“Where are we?” I ask her.
“You would call it Quantum Space. We are in the space between the universes, or at least, this is how my people describe it. I am no scientist.”
I marvel at the alternate universe. I’d love to have all my instruments with me, but I get the feeling they would pick up nothing.
“Seven days of this?”
She nods. “Luxilla is some three thousand light years from Earth.”
“Wow. That’s got to be the coolest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say.”
She blushes looking down at the panel. “Would you like to learn how to fly? I’m afraid I’m not that good with it myself, but I can show you what I know.”
I stare at her in open-mouthed amazement for a second unable to form the words required to respond.
Luke leans in over my shoulder, placing a quick peck on my cheek. “Lux, I don’t think there is anything you could have asked her she’d be more willing to do.”
The gate opening into Luxilla is the opposite of leaving Earth. A black square forms in the infinite white of quantum space. On the other side I can see stars and light. I hadn’t realized how claustrophobic nothing could be!
“Re-entry to normal space in ten seconds,” Lux says over her shoulder. We’re all standing, seven days felt like six days too long. Even with our gear and food, the small ship was entirely too cramped for this many people. We’re here though, driven by a desire to free our friend and stop the Th’un.
“Entry,” Lux says in her soft voice.
The ship shakes, but other than the view screen turning to the black of space, nothing happens. Lux taps a few keys and the ship rotates on its axis to point at a planet. A giant mud ball in space. Brown, dirty atmosphere swirls beneath us. It looks like a pool of muddy water.
“Is this one of the outer planets?” Tessa asks.
“No,” Lux whispers. “This is Luxilla, my home. Oh stars, what have they done?”
“I take it the place isn’t supposed to look like that?” Monica asks.
Lux shakes her head. “It is not unlike Earth, a shining blue jewel in space.” She stops, dropping her head in her hands and her shoulders start to shake. “What have they done to my home?”
I give her a moment to process her grief. “Epic, plug into the ship's sensors and show me the solar system.”
The view screen shifts with a 3D overlay. The planet vanishes and eleven more take its place in a top-down view. Their system is very much like ours with some significant differences. Luxilla is about twenty million miles closer to her star, a big yellow beauty that according to Epic’s diagram is slightly larger than Sol. Three planets orbit her in the Goldilocks zone, and all of them are swirling brown messes. Planet Six is flagged as a giant asteroid belt and from all the transponder readings I’m picking up I’d guess the Th’un are mining heavily out there as well. All in all, there are over a hundred ships in the system and uncountable drones buzzing about.
“Epic, filter the transponders based on ship size and show us the ones most likely to work for our plan.”
Calculating.
“Lux,” I whisper to her. “I’m sorry, hon. We will do what we can.”
She nods, not looking at me. “Will my world ever heal? We are a people of the sun, Amelia. We strive for it, grow toward it. Light is our language and our life, I look down there and all I see is death.”
I glance at the screen, Epic is still calculating what we need and a plan forms in my head. I roll backward. “Beep beep,” I say with a smile. The team makes a hole until I’m in the main room.
“Okay team, here is the situation. We have two goals here. One,” I point to Lux’s planet, “save Luxilla, stop the Th’un here. Two, save Kate, keep the Th’un from invading Earth again.”
Luke raises his hand. “How is that even possible? Look out there. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met, Amelia, but look… they thousands of ships. I had hope before we came here but now I think the best we can hope for is to save Kate…”
I look at the faces of the team and I can see agreement in their eyes. Well, except for Pythia, who somehow manages to still have cell service and keeps her nose buried in her phone. I refuse to believe it is magic. I just can’t think of how she does it, yet…
“I know this looks bad, but trust me when I say, we can do this. We’re standing at the base of a mountain looking up at the peak poking through the clouds, and the impossibility of climbing it. But I’m here to tell you, the impossible isn’t what you think. It is only the ‘what I haven’t done today’.”
Lux has come out to lean against Tony. I have all their attention now, which is good. “Epic, initiate.” The liquid alloy flows around me, covering my skin from toe to neck. My skin crawls as the alloy solidifies on the surface yet remains flexible enough for me to move. I lift my foot out of the chair and stand. “We conquer the impossible one step at a time. One foot in front of the other and we do not quit until we are looking down from the top of the mountain on the pile of Th’un bodies we’ve left behind. We will rip them apart until they learn to leave us alone.”
I shed my loose shirt and pants standing before them in my silver armor clinging to me like thick paint. “The Th’un think they can take whatever they want. That no one will stand against them. We proved them wrong on Earth, and we’ll prove them wrong here.”
“But how?” Monica asks in her quiet voice.
“By doing what we do best. We work together as a team, we focus on our goals, and we don’t give up. Not ever, until the Th’un either surrender, or we hurt them so badly it will take a generation for them to recover.”
They’re smiling now. Luke looks at me with wide eyes and a sly smile. He winks when he catches me staring. I cough hiding my cheeks turning pink with my hands for a second. He always can do that to me.
“Okay, here is what I’m thinking. Lux,” she looks up at me. Her eyes are wide and full of water. “Can you contact your people on the ground?”
