The general turns to Eve and she reaches out for his hand. “It has always been you and me for as long as I can remember. Maybe we could go and find our own little haven, and populate the planet with good genes. I know how you feel about me and maybe it’s time to think about a retirement plan. I always wanted children and I know you have too. Get me out of here and we will start over somewhere together.” These words were like music to the ears of General Stern. He had always loved Eve, she was all he wanted in a woman but could not ever get with her due to her job.
“You mean you feel the same way as I do, after all these years. I never thought you would say that.” Stern smiles and Eve smiles back, this time hiding another well thought out lie. He would fight harder for her now that he thought she was his lady, and at the last possible moment she would just stab him in the back too. Eve was thinking to herself that once up in space she would pose as a fighter pilot and head for the Fahrenheit for help and safety, leaving the general behind in a pool of blood. He was not her type at all.
“I have always loved you; I was just too busy before.” She touches his face gently. “We better get going; the blues will be here soon.”
Chapter Seventy-Three
Now lined up for a second attack, the Invictus now swoops down like an eagle upon its prey. Eve’s troops are now turning around, so their backs are exposed.
“Cap, why are they turning away from us?”
Pace is looking on his screen, analysing data. “The blue ship is almost on us. If I know Eve, she will be hatching a new plan with that general of hers. Continue attacking her army, we have to stop her, they must pay for the deaths they have caused, and it is what Megan would do for me.”
Nova can see the pain in Pace’s eyes as they begin to well up with tears. More jet bikes and rovers are hit by blaster fire from the Invictus and are sent sprawling across the sandy plains in pieces, littering the whole area in hot shards of molten metal. After about ten minutes of battle the crew of the Invictus spot, with their tired eyes, a second Titan nowhere near able to fly. Eve’s rover boards a ramp at the rear of the ship and a second rover comes to a halt. The men dash inside the Titan, while the rest of the army concentrate their fire on the Invictus.
“Nova, spin her around for another pass. This time, Rusty, you be ready to test that toy of yours.” The Invictus manoeuvre through all the fire and smoke and turns.
“But Pace, we can’t fire this gun here, only in space, she is just too powerful when gravity is involved, we would be ripped in two.” explains Rusty.
Pace is not stupid and changes his plan quickly. “Ok, then we will concentrate our fire on their engine core and make it pop instead.” The Invictus turns and targets. All guns are facing forward and poised to fire. Suddenly the lights on the Titan flicker on and the auto-turrets begin to pump out blaster fire at an alarming rate, and now the shields of the Invictus are being damaged and the ship groans under the added stress.
“Damn it, turn away, we need a new plan, we can’t get even close now.”
Sam is busy firing his turret gun when he suddenly stops and turns to face Pace, and in a calm voice points on his screen. “We could always bring that mountain down on them. The last time I checked, mountains could not fire back. We could approach from the other side and avoid fire completely. Just an idea.” Pace agrees to this plan; it was a fantastic idea.
The Invictus disappears out of sight of Eve’s forces and the cheers and happiness of her men are loud and boost their morale. As a lot of them lay dead in the defence of the ship, one sergeant moves towards the Titan ship to enter, and arrange for his men to get on board to leave. He is mowed down by turret fire, his blood and guts spray his men over a large area. More and more men realise it was a double cross, and also begin to attack the Titan ship in retaliation. There are explosions and carnage everywhere.
“Cap, it seems Eve’s forces have turned on her. They are attacking the Titan.”
Pace is happy for the distraction. “Well, let’s seal their tomb then shall we, the least we can do is bury them.” He says with a grin on his face.
Chapter Seventy-Four
Eve and Stern get out of the rover and now that the turret guns were activated, and a skeleton crew was overseeing the operation of the destruction outside, they had only to strap themselves into the fighter and open a hanger door and blast off.
Eve had one last plan before she left. “General, I need you to do me a favour before we leave.” Stern was unlocking the fighter’s front landing gear for take-off, as he had done the others.
