Titan Fleet: The Invictus

by Jason J Black

  As the Invictus approaches the settlement and begins to try to find a suitable place to land, they notice a lot of the scrap metal mountains were just gone, and some of the buildings were destroyed and smouldering, a sooty black smoke drifting like a snake in the air, twisting and turning as they pass through the clouds. Pace sets the Invictus down where a large mountain of scrap once stood. The ships giant feet make large indentations in the ground, and dust and smoke waft into the air, covering everything around for fifty feet. The roaring engines finally rest, and like sleeping lions purr for a few moments until Pace shuts them down. Nova was grateful of the rest; she had fallen asleep in her chair the whole journey and everyone had just left her to rest, and she had now just been woken up by the landing.

  “Someone go and wake Rusty and give him plenty of coffee. Then suit up, I think there has been a fair bit of trouble here, by the looks of things.” Sam stands up and makes his way out of the bridge to wake Rusty.

  Nova rubs her eyes, not remembering much due to the drink she had with Cassy.

  “Sorry, I must have dosed off, but I see we are in one piece, so what’s going on?” Pace contacts the two robots on the ship.

  “Padley and Anc, I want you to guard the ship and protect Nova, she will be at the ready. There could be looters, so keep your eyes open and scan the area for anything useful to us. Nova, I’m glad you had time to rest.” Pace then turns to Cassy. It is nice to have his sister around and the ship feels more like home now she is on it.

  “Come on, squirt, we have work to do.” Cassy smiles. She had not heard those words for a long time and it gave her a good feeling again and lifted her spirits up.

  “Joseph, I need to contact my husband. He is still working on the mining planet and does not know if I am alive or not. I must get word to him and Lily to prepare to leave before it’s too late.” Cassy looks at Pace with a great deal of concern.

  “Of course, I did not know about your family, who is Lily?” Standing up and joining Pace, Cassy realises how much they have both missed out on.

  “Lily is my little darling. She is just four and is a little angel, so you my dear are an uncle and you will love meeting Lily and my husband. Come on, let’s get moving, we can chat later. I need to get to a main terminal to send word.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Rusty is half hanging upside down with drool dripping out of his mouth, his hat still on his head looking like a cone, and he is still not letting go of the bottle.

  “Hey, Rusty, time to get up, you have important work to do, you got to catch up with your friend in Greyfields.” Sam is bent over, looking at Rusty’s reddened face when his eyes open.

  “You must be joking, I have slept for like five minutes maximum, what are you trying to do to me, torture me or something?” Sam waves a cup of coffee under the nose of Rusty and he begins to sit up and straighten his hat out and takes a sip of coffee. “You go down and I will join you in a moment.” Rusty drops the bottle to the ground, sad that there was none left, but then smiling because he had had a skin full and it had been a while. After about ten minutes pass, Rusty appears down in the loading bay, where the others are waiting for him.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  “So let’s get this done, the sooner the better.” Pace lowers the rear door and they all walk down, gauntlets at the ready, just in case of trouble. The wind is kicking up and dust bounces off their half-visored helmets. They head toward a large grey building with a red stripe down the side of it, the governors house. There were many blaster holes in the outside walls and a few burnt rovers lay broken and twisted in a line, as if they were used as a defence wall. Dead bodies also lie in the dirt, some citizens and some Thorn Guards. They approach the main double doors into the building, and as they get near the door, they are all caught off guard by blaster fire from the defenders in the building. Rays of deadly light whizz past their heads and hit the buildings and vehicles behind them, exploding shards of metal and brick all around them.

  The Invictus crew dash and hide behind the destroyed rovers for cover and Rusty shouts out in his loudest voice, “Now cut it out, you lackeys. It’s me, Rusty, the bringer of wealth.”

  One of the defenders spots Rusty’s hat and recognises it to be his and shouts, “Hold your fire, it’s Rusty, stop!” More heads pop up and from around doors, and one after one they come out of the building to greet Rusty.

