United We Stand

by Christian Messe

  Important hallways were illuminated, stating where they led, and most importantly, the visor highlighted where every single Jupitain on the ship was so that he wouldn’t run into any. The path to the engine room doors was straight ahead. Lewis knew what he had to do.

  He crept through the hallways, looking through empty corridors for Jupitains. When Lewis reached the end of the hall, he came into contact with a large doorway, with a control pad attached to the left side of it. He ran to it and started swiping through random code. The visor he was wearing deciphered the door controls, and Lewis tapped the ‘open’ button. The large set of double doors slid open with a silent swoosh, and Lewis walked inside.

  The engine room was confusingly quiet since the ship it powered was huge. Large containers filled with a red energy source were everywhere, pumping the fuel into the reactor. Lewis guessed it was Compressed Ion Neutrolites. The silent hum of the engine room gave Lewis an almost pleasant feeling. Almost. He walked around, hoping not to run into any stray Jupitains. His visor scanned and labeled essential areas. He scrambled to a control column. About a hundred switches were mounted there, twenty-five on each side.

  “This is gonna be a problem,” Lewis said. His visor scanned each one, naming their function and role. Most of them were switched off, power converters and cooling systems. Then he realized. The visors are mechanical; the ship is mechanical. If the ship turns off, it stops. If the visors turn off, the Jupitains die. There was no switch to turn the visors off.

  “The switches are off, off because they take up to much power, too much power equals a power surge, and a power surge…” Lewis stopped himself, “Me, you’re a genius.” Although he didn’t really know for sure if that would work, thousands of incredibly advanced civilizations had probably tried some type of EMP to shut all the Jupitains off, but none of them worked well… however, Cyrisian tech was all connected, and if the same technology as the visors was overloaded, it might just deactivate all the Jupitains onboard.

  A Jupitain walked up behind him, “You- what is…” Its scratchy voice didn’t get the chance to finish. Lewis flicked every switch up. He went too fast to tell what they did so he hoped there wasn’t a self-destruct one. Some of the switches had security modules that kept them in the off position, but since Lewis was wearing a visor, the security systems let the switches be turned on. The lights started to flicker, and the power generators went from quiet hum to ear-pounding chaos. The sound went faster and faster until it stopped. The lights went out. The engine stopped, and Lewis’s visor turned off, leaving him guideless, and in the dark.

  The ship kept at the same speed, since they were in space after all, but the power had been completely shut off. Some of the generators were blinking, trying to reboot. He limped to the doorway, stepping on the dark, gooey remains of a Jupitain. Lewis took off his deactivated visor and tossed it away. It hit the wall with a clang. The Jupitains were gone, and there was only one thing left to do.

  “I’m coming for you, Red,” He took off through the hallway. If the lights used to be dim, they looked as good as off now. Lewis could barely see anything, so he just kept running straight, hoping not to run into anything. Random areas with energy remaining caused some of the lights to blink repeatedly. Lewis sprinted across the hallways, searching for probably the only thing left that could move on the ship, besides the prisoners. Then, he heard banging. It got louder and louder. Over a hundred prisoners were banging on their cell doors in confusion. A Jupitain had been standing in the middle of the prison hallway and was now a puddle of Dark matter, which was what started the uproar.

  One of the inmates noticed Lewis and called out, “How’d you get free, h-how?! Can you get me out? Get me out of here!” Lewis was glad that guy had a translator sphere. He ran over to his cell and pressed the control pad to open the door, but it didn’t work. The pad was dead, so was the door. It was fixed in the locked position.

  “Sit tight,” Lewis said.

  “No no no, please don’t leave me. I have a family!”

  “I’m not gonna leave you, the door’s locked. I’m gonna find something to get you out,” Lewis looked around, trying to find something that could open the door. He saw the Jupitain’s laser rifle and grabbed it. He aimed and fired at the door, but it just left a small burn mark on the metal. He dropped the gun and looked for something else.