“What is that?”
The engine powers up, so Eve has to shout. “Get to that console and set our little pets free. They will leave no trace behind us. It seems unfair that they have lived underground all these years and we have not used them much since the mines were closed.” The general likes her thinking.
The Kalgoray were designed and bio-engineered by Eve’s scientists, using human and alien genetics, to be elite soldiers against the blues should the blues go back on the deals they had agreed with Eve, and as the blues were coming, they could monitor their effectiveness from out in space and that would buy them more time to get away.
The general runs over to the console and taps in a few things and from another location four large missiles were reading to launch. They would impact the ground, opening it up for the Kalgoray to be set free. They would then wreak havoc on the forces and give the blues a run for their money. Stern turns around and signals Eve that the deed was done and no sooner than this was done, the fighters guns were locked onto him, and a steady hand holding on to the controls presses down hard with an iron thumb, to let loose thousands of knife-sharp laser beams, to stab at the general. In his disbelief, he raises his arms to shield himself, but his blood leaves his body in trails of red streamers, splashing the walls and floor behind him. The cockpit canopy closes and the fighter lifts up on a giant lifter ready for launch. Eve does not even look back. She is still smiling having won the day.
Chapter Seventy-Five
The cloaked Invictus is looking directly at the top of the mountain and opens fire on the white snowy top. It explodes and thousands of tons of rock drop down, bouncing and spitting more and more as it picks up speed. Tons of ice and rock rain down on the Titan and the troops below, like hail stones. Men dodge for their lives, most of them running for cover under the Titan, only to be cut down by turret fire in the process.
The Invictus has a bird’s eye view. It felt good to purge the evil from this place. As the dust and snow settles, the sound of turret fire fades away. About a quarter of Eve’s men have survived, which was a miracle in itself, but Eve’s escape was now not possible, due to the large chunk of rock holding the hanger doors closed. Some of the falling mountain had pierced the Titan and closed off access to many corridors.
Chapter Seventy-Six
Eve clambers down from the fighter and the engine falls silent. She then walks over to the door, her footsteps making a splashing noise as she walks through the remains of the general. Emergency power activates, bringing life support online again, and the dusty air slowly begins to be filtered out by the giant air scrubbers on the ship. Eve activates a hatch door to the outside and looks out, breathing in fresh air, closing her eyes and savouring the moment, until her nose is suddenly broken by a soldier’s fist. She falls back onto the bloody mess that was once the general, and begins to claw for grip to get back up, but all she finds in her fingers is blood and bone. She has tears rolling down her face and her nose is pumping out blood like a broken tap.
The angered soldier dives in through the hatch and grabs Eve by the hair, tearing some out in the process, and drags her back to the hatch, and without any concern smashes her head once or twice on the way outside. The man flings her down onto some rocks face first, and she gets a mouthful of grit in the process. She is now disorientated. Another man puts his foot on the back of her neck, holding her face down in the grit. She turns her head to breath and cough ou
t the rock in her mouth.
“Look! What do we have here? Is it a Prime Lady or a dog that turned on her men, a dog who shot us in the back, a dog who promised us freedom?” A small pool of blood gathers in the dirt around Eve’s face and she can hardly breathe. She is then lifted up once more by her hair and stood upright, gasping for much needed air.
“I’m sorry! The general made me do it,” cries Eve in a last minute lie. Out pops a knife and it is waved in Eve’s face.
“That’s bull, and this here knife is going to find out the truth, slice by slice.” The man draws closer with the knife and he takes hold of her ear, readying to cut it off slowly.
Eve struggles with the now two men on each arm. “Please, please no, I am sorry, please.” The man laughs, and just as he is about to slice the ear he is hit in the back by a blaster shot, which melts his stomach like ice cream on a sunny day, and he falls to the ground. In all the mayhem and destruction and fighting that had been going on, no one had noticed the blue ship turn up in orbit. No one had noticed the thousands of ground troops heading their way and no one had noticed the swarms of ball ships either.
