by Don Cook
During the evacuation, the remaining adults — all military-trained reservists — lined up before Isokk and Khraa.
Isokk instructed them, “You know the run. We’ll board our hover-bikes and each take separate back-route paths, linking up at Alph Air Base. I’d sooner all have us arrive separately than if we all go together in one group where they can get us all at once. You know the line-of-command. If I’m taken out, my wife’s your commander. Questions?”
An agreeing silence befell the team.
Isokk said, “The god be with you all. DISMISSED! LET’S RIDE!”
Each reservist, including Isokk and Khraa, scrambled to board his or her motorbike-like maglev hover-vehicle and started them up. They then sped along the back areas away from the road to nearby Air Base Alph through the ruin-adorned countryside.
CABIN OF TRI-LEVEL SCHOOL HOVER-VAN
“Any god-loving kids here better start praying now!” said Hemm, with blended partial cynicism and panicky hope that there was a Supreme Being.
The god-fearing adolescents and adult shelter-chaperones on board prayed hard as Hemm hit the hover-van’s accelerator and sped towards the Base-Town Alph Disaster-havens. The horrific melee of combat exploded around them and flashed through their windows as Mephistula’s mega-squadrons swooped down from space and fired their ray-guns without mercy upon the Expedition’s base-towns, archaeological sites, many of the air bases, and other structures, annihilating most of them in furious flames.
Some of Mephistula’s fighters were destroyed in the air, but most of the Expedition’s frontline fighters had been literally vaporized, many of them either while the fighters were parked or while lifting off. Frightened chatter from pilots in combat came over the hover-van’s radio as their defense fliers, despite the pilots’ best efforts, were being picked off ruthlessly as if the battle was a turkey shoot.
“How bad is it, Hemmy?” Level-3 Warrant Officer/Dr. Iske-NuTann, a junior archeologist-male chaperone asked the combat-harried Hemm, who bravely attempted to desperately evade and dodge the invaders’ gun-blasts by driving with calculated lunacy.
“Does this answer your question, Isekey?” Hemm said sardonically as a blast shook the vehicle.
Shurrah, scared that he was about to die, decided to make amends with “the god.” He bowed his head in repentant prayer and said in scared rapidity, “Dear Yeshvah, please forgive me for even considering going along with Svettie and the others about the campout. It was wrong and I should have said something. And please forgive me for everything else I did that was wrong and against you. I don’t know how this will all turn out, dear Deo, but if you can take my soul, you can have in the name of the Father-Creator, the Redeemer-King, and Spirit Supreme. Sobyit!”
Meanwhile, god-reluctant/bad-girlish Svetlia, who sat next to Shurrah, was worried for her little sister Aleeta, who was on the hover-van with the Mid-level (middle school) children, as well as for her mother and father who were heading for the Air Base.
“Hemmy,” Svetlia asked in fear and worry, “what about my sister Aleeta?”
“Svettie,” Hemm said with paternal reassurance, “your sister will be okay. Have faith, girl. Have faith.”
An explosion to the hover-van’s left side shook and rattled the vehicle fiercely.
“Baby, baby, have faith,” said Hemm with nervous calmness as an enemy fighter swooped down, fired on the Tri-Level School hover-van and vaporized it.
ANCIENT RUBIAAR IV ROADWAY #1-A
Velbya drove bravely through the ray-gunfire from above, trying to deliver the Mid-level hover van and the tween-aged Mid-Level schoolchildren, including Aleeta and her “puppy-love” boyfriend Opio-Tyarr (also aged 10), as well as their chaperones to the assigned disaster-haven.
A blast from one of Mephistula’s fighters suddenly hit the hover-van’s maglev-stabilizers and sent the vehicle spinning and careening out of control into a ditch-like roadside depression. The Mid-Level hover-van tumbled violently for several minutes until it came to rest in an inverted position.
Aleeta and Opio saw that everyone else in the van was either dead or appeared to be dead. Opio wept, thinking sadly that everyone in the van was dead. Aleeta, strangely enough, was only in shock, but came out of it quickly, and shook Opio.
“Opio!” shouted Aleeta. “We gotta get outta here! Opio! OPIO!”
Opio snapped out of his grief and said, “Thanks, Aleeta.”
Opio undid his safely-belt, but Aleeta couldn’t undo hers. Aleeta was scared.
“Opio!” Aleeta screamed. “I can’t get this belt undone!”
“Wait!” said Opio, as he saw a piece of broken window glass. “I’ll cut you out!”