She nods.
“Good. Let them know help is coming. Tony, you, Tessa, Monica, and Lux go down there and destroy as much equipment as you can. Between the four of you, I think you’ll have no trouble causing them some pain.”
“I like it,” Tony says with a grin.
“Uh, you won’t be there?” Monica asks.
“No. The two of us,” I point to Luke and myself, “are going to—”
Three,” Pythia interrupts from her seat against the hull. She raises her phone, light flashes through the room as she snaps a pic of the group.
“Three.” I sigh. “Okay, the three of us will board a Th’un ship and use it to gain access to their solar system. Once we’re there we’ll find Kate, rescue her and destroy any targets of opportunity on the way in and out.”
“What could you possibly destroy that would matter to them one bit? Look at my home, they’re destroying it.”
I sympathize with her, I really do. “Lux, they have to send that stuff somewhere. And something has to power those gates on both ends… trust me. There are lots of things we can blow up to make a difference.”
She gives me a weak smile before turning back to the cockpit to contact her people.
“We’ll sit down wherever Lux needs us to and drop off the supplies the four of you need before we head out.”
Tessa raises her hand, I sigh, it’s a cold day in hell when she asks permission to speak. “I don’t mean to rain on your inspiration parade, Amelia. But what happens if you don’t come back? What, the three of us spend the rest of our lives fighting someone else's war?”
“It’s a good question, Tessa, thank you. The answer is, maybe? First, it isn’t someone else’s war. We might be in Luxilla space but the Th’un came to our home. If we can stop them here, or even tie up more resources they may not be able to afford to come back to Earth. Also, in the unlikely event we don’t return, we will be leaving this ship here. Worse case Lux takes you back to Earth. But I really don’t think that is going t
o happen.”
She shakes her head, running a hand through her short hair. “I’ve seen you do some amazing things, boss lady, but this seems impossible. What makes you so sure?”
I grin. “You know me, Tessa. I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.”
The ship buffets as we pass through the upper atmosphere of Luxilla. I’d expected a beautiful world slightly marred by the Th’un, I never imagined the hellscape that appears below as we descend. Giant tracked factories the sizes of cities crawl across the land spewing thick black smoke behind them.
“How are we supposed to fight that?” Fleet asks.
I wish I knew. I wave my hand through the air signaling my suit to open up broad spectrum scanning. Holographic images piped through my optic nerve fill my vision. The city-sized refineries move across the land at a constant five miles per hour.
“Lux, your cloak is up, right?”
“Yes, but it isn’t as good in the atmosphere as it is in space.”
“Understood, can you bank around and circle that big one over there?”
She nods, delicate fingers flying across the control panel. Immediately the ship banks in a long loop circling the refinery.
Temperature, humidity, materials, exhaust, all of it flashes across my screen as onboard sensors pull in the data and Epic analyzes it for me. I wish I could have our connection back, but the danger is too high. I’d fry my brain in half an hour. When we get home I’m going to find a way around that little limitation.
“They travel in a straight line, and if I’m right, they have some kind of smelter inside the refinery. They probably melt everything and send it through their quantum gate in liquid state…”
I concur with your analysis.
“Thanks buddy.” I wrap an errant black strand of hair around my finger and think.
Antarctica.
“Got it. Just like when we fought the drone in Antarctica. Drop a dense piece of ice into the superheated liquid and—” I hold my fingers together then out miming an explosion “—kaboom.”
“That should be easy—” Lux lets out a shout and the ship jerks hard to the left. Green laser beams slice through the air after us. I reach for the ceiling, using the armor’s enhanced strength to brace myself. I catch Luke doing the same out of the corner of my eye.
“Hang on, they saw us,” Lux says as she drops the ship low. Another volley of beams slices through the air after us.
“They look like they’re getting closer,” Tony says between clenched teeth.
She drops the ship hard and banks again. Two more beams come so close warning lights flare to life on the control panel. Lux doesn’t have the skill for this. If she were outside flying on her own she could do this but— the ship shakes with a bang as one of the beams connects.
“Lux, all the way to the ground, as low as possible.” I have to yell over the noise of escaping air. She complies dropping the ship to ground level. “Stay level and fly right to your HQ, okay?”
“I can’t! They’ll track the ship to the cave where my people are.”
“Trust me,” I let go and turn firing off the Emdrive and head right for the three-meter hole in the hull. A mental impulse snaps the helmet around my head.
I come out of the hole through the smoke trailing behind the ship. “Okay Epic, let’s make some noise. Full power ECM… Flares!”
The invisible electromagnetic energy snaps to life around me. The suit is capable of putting out enough interference to light up the eastern seaboard. Add to that a hundred flares that explode in the air around me hiding any thermal trail the ship might be leaving.
I give the Th’un a second to lock onto me and I shoot up in the air, trailing flares until the counter reads empty.
Congratulations, Amelia. They are tracking you.
“Right.” A hundred tiny objects separate from the refinery shooting up into the sky before banking around and come right at me.
“Are those missiles?”