  “Come to lose more money again, Rusty eh, thought you weren’t gonna gamble anymore.” A tall man approaches Rusty and holds out his hand to shake with Rusty. The man had been wounded but was still in high spirits. Rusty greets him well.

  “No, we are here this time for something far more important that we need your help with.” The tall man turns and beckons them all into the house. The inside is a mess, holes in the walls and furniture broken everywhere.

  “As you can see, we have had problems of our own. If you can find a seat, please sit.” Rusty remains stood, while the others perch on what they can.

  “This is Robert Pembroke, the Governor of Greyfields. What’s been going on here, Rob?” Rob sits in his leather seat, one of the arms hanging down broken, but still he finds comfort.

  “Well, Eve happened my friends. They came in and took anything that was any good, along with all the food in our stores. They killed a lot of our people without a care. We have heard that the other settlements have been hit too and many are dead. She took all the resources, where to, I don’t know and why I don’t know, but I plan on finding out.” Rusty opens up his litepad and activates the projector viewer for all to see.

  “I will tell you what’s going on, Eve’s plan is simple. The resources here are sparse, they have been for years, but we share and we survive. But Eve was not happy with that, she has been rebuilding a Titan ship in the dead zone for years and has had supplies brought in from a mining planet and has kept it all secret. She sent up several ships to find new planets, I presume to live on, four ships in total, two salvage and we have just found out that two were warships.”

  Rob leans forward, “You say warships, I was not aware of this, nor of the Titan ship, so she plans to blast off and leave us to rot, eh, well I got news for her.”

  Rusty displays more on the screen. “On the salvage ships, one of which is our ship, she places military troops for protection, or so she says, but the military teams had planet destroying missiles with them to destroy Foloss after she had left, but we found all this out and put a few spanners in the works. However, in the process we were attacked by a number of large ships belonging to the blues, I even fought off one blue single handed. The fight was immense and I showed it what for. Well, to cut a long story short, the mother ship is heading this way to kill Eve, due to a bad deal going wrong, where Eve traded people for tech. Am I right on that part, Cassy? That is what you wrote in the report.” Cassy nods.

  Rusty continues, “We may have two days at best, maybe less, I have been asleep since then. This is my Captain, Rob, his name is Pace.” Pace walks over to Rob and shakes his hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Captain, do you have a plan with all this?” Rob asks. Pace takes control over the litepad.

  “I do, yes. Just here is where Eve’s ship, the Fahrenheit sits waiting for lift off and if what you say is true, she must still be loading that ship with supplies. Now, it will hold a lot of people, tens of thousands at a guess, we need to get aboard the ship, take control and blast off before the blues get her, and not leave a trace, because they will follow us given the chance.” Rob clicks his fingers to a woman and tells her to radio the other settlement right away, and with this Cassy asks for permission to join the woman to radio her husband which Rob grants.

  “If they have left Hawkesbury, then they must be near White Crest. I heard tell of a tunnel once there, through the mountains that led to the Dead Zone, but it was the Dead Zone and laws were laws, so I thought it was an old wives tale until now. If we can round up people from Hawkesbury that are left behind, and survivors here and other
small farmsteads, then we will have a sizable force to tackle Eve.” Rob looks to Pace.

  Pace closes down the viewer. “One problem, you have no weapons to deal with Eve’s guards, there are thousands of them.” Pace puts the litepad into the hands of Rusty once more and pats him on the back for doing a great presentation. Rob shares a sly grin and stands once more.

  “Many years ago I started to put aside a few things, for if things went wrong and if you follow me, I’m sure you will agree we have plenty of fun things for the populace to use.” After opening a giant steel door, Rob leads everyone down some metal stairs. They reach the bottom to find another steel door which they open. As they all pass through, they are shocked to see a large warehouse full of weapons and armoured rovers and jet bikes, along with armoured suits and weapons made for war. There was also a giant lift to raise the floor up to the surface. The giant doors above must have been covered with scrap and dust, so went unnoticed to Eve’s forces and that was why the governor’s house was so well guarded.