Opio took a white scarf-like cloth from a dead girl’s neck, wrapped it around his hand, grabbed a shard of broken glass and cut Aleeta loose with it.
“Let’s go!” Aletta shouted.
“What about the rest?” Opio said.
“Can’t you see, Opio?! They’re all dead! Let’s scramble!”
Aleeta scrambled out of the wreck, followed by Opio. Both got themselves to safety and ran like crazy away from the hover-van.
By the time the kids were 30 yards away from the crashed hover-vehicle, Velbya, dazed and disoriented, also climbed out of the wreck, and collapsed unconscious behind a rock just as the Mid-Level hover-van exploded.
A hundred yards away, Aleeta and Opio watched as the wrecked hover-van and the bodies of their classmates and chaperones burned to a crisp.
“What’ll we do now?” Opio asked, with tears in his eyes.
Aleeta, out of the corner of her right eye, noticed a towering space rocket behind a nearby bush behind the ruins of a country gas station-like facility, ready for launching.
The spacecraft, called a “love-rocket” by the planet’s extinct inhabitants, was designed for sex in space by a Hugh Hefner-minded aerospace engineer-industrialist who also ran his own Playboy-type adult entertainment empire that included the manufacture of spacecraft designed for sexual indulgence. But the spaceship was also capable of indefinitely prolonged spaceflight while its occupants were in suspended animation.
“Look!” Aleeta said. “You know those love-rockets the Rubiaar IV people built? The ones with a sleep-mode, that our parents were working on?” Opio nodded yes, as Aleeta pointed to the rocket as she said, “There’s one over there. I know it’s ready to fly.”
“Looks good” Opio said.
“C’mon!” Aleeta said. “let’s go!”
Aleeta and Opio ran to the two-person spacecraft. With her telepathic abilities, Aleeta summoned a massive amount of strength, part of which she mentally transferred to Opio.
“Go!” Opio shouted, gentlemanly encouraging Aleeta to climb first.
Aleeta scrambled up the aerodynamically built-in notch-ladder on one of the towering spacecraft’s fins with a speed even she never thought she could have. Opio, with that same supernatural strength, followed her up the ladder speedily.
Once the two were at the top of the built-in ladder, Aleeta turned a lever beside the outer dual-hatch that made it slide upward. Once the hatch was fully open, Aleeta scrambled into the love-rocket first, followed by Opio.
CABIN OF TWO-PERSON LOVE-ROCKET
Aleeta climbed into in the left seat, and Opio got into the right seat, as they fastened their safety-belts and prepared for suspended animation.
Suddenly, Flitty, whose feline senses told her something was terribly wrong, flew with bat-like swiftness into the rocket’s cabin.
“Over here, Flitty!” Aleeta said to her winged pet. “Into the pet-sleeper!”
Flitty leapt into the love-rocket’s suspended animation compartment specially built for small pets by its Rubiaarian manufacturers, and curled up tightly. Aleeta put a small band around Flitty’s left hind-paw.
The small band on Flitty’s paw, activated by pressure on the wing-cat’s hind-limb, injected a sleep-life-support vein-seeking needle safely, harmlessly and painlessly into Flitty before the pet-c
ompartment’s glass door and the outer main hatches quickly auto-slid shut at the same time.
While Opio began to have second thoughts about the Rubiaarian spaceship, Aleeta, having watched her parents and their colleagues perform successful un-crewed test flights during their studies of the spacecraft, confidently and quickly carried out with unbelievable precision the liftoff procedures she had memorized off by heart.
Opio asked with skittishness, “Are you sure this thing’s —?”
Aleeta, knowing exactly what she was doing, hit the main switch. The instrument panel lit up, and the love-rocket was ready for liftoff.
“Does this answer your question?” Aleeta said, with girlish smugness.
“But how —?”
“I just watched Mommy and Daddy do it. Lots of times. Now, life-bands!”
Aleeta and Opio donned the ship’s life support wristbands that connected them to the ship’s suspended animation life-support systems and put them into a deep sleep. In the pet-compartment, a sleep-gas placed Flitty into a deep sleep before.
The ship’s cabin and pet-compartment quickly flooded with an indigenously-formulated viscous clear-green biochemical suspended animation life support fluid as all of the love-rocket’s systems auto-readied for launch.
REAR OF ANCIENT RURAL SERVICE STATION
OFF RUBIAAR IV ROADWAY #1-A
The ancient yet still fully-functioning love-rocket, with its stealth systems fully activated, blasted off safely into space and closed in on the starry skies above, streaking upward at maximum speed.