“Kill them not me, you fools!” shouts Eve breaking free and heading back into the Titan, as fast as her feet could carry her. She closes the hatch and heads inside the ship. She climbs over rocks and twisted ship, before sealing herself on the bridge. The consoles are blinking on and off, but she discovers that there is some power to the ship. Even now that she knew this attack would be too much and death was inevitable, she manages to restore some power to some of the auto-turrets and they begin to fire on the approaching blues. If she could get the engines to run and use full hyper-speed, she may be able to use the Titan as a giant rocket car. Her forces were now engaged in fighting the blues, and all they had to do was fight and not die for a few moments more, because now the four missiles had launched and were making their way to break the ground open around them. The sandy coloured plane was now a blue plane, covered in thousands of monstrous creatures making their way to feed and destroy; it was like a never ending tide.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Pace was sat in the Invictus watching the whole thing unfold. His ship was cloaked and no one noticed him at all. Many things were running through his mind; should he rescue some of the men below him? Checking his scanners, it appeared Eve was on the bridge alone, with no shields on the ship to soak up fire. It was not worth saving her men, they were all ex-prisoners who would kill first and ask questions later, he thought, but maybe saving Eve could be used to their advantage. She was bound to know where more PD1 missiles were stored, and that could turn the tide in their favour. Standing up, his mind was made up.
“I’m going down to rescue Eve. Before you say anything, hear me out. I scanned the Titan and there are a few fighters on board. I’m going to grab one and Eve, blast my way out of the ship and get to her palace, and pick up some PD1 missiles or better, and destroy this menace once and for all.”
Nova is not happy with this idea at all. “What are you, stupid? We are sitting pretty, with the best seats in the house for once, and you want to go rescue an enemy. You need your mind reading or something. Why don’t we get the Fahrenheit to turn around and blast those suckers instead? Why do you have to be the hero?” Pace can see Nova’s concerns, but it is all set in his mind and he will not be deterred from it.
“I won’t call back thousands of people to be killed when I can do the job myself, and I’m not stupid, I’m far from that, but if I don’t go and see if Eve will reason with me, then I have lost my humanity. I must give her a chance. She has just been beaten by her own men, if that don’t get her to think about her evil doings what will? Everyone deserves a second chance.”
Nova shakes her head. “Yeah true, but not a third or fourth chance, Cap.”
Pace walks over to Nova and turns her in her chair to face him, and leaning down towards her whispers softly, “Listen, you have always been like a sister to me, and I know you are looking out for me, but sometimes you just got to stop wrapping me up in cotton wool. Look at me. I have been through a lot, but I will go through a lot more before I live my last day. I’ll be back, I promise.”
Nova reaches up and hugs Pace and kisses him on the cheek. “You better keep that promise brother. Stay safe, I love you.” Pace stands up tall once more with the much needed love in his heart.
“Nova will take command. You are to rendezvous with the Titan ship and stay safe. I will be along soon. Watch out for ball ships, don’t let them track you.” Pace looks at the worried faces around him. Maybe what he is doing is stupid, but it was the right thing to do. Pace puts on his spacesuit and arms his weapon systems. Sam had been modifying things again, to make his suit better, but he had no time to test these new items, he had work to do. The loading bay ramp lowers and Nova flies close to the top of the Titan ship, still cloaked.
“Sir, you do have a cloaking system built into your suit. I was messing around with things, but it should serve you well.” Sam is pleased with that modification as it will keep Pace alive for longer.
“Thanks, Sam.” Pace activates the cloak and becomes invisible, and then jumps out of the Invictus, using his jet pack to lower himself slowly onto the hull of the broken Titan. The Invictus shoots off up in to the blackness of space, unseen. After searching for a few minutes, Pace notices a hatch, opens it and climbs down a ladder to an airlock, where he opens the inner hatch to a room. Explosions are heard outside and the sound of the auto-turrets boom every now and then, shaking debris around him. Pace uses his spotlights to light the way in the darkened corridors that were powerless now.