Sensors indicate they are manned craft. Fighters, perhaps?
They don’t look like the other Th’un ships, more like coffin-sized missiles with no control surfaces and one long barrel running the length of them. Either way, they’re dangerous. I take a left angle away from my fleeing friends.
“Time for a new trick. Fire off Lockheed and have him follow the ship.”
Affirmative.
The armor shifts around on me as mass is added to my back in order to form my little dragon. A shudder runs through the suit as he ejects. I rotate for half a second to make sure the small two-foot-wide drone is a go. He’s sleek, and low profile with thin wings and a single micro-Emdrive, with a complete stealth and ECM suit as well as a short-range plasma blaster inspired by the warbots. With his own ZPFM he can last forever in the field. He’ll track the ship for me so I can find them later. As small as he is, there’s no way for the Th’un to follow him, not with me making all this noise.
The fighters light off their chem lasers bringing my focus back on them.
“Full power, particle beams.” The charge shoots to one hundred percent in an instant. I kick in the Emdrive and grunt as the four engines push me forward in a jolt. The fighters speed up pursuing me as I sway left and right trying to keep them from vaporizing me. The world shakes as we blast through the sound barrier, once, twice, three times.
Amelia, they are separating, half are going above us to strafe you. The other half are widening out in a line to prevent you from doubling back.
“That is exactly the plan. I’m going to jink up, take a few shots and then drop back down and act like they’ve got me boxed in. Keep an eye on the sensors and dodge if you need to.”
Roger.
Between the four Emdrives and the stabilizers in my hands, I have amazing agility in this suit, not to mention speed. Combined with my kinetic manipulators augmented by alien tech I can do things I never could in the Mark III. Like make a near ninety-degree turn going eighteen hundred miles an hour.
The air booms around me as the jets whine through the turn. I roll over and fire off a series of particle beams. I don’t really have time to aim because for a half second I am going to be standing still relative to their forward momentum. Blue beams split the air and I see one of the ships dip suddenly and bank as smoke pours out of the back. That’s all the time I have as they return fire. Their aim is high, forcing me down as I resume my forward momentum.
They are four hundred meters behind us. So far they are unable to lock onto the armor but the closer they come the more likely they will score a hit.
“Epic, I feel the need for speed. I want them going as fast as they can.”
I grin as I mentally nudge the Emdrive to even higher speeds. Boom after boom shakes the suit as I pass another couple of sound barriers. The vibration from the buffeting blurs my vision but I see the airspeed indicator peg Mach 10.
“Woohoo!” I shout.
Amelia, at this speed we cannot maneuver and they are still gaining.
“Good.” I do some quick calculations in my head. “When I say, dump all available power into the kinetic shields.”
Amelia, what are you planning.
“Trust me, you’re going to love it.” Mach 10 isn’t break orbit speeds but at this altitude it certainly generates a lot of friction and vibration. My whole body tingles with pins and needles. “Not much longer.” I have one eye on the scope watching them pull ever closer. Epic sways us hard to the right to avoid a barrage of green lasers burning through the air.
They can now accurately target us Amelia.
Excellent. I nudge us to the right a little bringing the lead craft directly behind us.
“Epic…” I hold for just a second… “Now!” The thrust from the engines vanishes as all power switches to the shields. I curl up in a ball wrapping my arms around my knees and ducking my head.
The ship hits us like a missile. Unfortunately for him, I have my shields and he doesn’t. The lead ship vaporizes in a mass of fire and flames. The
jolt torques my spine and rattles my teeth. Systems flash on my HUD vying for attention but nothing is permanently broken.
Amelia, re-engage thrusters?
“N—no…” I manage to choke out between clenched teeth. “Fall, let them think we blew up. Full stealth mode. Kill everything active.”
We fall, the ground comes up fast as the wreckage of the ship is strewn behind us. The aliens are busy throwing their engines in reverse trying to slow down and turn around.
“Now, Epic, full power.” I flatten out and grunt as the thrust kicks me in the butt. By the time they’ve overcome their velocity, bank and turn around, I’m a hundred miles away following the RFID on Lockheed.
You are quite lucky that worked. I calculate a thirty percent chance of total systems failure. Which would result in your immediate death at hypersonic speeds.
“I was pretty sure it would work. I ain't exactly feeling great though.”
What should we call that maneuver? In case we need to use it in the future.
I grin. “Let’s call it… Panama.”
How apropos.
“I like to think so.”
The landscape stretches out behind me as every second separates me by miles from the Th’un. Hopefully they think I’m dead and with me, their security threat.
Lux’s cave complex is impressive. A massive system of ravines not unlike the Grand Canyon back on Earth runs through the Eastern side of their continent. The refining cities haven’t arrived here yet, but the vegetation that once lavished the area appears to all be dead from the lack of sun. From the way Lux talks about her home I imagine it was a garden paradise. I would have loved to see it like that instead of brown and rotten. Who am I to talk, though, I live in a dessert.
Just one more reason to stop these animals. I’m not an ecologist but the damage to this world might be more than they can recover from.
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