Meanwhile, its flaming afterburners demolished and burned up the ancient filling station-like business until it was nothing but charred, flattened, flaming ruins like most of the rest of planet. At the right altitude, the ship’s amazing high-powered engines switched to super-cold dry thrust mode as the love-rocket continued to dash towards space.
MID-LEVEL/ATTACK ORBIT AROUND PLANET RUBIAAR IV
With Aleeta, Opio and Flitty safely in suspended animation — and equipped with a presently fully operational miniaturized space probe scanner-and-photo-video recording system built into its electronics systems by Khraa, Isokk, and a small host of KERC scientists, engineers, and technicians sending its findings into its mind-boggling multi-octillion yottabytes-vast recording/memory system capable of infinite lossless data compression — the love-rocket successfully evaded the detection devices on Mephistula’s squid-shaped starship, speeding past the outermost moon that orbited Rubiaar IV with ease as the fires of invasive warfare raged below.
And as a result of escaping from Mephistula’s machines of war, the love-rocket began its serene, vastly protracted space odyssey...
RIP ENEMY FIGHTER #1 COCKPIT
“R-I-P-One to Supreme Mistress!” Fighter Squadron leader RIP-1 reported, as it briefly detected Aleeta and Opio’s love-rocket, which falsely registered as unmanned due to its deception/anti-detection devices — and then instantly vanished from RIP-1’s sensors.
“Supreme Mistress here!” Mephistula said.
“Sensors briefly detected a two-person spacecraft that just lifted off from an abandoned road vehicle-refueling station and blasted it to bits, and then just vanished.”
“Vanished?”
“Affirmative, Supreme Mistress. Contact no longer registers.”
“Never mind that contact, R-I-P-One!” Mephistula radioed. “Attention all RIP’s and QXT’s, this is Supreme Mistress! Regroup, seek, and destroy Commodore Elheem!”
Squadrons QXT and RIP regrouped with deft swiftness and went after Isokk.
ISOKK ELHEEM’S HOVER-BIKE,
ANCIENT RUBIAAR IV ROADWAY #1-A
“Big-Chief to Right-Hand, Big-Chief to Right-Hand” Isokk radioed Khraa desperately as he dashed on his hover-bike to the Disaster-Haven. “Report status.”
“Right-Hand here” a sobbing Khraa radioed, with trembling voice because Svetlia and Shurrah had been killed and Aleeta was registered as missing. “We’ve lost 98.44-over-100 materiel, 75-86-over-100 personnel and younglings.”
Isokk, speeding along the ancient, was overcome with grief at his Expedition’s attack-losses as he asked bravely, “How bad is it, Right-Hand?”
KHRAA-VEH VEN-ELHEEM’S HOVER-BIKE,
ANCIENT RUBIAAR IV ROADWAY #1-A
“Hover-van with Tri-Levelers — LOVE-LORD, IT’S AWFUL!” Khraa screamed. “THEY KILLED OUR BABIES!”
“STAY IN THERE, MY BRIDE!” Isokk radioed in reassurance. “OVER?!”
“Copy, love-lord” Khraa said, while regaining her composure. “Am 12.33 moments from Alph Air Base. Will meet you there.”
RIP ENEMY FIGHTER #1 COCKPIT
“Locked on Commodore Elheem” RIP-1 radioed. “Firing, now!”
ISOKK ELHEEM’S HOVER-BIKE,
ANCIENT RUBIAAR IV ROADWAY #1-A
“BIG-CHIEF TO RIGHT-HAND! BIG-CHIEF TO RIGHT-HAND!” Isokk radioed Khraa in desperate terror as RIP-1 swooped down towards him. “MEPHISTULA IS ON MY GLUTIES! CAN’T KEEP HER OFF ME! CAN’T KEEP HER —!”
RIP-1’s blast-ray struck and vaporized Isokk and his hover-bike into fiery oblivion before RIP-1, with attack warrior callousness, dashed back into battle.
KHRAA-VEH VEN-ELHEEM’S HOVER-BIKE
ANCIENT RUBIAAR IV ROADWAY #1-A
“NOOO!” Khraa screamed and wailed, as the scanner indicated Isokk was killed.
Khraa knew that her entire family and most of her expedition were now either butchered by Mephistula’s forces or missing in action.
MEPHISTULA’S FIGHTER COCKPIT
“R-I-P-One to Supreme Mistress” sounded RIP-1’s voice over the radio. “Have terminated Commodore Isokk-Elheem. Repeat, Commodore Elheem is terminated.”