  Then he saw what he was looking for. A large mountable Plasma laser was stationed on top of a metal platform. Lewis climbed up the ladder and sat down in the laser’s chair. All the control pads were blank.

  “Come on you stupid thing, work!” He smashed one of the pads with his fist. All that did was make his hand hurt, “Ugh!” Then the lights turned back on, so bright Lewis had to squint for a few seconds. The system reset. The Jupitains were still puddles, but the visors turned on. Energy flowed between the walls of the ship, but the control pads for the prison cells stayed lifeless. The Plasma laser’s controls though, were fully alive.

  “Alright everyone, back up from the doors!” Lewis yelled.

  “What are you doing?!” One called out.

  “If you shoot me I’ll shoot you back, pal,” Another one said, grudgingly.

  Lewis charged the laser, and fired a beam of energy at the cells, also hitting the walls. The metal melted, creating an unbalanced line of hot energy at the bottom of the doors and walls on each side of the hallway. Without any bottom support, the cell doors crashed into the hall, scattering the floor. All the alien prisoners came running out, heading for the hangars.

  “Thanks for that,” The alien he had talked to said.

  “I hope you get back to your family,” Lewis said.

  The alien chuckled, “I don’t have a family, I just said that so you would free me first.” The alien had grey skin, which looked rough and textured. He also had three scars running down his chin, a natural feature of his species.

  Lewis smirked, as he watched the alien run off with the others. Then he looked away, “Where are you Red?” He picked up the visor that was in the middle of the room, took a deep breath, and put it on… but something was different. The ship’s entire energy system had reset. The visor had rebooted, but it wasn’t controlling him. It was showing him something. An introduction. The introduction to a new Jupitain.

  Lewis saw the giant mothership he had seen on Jupiter; only it wasn’t in the hangar. It was flying in space, surrounded by dozens of other smaller warships. The fleet was fighting something, fighting the United Worlds. They broke through, leaving no one alive. The other warships seemed to stop, but the mothership sped up. He could see the ship pass Mercury, heading towards the sun.

  The bright hot burning star did nothing to the heat resisting shield on the mothership. It got closer and closer, and closer until the ship flew into the sun. For seconds, nothing happened. Then the sun started to shrink, and shrink, getting devoured by… itself, until nothing was there. Then, it exploded. The sun had turned into a full-blown supernova; only it was bigger than that. It wasn’t huge. It was massive.

  The burst of energy vaporized Mercury, Venus… Earth. It didn’t cease. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus… Neptune, it destroyed everything. It didn’t stop there though, the blast reached much, much farther than that. Hundreds of thousands of Solar Systems gone, in an instant, from a star that was only a fraction of the size of most in the Milky Way. The explosion vaporized the entire Galaxy, and kept going, kept going until it reached other galaxies. Lewis saw it all, everything, an uncountable number of lives lost, lost to the sun, his sun. The only question was, why?

  The video feed turned off, and Lewis tore the visor off his head, panting, his shirt wet from sweat. He threw the visor into the wall aggressively and stood there.

  “Help! Somebody help me! I’m in hallway prison section B-56, anybody, please help me!” The voice was coming from the intercoms.

  “Red?” Lewis asked himself.

  He looked around, and noticed that he was in section B-52. He breathed out, and sta
rted running towards the other empty prison halls. His run turned into a full sprint, as he rushed across the hallways of the giant warship. He ran and ran until he found something that made him horrified.

  A row of cylinder chambers, all lined across the right-side wall. The circular doors were glass, but on the other sides there was a thick metal wall, and a small glass viewport. That wasn’t what scared him though.

  One of the chambers had the small glass viewport open on the outside, sucking all the air out. The door in front of him was closed shut though, so none of the air inside of the hallway was leaking out. He saw a dead alien whose body was laying on the floor. His body looked cold; it’s face stuck with a horrified expression. The cold from space was starting to freeze the chamber.

  Lewis looked along the hallway and saw dozens of these death chambers, all with dead bodies in them, like all the air had been sucked out of their body. He walked through, and saw Red, alive, and crying, holding onto a portable control pad. She didn’t turn around, but she still noticed Lewis.