  “Now that is nice.” Pace is busy eyeing up an armoured rover. He had lost his last one when he fought his first blue. Its large tracked wheels were made for carrying heavy items and sure enough, instead of carrying heavy scrap, it carried two twin-linked blasters on the top and the hull was thicker too.

  “They are nice, top of the range shields, cloaking device and can run anywhere. I can see you appreciate great machines. It’s yours, take it. I have two anyway and can’t drive them both.” Rob tells Pace.

  Cassy is looking at a jet bike, which was more her style, and running her hand over the seat she has fallen in love with it. She had followed the group down stairs, when she noticed the room above was empty on her return, after contacting her husband. Rob walks over to Cassy and switches the jet bike on and starts it up. The engine is loud and strong as Rob revs it up. As he does so, he talks to Cassy so the others can’t hear their conversation.

  “Did you contact who you needed? I trust all is well, oh and your captain, why is he half blue? Can he be trusted? I just need to know who I am working with, you see and trust around here needs to be seen. Now, I know he is friends with Rusty, which goes a long way, but I am just doing my job.”

  Cassy replies, “Yes, thank you and Norma has contacted some of the settlement and they are making their way here as we speak, she is still trying some others. The blue, well, he is my brother and has been infected by the blues, but he is fine. You can trust him for the rest of your days, no matter what colour he is, it is what is inside that matters, not what you see.” Rob nods and tells the group that they can take whatever they want and need as a gift for warning them, and he then walks over to Pace and the large rover, which now Pace is sat up in with the door open. Rob looks up at Pace, who is beaming with joy at his new present and leans in to disconnect a black square object from the underside of the rover.

  “What’s that, Rob?” Pace looks down, he is sat quite high up, at least five feet high off the ground.

  “Sorry, I was just being safe, because you were blue and I did not know if I could trust you or not. If there was any trouble, I could have made you go boom, that’s all.” Pace for a second feels insulted that he was not trusted, but then finds the funny side of it, and also understands why Rob had precautions, which was fair enough. He had noticed the device as he stepped up the rungs into the rover, and knew it was a bomb, but wanted to play along for a while to see if Rob said anything.

  “I understand, but don't take me for a fool. There is a second one under the arch at the rear, and also one on my sisters jet bike. I think, from now on, we should all just be honest with each other, eh?” Rob realises he can’t get much past Pace and agrees with him and taps Pace on his foot that hangs down out over the door, at the side of the rover.

  “Agreed. Now, let’s press on, shall we. We have plenty to do.” Pace turns his back on Rob and slowly steps backwards down out of the rover and down the steps to the floor once more.

  “That runner over there, I could use that too, if you don’t mind. We have no means for escape if our ship gets into trouble.” Rob has plenty of runners and supplies. It is just food supplies that he is running low on.

  “It’s yours.” Rob walks over to two robots stood in their bays, motionless and activates them both. He waits for them to come online and then gives them orders to move things and help where they can, and they move off about their work.

  “Pace to Nova, things are ok here, so feel free to come over and grab some supplies and get Anc on repairing damage to the ship. We need to use this window of time to get the Invictus tip-top again.” Nova nods and turns off her viewer on her gauntlet and sets the ships alarm, so that if anyone goes near it that should not be there, they will set the perimeter alarm off. The large doors open above Pace, moving the bits of scrap and dust to the side, and the floor lift groans under the weight of the machines it has to bear. It has not been used much in recent times and rusty dust falls down off the humongous corkscrew device, but eventually the floor lifts up to meet land. Pace drives the rover off the lift, along with Cassy on her bike, both with smiles. They pull up next to Rob.

  “We are going to check out White Crest, if we can get close unnoticed, and let you know what we find, ok. We need to recon before we send in the guns.” Rob is next to Pace in his rover, the two men shouting slightly at each other because it is still blowing dust around them. They are sat side by side with their doors open when in front of them, just coming in to view, they see a mass of rovers and jet bikes and people walking.