“Excellent, R-I-P-One!” an elated Mephistula radioed before she continued, “Attention all fighters, this is your Supreme Mistress. Surviving Kannatikan Expedition members are either dead or in hiding. Enemy fighter-strength is mostly destroyed. We shall exterminate them later. Track Captain Veh once she arrives at second-line base and attack. But take her alive as per orders! All remaining squadrons are to regroup over Rubiaar IV’s central sea-region and await further orders! Supreme Mistress out!”
KANNATIKAN RUBIAAR IV EXPEDITION ALPH AIR BASE
“This is Bronze 1 to Blue 2!” radioed “Bronze 1”, the last surviving Expedition Aerospace Defense Frontline Fighter Unit Commander. “Most frontliners are gone!”
Along with the five other spacesuited scientists-reservists (including Khraa’s daring Jesus-as-Flash Gordon-alike exo-metallurgist-adopted younger brother Level-2 Lieutenant/Dr. Yesh-Veh) and the Base’s ground crew, their spacesuited and handsomely graying leader Commander/Dr. Har-Nyxxlon listened to the last surviving Frontline Commander give his dire, grim panicking report in the heat of combat.
All of the reservist scientist-pilots on the Base and their ground crew was gripped with terror as “Bronze 1” reported in a panic, “Most of us frontliners are wiped out, Blue 2! IT’S UP TO YOU SECOND-LINERS IF OUR EXPEDITION’S — ARRGH!”
A deafening blast in the background sounded from Har’s comcorder, quickly followed by a shrill, piercing noise and then… silence. Har, a normally fifty-something-looking sedentary-type male socio-archaeological metallurgist, was profoundly shaken by the abrupt loss of communications with the Frontline Commander known as “Bronze 1.”
“Blue 2 to Bronze 1, come in! Come in, Bronze 1! Bronze 1, come in!” shouted a mega-anxious Har… yet there was no response from “Bronze 1.”
MEPHISTULA’S FIGHTER COCKPIT
“Attention all fighters!” Mephistula radioed her surviving robot fighters. “This is Supreme Mistress! Converge on Alph Air Base immediately to destroy remaining Kannatikan resistance!”
Mephistula pressed her fighter’s joystick accelerator and led her fighters in a mad dash towards the targeted air base, with no regard or concern for the g-forces pressing upon her demonic body.
“Soon, Captain Khraa-Veh…” Mephistula said with a menacing sneer.
“Soon…”
Mephistula let forth a witchy cackle befitting of her diabolical character.
KANNATIKAN RUBIAAR IV EXPEDITION ALPH AIR BASE
“Reports coming in, Commander” spoke Level-1 Chief Petty Flight Officer/Field Lab-Tech Geeka-Gatobs to Har, as the tall, platinum-blonde short-haired woman ran to him and gave the standard chest-crossing right-arm-to-left-shoulder salute. “All frontline units are gone, but some orphaned frontline fighters have survived and are regrouping.”
“Strength-numbers of orphaned fighters, CPO!” Har said.
“About 100, lord!” Geeka said. “Look! Here comes Captain Veh!”
Khraa sped up to Har and Geeka on her hover-bike, stopped, dismounted and quickly walked up to them before Har and Geeka saluted Khraa, who returned her salute.
“Captain, thank the god you’re okay!” Har said as he saluted. “What about Isokk and the kids?”
“They’re all dead, Harry. Any other reservists from Alph Base-Town make it?”
“Negative, Captain” Har said with heavy sadness.
“None of them?”
“Just you.”
Khraa, stunned by the news, steeled herself and asked, “Fighter-strength?”
“Most of the frontliners are destroyed.”
“Remaining fighter-strength?”
“One hundred frontliners still in the air, the seven of us — and that’s it!”
Khraa was stunned at the grim news. She then thought up a plan of attack using random flight-and-strike patterns against Mephistula’s Shrion robot forces. It was the only way her forces might win this battle with near-impossible odds against their foes.
Khraa faced all the pilots and said to them, “If we’re all that’s left, then LET’S GO!”
The six spacesuited pilots scrambled to their older, outdated yet still effective Amkerian-built KF-18 Stingfly space-fighters that looked like vertically standing three-finned darts, each with a globular cockpit-cabin the size of a small two-seat car nestled within the fins.
Khraa touched her wrist-device and was very briefly enveloped in an orb of blue light. Then, once the light-orb disappeared, she was also spacesuited, and scrambled to her Stingfly spacecraft Blue 1 that despite its own age, it, too, was still a formidable fighter-craft.