  She sniffed, “T-they were going to kill me, slowly.” She turned around, tears in her eyes, “They were going to suffocate me like the rest of them. They were going to! And they just watched, watched all of them die, no emotion, nothing!”

  Lewis didn’t know what to say. He tried to open the door, but the control pad was blank like the cell doors. He picked up the laser rifle off a Jupitain puddle and fired at the glass. It shattered after a few shots. Red didn’t move. Lewis had to walk carefully into the chamber to avoid the broken glass. He knelt next to her, and the two of them stayed there in silence, until Red said, “My name is Abigail…” she said, “Abigail.”

  “That’s a nice name,” Lewis said.

  “That’s all you have to say? Just a nice name,” she said, sarcastically, but still trembling slightly.

  “Well, what did you expect me to say? We’re not under the best conditions here,” Lewis said jokingly.

  She smiled slightly, “So, what now? Are you still trying to get to the Lore, or have you come to your senses and decided to go back to the United Worlds?”

  Lewis’s smile faded, “If what I just saw is going to happen, then there won’t be a United Worlds to get back to.”

  “What do you mean?” Abigail asked.

  “I put on one of the Jupitain’s visors, and it showed me Karalus’s plan, everything. He’s making sure he eradicates the Kelisians and everyone else in the Galaxy.”

  “H-how is that even possible?” Abigail asked, shocked.

  “I don’t know, but in the video feed it showed a supernova way bigger than they're supposed to get, destroy the entire Galaxy.”

  “The entire Galaxy?” Abigail asked.

  “Everything,” Lewis replied.

  “There’s no way a supernova can get that big, it’s impossible, the entire Galaxy is way too big of a radius.”

  “Where did you learn about the radius of supernovas?” Lewis asked sarcastically.

  “It’s not a special thing to know. It’s common sense.”

  “We almost got killed by a giant worm made of metal that can move pieces of its body in any way it wants, and you’re talking about common sense?”

  “Worm or no worm, stars don’t get that big.”

  “I know what I saw, and I’m not sparing any details, all the visors are reset, you can watch it for yourself if you need to.”

  “No, I believe you. It’s just…” Abigail paused, “It’s just kind of hard to take in our imminent deaths.”

  Lewis stood up, “If we’re gonna die, best to die trying to save the day, right?”

  Abigail looked at him, “What do you mean?”

  “We’re on board a giant Jupitain warship, Jupitain, armed with laser turrets and a giant freakin Ion cannon. In the video, there was an entire fleet of Jupitain warships. They won’t notice whose side we’re on until we’ve done some major damage.”

  Abigail smirked. “You want to attack with their own ship?”

  “Bingo baby,” Lewis said enthusiastically.

  “I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that… I’m in.”

  Lewis started to walk out of the chamber, “Where’re you going?” Abigail asked.

  “To get some recruits,” Lewis replied. He started to run towards the nearest hangar, with Abigail following behind. He ran through the large hangar doorway and saw the aliens he had freed scrambling into Jupitain ships.

  “Listen up you people!” Lewis shouted. They all turned around.

  “What do you want?” One of them asked.

  Lewis walked up closer to the crowd, “All of you here hate the Jupitains right?”

  They all mumbled in agreement.

  “Well I have two choices for all of you, one will satisfy your hatred, and the other will kill you instantly, well the first one will kill you later, but will be satisfying.”

  “If they both result in death I’m out of here,” Another alien said.

  “Well if you go out there, you're still gonna die, unless you have a way of leaving the Galaxy in only a few hours.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Jupitains, aren’t mindless animals, they’re controlled… by some blue bastard. I’m gonna be honest, I’ve got no idea what he wants, or why he’s doing what he is, all I know, is that he’s really pissed off, and he’s trying to destroy the entire Galaxy. More than that actually,” Lewis looked around at the crowd, “This man, almost destroyed my planet, and killed three billion of my own people, and I can reckon that he did the same to all of you. We have a chance, right now, to bring the fight to this guy, and kick his ass into oblivion.” He clapped once, “So, who here wants a share? Before everything we love, is gone.”