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Outside, only a few of Eve’s original forces remain alive, still fighting hard against these terrible odds. A large green gas cloud precedes the blues, generated by two giant machines, and protected by giant four-legged creatures with dark blue skin with black stripes and two massive arms that could punch through armour in no time. They also had what appeared to be tendrils coming out of their backs. Smaller blues dashed around leaping in the air at Eve’s men. They could launch an attack from quite a distance away; a hard lesson learned at the beginning of the fight, losing a great number of men.
Then there were the medium sized blues. They were like little tanks once on the rampage. They had four arms, horns and thick scales and were dark blue with lava coloured veins all over them, but their evil red eyes made every man shudder, if he had the misfortune to get up close. It seemed they could jump a fair distance too, and fired parasites at the men. If Pace had been stood with them, he could have warned them of all of this and maybe saved some lives in the process, but what goes around comes around, he thinks. These men were used to fighting other men, not aliens. They were out-matched, and finally the blues started to break through their line.
One man, who was on his back being attacked by a smaller blue who was carving at him with metal claws, shouts out loud, “In coming!” He notices two and then two more missiles flying over him and smiling he draws his last breath, as the missiles hit the ground near him. Four large explosions cause soil and rock to erupt into the air, along with a pungent smell.
Many blues are slain in the blast and many are sent in bits through the air. The whole ground shakes and ripples shake the ground for miles. Nothing can stand up for long in this blast; even the giant blues are shocked, looking up from the floor. Every creature and every man lie still for a moment, then remembering what is going on around them, jump back to their feet to try to gain an advantage on the battlefield. No person or creature pays any attention to the four large holes in the ground.
Pace regains his footing and tries to open the bridge door, but it’s locked from the inside. Eve hears a beeping sound on the door and looks at Pace from the camera and opens a channel to him.
“You’re still alive then. Well, well, well. Oh, you poor thing, you’re a blue too I see. That’s such bad luck.”
Pace, looking at Eve’s mangled face replies. �
��I see you have had a face lift, such a much better look for you, I think. Now cut the crap. Do you want to work against me or with me, the choice is yours. I’ll give you five minutes to decide, and then I’m leaving your sorry ass to the blues.” Eve decides in an instant to work with Pace, after all he is still alive, and if he can get her out and die along the way, then that’s a better option than none.
“What’s the plan?” replies Eve, opening the door.
Pace has his blaster gauntlet raised pointing at her head. “We need PD1 missiles. Where are they kept?”
Wanting to work with Pace and get out of the Titan, Eve wipes blood from her nose. “A stockpile I have stored at my palace, but how are we going to get there?”
Pace grabs her arm and tugs her down the dark corridors back to the fighter. “Get in, now!” Pace shoves Eve into the front seat of the fighter and climbs in the rear seat. He locks out the controls in the front, so Eve cannot try to pull a fast surprise on him, and he takes the controls. He arms two melta-missiles and closes the canopy. The engines roar and the missiles are soon traveling towards the hull wall. Two blinding lights flash and an orange glow appears around a large hole in the hull. It is just big enough for the ship to fit through, so they scrape through just in time. The last of Eve’s troops have fallen and they have just moments to escape.
The fighter is hit by blaster fire, which has no effect on the shields, but they have now caught the attention of the wave of ball ships, and with no cloaking ability they are sitting ducks, unless they do something soon. Pace flies the ship low over the thousands of ground troops massing near the Titan. They leap up trying to jump on the ship as it passes them. Pace notices the blues’ gas making machines and realises that they all are breathing it to survive. He also notices, from one of the holes in the ground, some Kalgoray emerging, who pounce on some of the blues and drag them underground for a quick meal.
Titan Fleet: The Invictus Page 23