“Those things will eat anything, eh?” Pace is looking in amazement out of the window, in awe of their killing skills.
“They were engineered for that reason. Once we began to run out of ore in the mines, we stored them underground, and fed them every now and then with a few homeless people, prisoners and other rejects. Good job we did, they may just save us yet.” Pace, looking at the back of Eve’s head wonders, how evil could she get?
“So they were once human then. Why would you do that to someone?”
Eve chuckles, “Because we can, and we will continue for ever more if it benefits us.”
Pace notices hundreds of Kalgoray pouring out of the ground, to what must be a feast to them. The blues have found a hard fight here and the battle is intense it seems from above. The fighter hurries away, heading for the palace. It can be seen in the distance, so it will not take them long to reach it, but they are, however, being pursued by eleven ball ships, thirsty for blood.
Pace gives the fighter full burn and he and Eve are jolted back into their seats, hanging on for dear life. The ball ships hang back as the desert plains turn into canyons. They fly through a maze of tunnels and only scrape through a few gaps. Pace is trying to lose his pursuers, but to no avail. The sun has gone from here and it is dark and cold. It is even cold in the cockpit, not just in temperature, but cold in someone’s heart. The smell of Eve wafts back up into Paces nose. It’s a smell of cigarettes and dampness; a smell of death. Not like Megan’s smell, she smelled like fresh flowers, cinnamon and love.
“Watch out!” Shouts Eve as Pace gets too close to an outcrop of jagged stone spikes. Pace veers left to avoid certain destruction and snaps out of his trance. He thinks perhaps he should have hit the rocks after all and ended Eve to be sure, but then again he wanted to see his niece. A few more twists and turns and it seems they have lost the balls following them, and they shoot out of the last tunnel towards a shiny mansion house, which was used as Eve’s palace. It was a large base with tall walls built around and a moat, just like the days of old when knights ruled the old realms. The area seemed quiet and so they land on the landing platform on the top of the mansion. Pace opens the canopy and Eve and Pace both step down onto solid ground.
“Does this place have any defence at all? If it does, turn it on, we will need it.” The sand was blowing and the weather was turning bad again, so Eve and Pace walk together from the flight platform down some steps to a door leading inside, to warmth and shelter, which was great as it was very cold outside. A large metallic door was sealing the entrance. It had many locks on it and it took a while for Eve to enter the code to release the giant piston holding it closed. Stepping inside to a well lit room that smelt of lavender, Eve sighs in relief. She is home again and walks over to a console on a desk in the corner of the room. The room is purple and has some chairs and a table, probably a waiting room, thought Pace. Eve turns to Pace, who is still holding a blaster to her back.
“I take it you want me to turn the guns on and what nots?” Eve has her hands up, still fearing to lower them.
“Turn them on, and no tricks.” Pace is being very watchful and any false move will be her last. Eve enters a code into her computer and activates the defence system. This was the state of the art technology and Eve again has a trick up her sleeve.
“So you want missiles, well they are downstairs, but the good news is that we can launch them from here if we target the blue vessel up in orbit, because not being funny, we would never be able to carry enough needed to do the job and escape with any haste.” Eve points down onto the screen. It flickers yellow and after pressing a few more buttons, charts and pictures appear with an inventory of everything in the house, which was not a lot now, due to most of it being on the Fahrenheit, somewhere in space.
“Ok, target the alien vessel and put a timer on it. We want to be able to blast past them as we escape.” Eve types in a few inscription codes and a timer for launch appears on the screen.
A deep robotic voice bellows as the blues begin to attack the mansion. “Danger close. Defence systems activated. Engaging enemies. Initialising lock down protocol. PD1 missiles armed and ready for launch.”
What Pace did not notice was that Eve had also targeted the Invictus that was cloaked just outside orbit, about to pass the giant alien ship and it still was carrying a homing beacon on it. She had also activated personal defence robots to come to her aid.
“You’ve done the right thing in the end, Eve. The blues are just pure evil and now humanity has a chance again.” As Pace lowers his weapon, a black robot enters the room via a sliding door in the wall behind him. It is quiet and deadly, and stands around seven feet tall with no face and no eyes, just a dark head shape on its tall body, featureless and cold and ready to attack and take no prisoners. When a second door opens to the right of Pace, and he catches a glimpse of a dark shape entering the room, he knows it is a trap once more, and as he turns to face the second robot, the first robot lashes out at him from behind, delivering a devastating blow to the back of Pace’s head, sending him face first onto the cream coloured tiles on the floor.
Seeing her chance, Eve makes a run for the fighter and frantically begins to push buttons on the ship to get the engine started, but Pace also has trust issues and has rigged the ship to not start without a code, and quickly figuring this out, Eve takes no time to jump back out of the cockpit and heads back to the door, but the whole mansion was now locked down; you could leave but not enter. Eve was now stranded outside with the fighter, and Pace was inside.