  The large hangar went completely quiet; everyone was speechless. Lewis even surprised himself.

  “Well,” The alien he had met earlier started, “I don’t know about all of them, but I’m sure willing to kill some Demons!” The crowd started to murmur loudly, some of the aliens even making an uproar of cheers.

  “Well, then I hope you all know how to pilot a Jupitain fighter, because I have a plan.”

  Lewis and Abigail reached the hangar, with three other aliens who followed them.

  “How’s this going to work?” An alien asked. He looked like a robot, the same species as the Lore Admiral that had died in the Grand Warship.

  “We’re gonna use everything on this ship that can fire, everything. The Jupitains won’t know what hit em till it’s too late. I’m thinking that the guys down there can pilot the fighters, while we fire the heavy artillery. When we get there, everyone targets the mothership; that’s what I saw fly into the sun to cause the supernova.”

  “It flew into a star?” The alien Lewis had first met asked.

  “Yea, pretty heat resistant,” Lewis guessed.

  “No, I mean if he flew into the star, there must be something l-like a bomb inside of the ship, I mean what else could have caused an explosion that dense?”

  Lewis looked at Abigail who shrugged.

  “So, if there’s a bomb inside of that thing, we just need to do enough damage to penetrate the hull, and blow it up early,” The third alien said. She was Kalarian, red tattoos covering her pale, ghostly white skin. She was bald, and was wearing a torn and scratched officer uniform.

  “If it has shields that resist the heat of a star, what will the laser turrets do?” Abigail asked.

  “The Ion cannon could penetrate it; we would just have to fire enough,” The robot looking alien said.

  “How much is enough?” Lewis asked.

  “At least… a hundred times? Maybe.”

  “The cannon will be blown off by then,” Lewis gasped.

  “That’s why we need the fighters to keep a distraction long enough.”

  “That won’t keep them off of us, not long enough for us to fire that many times,” Abigail said.

  “It has to be,” he said firmly.

  Abigail, 2027, Novembe
r 2nd

  “Imptanius? Hello? Can you hear me? Please, Imp…” Abigail started. She was talking into a commlink, through her crash-landed ship. She had crashed into a forest. Tall, snow-covered pine trees surrounded her on all sides. The grass was covered with snow, and she was starting to feel the cold as her adrenaline wore off.

  She had no idea where she was. Her and Imp had been heading for the most clustered Jupitain force, but then, she was shot down, and Imp couldn’t save her. But, she was alive, and lost.

  She started to walk around the area, shivering from the extreme cold. There was nothing, nothing anywhere, just trees, and snow… with cold air that was starting to get unbearable. Then she heard it, the faint hum of an engine.

  “Imptanius?” Abigail asked herself. She looked up, but what she saw wasn’t a flying saucer. It was a cargo ship, and it looked clunky, and run down. It passed over her, almost twenty feet above. Then it noticed her. The ship stopped in midair, and turned around, slowly.

  Abigail panicked and started to run for a nearby tree. She took cover behind one, and looked back at the ship, to see if it was still looking at her. It was.

  “Shit,” Abigail said. It wasn’t Jupitain, but it wasn’t Kelisian either. She had no idea where it came from, or what faction it was associated with. The cargo ship had two large engines on either side of it that turned up and down. The hull was a clunky, rusted looking box, with a small looking cockpit. She couldn’t make out the crew.

  The ship shined a bright spotlight on her position, and she had to hold her hands to her eyes to block the blinding light. She groaned and started to run away from the ship, almost tripping over a thick tree root. She stumbled but kept going. She had a good feeling, that whatever the ship was associated with, it wasn’t good. The cargo ship slowly smashed through the tall trees, causing them to fall over with ease. The spotlight was right on Abigail; there was nowhere she could run.