“What’s it doing?” James asked.
“I don’t know; you’re driving it. Do something!” Mark shouted.
James started to push random buttons, including the one they used to get out of the hangar. “It’s not working!” James said frantically.
Suddenly, the hum of the engine turned into a blazing roar, and before anyone could react, the ship blasted off, into the mysterious void of space.
Claire, 2027, August 3rd
It couldn’t be real, any of it. A joke for sure. This only happened in movies; she would tell herself. In the end, though, it was all real. Almost thirty hours ago, thirteen year old Claire was eating dinner with her ‘family’, and now she was running for her life. Washington D.C. and New York were the primary targets.
No other state had been attacked, unless you counted the nuclear bomb that was blown up in its silo by a stray Jupitain laser, vaporizing half the state of Michigan. Quickly, Jupitains were spreading across the globe; all efforts to stop them were merely blown out of the sky.
San Francisco, California, where Claire lived, was hit by a small tsunami, luckily she lived downtown, but the damage was still catastrophic. The city didn’t have the news as a warning, just the effects of the Jupitain ships that were destroying navies across the Pacific Ocean. The blasts were hitting the water, causing small earthquakes that led to tsunamis. The water was up to people’s waists, but in the city entire buildings were completely submerged. Then it got worse.
Jupitain fighters had finally arrived. A nearby airbase’s runway was engulfed in flames, and pretty much every other military force in the nation had been used to protect New York and Washington. Claire knew where her sister was, she was her only guardian, and she worked in the city. It was too painful to think about it.
Claire and her sister lived in a small two-story apartment building, the lobby’s floor was covered with water, and she was soaked. The landlord had evacuated everybody to the lobby since it was safer. Sounds of laser guns and screaming came in through the thin walls. Claire held up her hands over her ears to block the noise. She wanted her sister.
“Alright everyone, just stay quiet; they might not notice us.” The landlord whispered. Silence filled the room; the only sound was the movement of people in the water. The screaming and explosions outside seemed to of stopped until a quiet sound of footsteps in the water sounded at the door. Claire closed her eyes. Boom! An explosion echoed through the room, and the double doors flew out of the doorway, hitting three people next to it. Two Jupitain speeders hovered into the lobby, and the Jupitains on them started to roar.
The visor on one of the Jupitains scanned everyone, looking for weapons, but found something else on Claire. The visor turned blue, saying in a surprised human-like voice, “I-is that a Meta-Gene?! Don’t just sit there; take her, alive, kill the rest.” They started to fire. Bodies dropped dead, people were trying to swim away, but the water slowed them down. A Jupitain ran over to Claire, but before it could grab her, it was shot in the visor by a stray bullet.
“Come on! Get these guys out of here!” A small speed boat, carrying three people was entering the doorway; the people on it were firing at the Jupitains. The man who had yelled came in on a jet ski and was armed with an AK-47 and belt of grenades. He was white and was wearing a dirty hoodie, with an American flag bandana covering the bottom part of his face.
One of the Jupitain hover speeders was hijacked by another armed man, who was black and was wearing a torn police officer uniform. He used the laser cannon to fire at other Jupitains. The sound of gunfire filled the room. The man on the jet ski moved over to Claire. “Help me get the youngest out of here!”
A man on a small speed boat let Claire, and two other kids on board. He looked like a hobo, with a long dirty beard, and a wrinkled, stained tank top and torn jeans. The sound of two Jupitain fighters flooded everyone’s ears. They swooped over towards the apartment building, ready to destroy it. The hijacked hover speeder fired at one of the fighters. It destroyed its stabilizer, and the fighter crashed into the one next to it. They both crashed into a nearby gas station, causing a huge blinding explosion. Then Claire saw something she was too scared at the moment to process.
A black Jupitain hover tank was floating over the water, with its eight-inch-wide laser cannon aimed at the apartment. It’s hover tracks were covered by thick black armor, and the turret’s base was also black, and incredibly high tech and sleek looking. The hover tracks curved a little at the edges. “Get out of here!” The man on the jet ski shouted.
The vehicles sped off, Claire looked back, to see her home blown to the ground. That wasn’t the only thought in her mind that she would always process for another nine years… what is a Meta-Gene?
CHAPTER 5
“Where are you taking me?!” Claire asked frantically. She was crying, scared out of her mind. Two Jupitain guards were dragging her across the hallway. They didn’t say a word. The dim red lights were barely illuminating the hall, but she could faintly see a set of doors ahead of her. One of the guards bent down slightly and had the ID scanner on the doorway identify its visor. It scanned it, and the doors opened.
The room they took her in was much brighter, and in
the middle, there was what looked to be an operating table. There was another set of doors on the opposite side of the room, they opened and a depressed looking pitch-black man, with red tattoos all over his face walked in, wearing a metal collar that blinked red every few seconds, and a red lab coat, with a black streak down the middle.
He looked down at Claire, and with a frown said, “Let’s begin.”
“Begin? Begin what!?” She knew that whatever the answer was, it couldn’t be good. The Jupitains holding her viciously slammed her onto the operation table and shackled her hands to it. She kicked around frantically, but one of the Jupitains growled and held down her feet.
“Let me go!” She shouted, half sobbing.
The other Jupitain went into a supply room and came out with a hovering table. It had a strange device on it, that resembled somewhat of a sewing machine. The tip of it activated when the Jupitain pressed a button on it, and a thin, red laser beam ignited through the tip, and to the bottom of the machine. It was a laser saw.
“Wha-what is that thing… what are you gonna do to me?! Answer me!” Claire screamed.
The scientist reached for a cylinder that was by the laser saw device. It looked like just a simple metal cylinder, but it wasn’t hollow. It was entirely filled in with metal. “Use the ray,” He ordered, solemnly.
Then realization surged through Claire. They were going to cut her. The ray was put above her wrist and moved across it. She moaned in pain, and in less than a second, the beam had cut through her wrist. Then, the scientist put the cylinder near her wrist, and for a few seconds, nothing happened. The only sound was Claire crying in pain, but then, the cylinder started to disassemble itself, and connect to Claire’s wrist, transforming into a shining metal hand.
The pain was gone as soon as the strange piece of metal connected to her left hand. Before she could look at what they had done, a Jupitain slammed the butt of his laser rifle into Claire’s head, knocking her out.
United We Stand Page 5