  “There is your army, Rob. We will get going and be in touch soon. I will leave you to explain to the others, after all, you are a governor and it is what you are good at, eh?” Smiling with a cheeky grin, Pace and Cassy shoot off towards White Crest, leaving two lines of dust in their wake.

  Chapter Sixty

  Rusty is busy too. He has commandeered a robot to take components on board the Invictus. His plans are to increase power output and make the ship harder to damage in a fight, something that will pack a punch too would be nice, he thinks to himself. He passes a pile of scrap and notices an old large tunnel boring blaster. Due to its incredible power, it had to be used from space where there is no gravity or else one blast would send it off like a shooting star, and would split the planet in two.

  “Oh yes, that’s the boy. I can modify this. We need a crane, robot, and a few miles of cable.” Rusty inspects the old machine. It was a long time since he had even seen one, let alone one working. Yes, it would be extra weight to the ship, but would give an alien vessel a run for its money for sure. The robot had worked fast and in no time at all it returns with a crane, which Rusty fixes metal straps and hook to, and it is ready to hoist its lost treasure up. The metal straps creak and the crane hoists the lump up to the front of the ship, just below the new wormhole dish. Rusty stands on top of it, swaying in the wind, and looking where to place the first welds, to attach it to the ship. The robot holds it steady and Rusty begins work. He wants to impress everyone with his skills as he felt embarrassed by his drunken state.

  Nova is also looking around and notices Rusty atop a swinging lump of metal.

  “What are you doing to my ship? You go careful up there, ok. What is that thing?”

  Rusty shouts back down, “It’s a surprise that you’ll like, believe me.” Nova raises her eyebrows and lets the crazy man carry on being happy, as long as the ship is in one piece, that is all that matters.

  “Oh Rusty, the rear thrusters need work too, thanks.” Nova continues along her way, pulling a hover trailer behind her to carry things back to the ship. After about half an hour of work, she notices a pair of shoes. She can’t believe her eyes and looks around her to check that no one is looking at her. When the coast is clear, she scoops up the shoes and stuffs them under her jacket. She can’t wait to inspect them later; it has been a long time since she has seen shoes like these. With a spring in her step, she finishes her rounds and heads back to the ship, eager to t
ry on her prize.

  The governor is busy greeting people as they arrive and he and his men distribute weapons and share what they have. There are thousands of people now camped out in the area, some small fires are now flickering, the wind has gone and the dust has settled, and there is the sound of laughter and people chatting and babies crying. There was going to be a meeting at 7pm to discuss plans, so people were cooking early and sharing food and stories and it was not yet dark, at 1600 hours there was still a fair amount of daylight left on Foloss to get things done.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Cassy and Pace are near Hawkesbury’s walls. These huge walls were built to keep out creatures that would otherwise prey on the people inside. Pace decides to take a quick look around his home, if he could, and maybe pick up a few personal items, but as they pass through the gates, all they see is death and destruction. Buildings have been destroyed, people litter the streets, bodies broken, burned and dismembered. How could people do this to each other, when there was an alien threat looming? Surely Eve needed every human to trade or fight, but no, it appeared not. They were all nothing but a number to her and as long as she was ok, then people suffered.

  Pace and Cassy leave their rides behind at the gates and wander down the streets towards the market place. The stench of bodies rotting away in the heat of the day was unbearable, so they activate their helmets for fresh air to breath. They reach the market place, which is in much the same way, stalls burned and everything has been looted at the cost of life. They stand in the centre of what was once a thriving city, which had its struggles but is now torn and barren, beaten and lost. The feeling of sadness weighs on their hearts like a sinking anchor, making them both feel sick. How could a fellow human be so destructive to another human? Each person who was dead had family and friends, and for each person dead a hundred people would be in mourning, if they were alive after this massacre. Every generation lay together in this bloody mess, many people Pace had known for a long time. Hopeful to find survivors, they both press on; searching alleyways, in houses and shops, but everything had been picked clean.