Getting up off the floor, a second swing finds its mark and Pace is punched backwards onto the desk. He looks down and in a seconds glance he notices that the missiles were about to launch, and that one was aiming at the Invictus, so he quickly turns, and while the two robots approach him, he tries to redirect the missile to save his crew, but he is seconds too late and the missiles begin to launch from the mansion. This infuriates Pace and standing up strong, he activates his sword and blaster, and his jet pack is ready and he blasts off into the air, towards one of the robots, his jets burning bright blue and scorching the desk behind him.
The deafening sound of missiles in his ears launching from the mansion makes him feel a little sick, knowing that one of them will hit his friends and it was out of his control. Pace slams into the first robot, man verses machine, with a cracking thunder behind his first punch, and then a slash of his sword destroys the robots right shoulder in an instant. The robot begins to crackle and buzz as hydraulic oil mixes with power circuits. The robot swings back hitting Pace in the chest, but Pace is not feeling a thing, the adrenaline rushing through his system, he brushes off the blow without a fear. Pace pounds upon the robot like a mad man out of control, smashing and crushing the robots outer metal armour, every punch with his metal arm causing major damage, until he gains a grip on the robots head and tears it off, flinging it across the room at the door.
The second robot slices Pace with a bladed hand, but Pace’s armoured suit holds the blow at bay and it glances off, sparks flying off the armour, but not causing any harm. He turns and impales the second robot with his sword and then fires his jet pack once again and pushes the robot from the centre of the room, over to the wall and lifts him up, pinning him to the wall and punching parts of the robot through the wall. It was a fatal move and the robot stood no chance. Pace withdraws his blade, and the robot hangs half in the wall and half out, sparking like a child’s sparkler.
The alien blues are massing outside now, attacking the mansions walls and defences. Pace gains access to the computer once again, now that he has a few moments to spare. He looks at Eve on the security camera. She is on the platform, stranded with no way off but if Pace stays, he will be toast, he thinks to himself, so he will have to take her with him, but first he must set the mansions melt-down timer, if it had one. He scrolls through the files and finds a few eye openers. There were files on human/alien hybrids and human experiments, so he uses a link to download
the files to the computer on his suit, for later inspection along with medical files, which may help him to return back to human again. He notices the mansion has more robots that he can activate to defend his escape, a total of forty-eight more personal robots that he now activates to fight the blues that have now entered the complex. He gains a comms link to the Invictus. The screen is a little bit grey but at least he can warn them of the PD1 heading their way.
“Nova, you have a PD1 missile locked on you, it’s on its way to you along with about ten more heading to the alien mothership. You’ve got to get out of there fast or shoot it down, or something.” Nova, who is controlling the ship from Pace’s chair, was about to answer but watching her screen, she can see the thousands of blues at Paces location.
She pauses for a moment. “I should come and get you; you’re in big trouble yourself.”
Pace moves closer to the screen and smiles. “I’m always in big trouble, Sis, but I’ll get by. I’ve got to go.” The door is being hammered by something large the other side that wants in and the door is seconds from buckling. Nova’s screen goes black.
She turns to Rusty. “We’ve got to find a transponder on our ship and fast if we are going to shake this missile. Get to work everyone. I will get us close to that mothership and we will dump it off on her, and then get out of there like a bullet.” Nova pilots the ship closer to the alien blue ship. Still cloaked they go unnoticed, but what she does notice is the missiles on her screen breaking the planets orbit and heading their way. She hopes they find the homing beacon or it will be a sticky mess for everyone.
The grey metal door buckles in the top right hand corner revealing a large blue, crazed and hell-bent on getting in at Pace. Pace finishes his computer work and then blasts at the creature through the gap. It yells and gets more angry; it is infuriated and going mental. The door was doing its job well; it was after all two feet thick. However, the wall next to it was not faring so well, with large chunks falling on the floor like a landslide. Pace is about to go outside when he notices on the screen that a few ball ships are now circling outside, and Eve is hiding under the fighter.
* * *
It seems Eve has been busy fighting against being captured but now the tendrils lashing around her finally find their mark. A tendril grips her leg and she is whisked up into the air, upside down and screaming and fighting but to no avail. The rushing air is making it hard to breathe or see, as now tears are streaming from her eyes, like a flowing river. The tendril retracts slowly up into the ball ship and inside is a blue waiting for Eve. He grips her head and slams her down onto a small table in a single movement and the tendril disappears into the floor. Eve’s eyes rush around the room in fear. A tube is shoved into her mouth and she begins to choke on it as it is pushed deeper inside her. A blue liquid is pumped down it and then she loses the control to stay awake. The room begins to spin and all hope of escape is lost.
* * *
The door finally gives way and storming into the room is a large blue creature with four legs and two arms. It has tendrils coming out of its dark blue skin. Its black stripes are scaly and its red eyes look down on Pace with no feeling but hate. Even with Pace’s jet pack at full power pushing against the creature, the monster pushes Pace to the outer door, ramming him with an armour crushing blow that knocks the air out of Pace’s chest and catching his breath he stabs at the creatures chest. A green cloud envelopes him and he can hardly see at all, but those red eyes pierce the green like laser pointers. A tendril impales Pace in the side. It cuts through his armour like a hot knife through butter and back out again, ready for a second stab.
Pace feels no pain, surprisingly, and his alien blue skin begins to heal the wound and to his surprise, the green gas that has got into his suit has not affected him at all. Perhaps he was too alien now, not feeling pain and being half blue, he thought he would just wait until the melt down and all would be right in the universe again. As the tendril flies in for a second attack, Pace grabs it with his metal arm and tears it from the back of the creature and tosses it to the floor, before tearing out his own oxygen canister and shoving it into the face of the giant crushing him. The canister ruptures and the vapour begins the fill the room.
Pace’s second attack was to slice the green gas tank on the side of the Oakthian, so that it could not breathe. The monster began to choke, along with the other blues now entering the room. Their skin began to bubble and burn. The oxygen was top dog this day, an unseen assassin in the air. For once the blues looked scared and began to back away from the room. Pace could see hundreds of them now, all screeching and melting. The giant blue moves backwards away from him. Pace’s suit was buckled and torn but he was still alive at least and it felt good. Holding his side, he walks over to the computer and programs the few remaining robots to target the blues’ green tanks, so that he could set the mansions oxygen levels at full to kill them.
Instead of leaving through the door to the fighter and freedom, Pace decides to take off his suit, as it was stopping him from breathing. The giant dark blue monster had fell and was now a mound of goo on the floor, and surrounding it lay many other blues, some still writhing in pain and some just liquid on the floor. The mansions count down timer display on the wall reads just ten minutes left. Pace can breathe oxygen and green gas, it appears, but part of him feels sad for the blues that had died or were dying. He had a weird connection of family, but shaking this off, he decides to take a look down the corridor and the room beyond that, where the door was taken off its hinges and two defence robots were stripped down in a fight. Parts and debris lay everywhere, along with dead blues. The robots had been doing a great job at targeting the green gas it seemed.
Pace walks unhindered around the mansion, but outside was a different story. Thousands upon thousands of blues waited to get revenge, and Pace thought he had won the fight, maybe so but not the war. He raised a window shutter to get a better look outside. There was a sea of blue in front of him, an area just outside the mansion, where some blues lay dead from the oxygen leaking out. Pace was on the third floor, but could hear a few robots shooting from the doors at the bottom of the mansion. There were some giant blues and a giant gas generator pumping out green gas all around. The turret guns were all quiet and most were ablaze and smouldering.
Near the centre of the army stood two tall slender figures stood on a floating platform. The platform began to move forward through the blues. It was obvious that they were in charge, as the blues cheered them like they were heroes. The platform floated towards the mansion and then stopped. The defence robots were still firing on it, but they had no effect. One of the alien figures floated down two steps to the ground and then went out of view. Blaster fire was heard and then all was silent.
It was so quiet that Pace could hear only the oxygen moving in and out of his lungs, and as Pace ran to the top of the stairs to see if the blue had made it in the building, he could see a tall figure, about seven foot tall floating up the stairs on green gas. It had some sort of force-field around it and it was on its own, and no doubt was looking for Pace. Pace retreated out of the room, back through the mansion to the escape door, and then leaving the door open, to see when the creature arrived. He starts the fighter ready for a quick exit and stands back just in the doorway, ready to press the close button if he needed to stop it. Pace was feeling fearful. This thing was not afraid and wanted something. Could it even be stopped? Pace was not going to wait to find out.
The creature came into view and Pace stood there, not raising weapons, just standing strong and still until the creature got close enough.
“Stop right there, pal.” The creature stopped. It had large metal clawed hands and a waft of rotting flesh preceded it. It gazed at Pace with burning orange eyes that looked like embers in a fire. It stood motionless for a few moments, which was very unnerving for Pace, before it pointed at him with a single finger.
“You are us and them, how is this?” The creature’s voice was deep and gritty.<
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“I’m a freak of nature, something I’m going to rectify. Trust me, if my evolution is to smell like you do, then I’m going to end it now. Do you guys even bath?”
The creature lets out a scream so powerful it knocks Pace back, and holding his ear so that it does not pop his ear drum, he cowers in pain. The screech stops and the creature points again.
“You jest when you should answer me. You humans are weak, nothing but cattle to us, nothing but food in our bellies. You are one of a thousand species we have destroyed. We have your leader and you will do as we say. We have decided that we will spare some of you to work in the mines, to gather resources to power our ships, and that is all, nothing more.”
Pace stands up tall once again and laughs. “That’s what you have decided, eh? Well for one thing, I don’t care if you have our leader, we all live our lives and decide our own way, and two, you have just two minutes to walk away or to kneel before me as your master, or you will feel pain like you have never felt before. Decide now.” Pace has realised that the mansions meltdown was about to blow and what a better way to go out, it would be fast and painless. The alien stood before Pace begins to chant and a weird purple and red aura appears around it, spinning faster and faster. The aura begins to pass through the alien like a spirit possessing someone. Ten seconds to go and Pace pushes the button and the door slams shut and Pace makes a run for the ship. He quickly finds his seat and fires the engines and raises the front of the ship, just as the mansions self-destruct system reaches zero. It was worth a go at getting away, but it was too late now. The alien leader realises Pace has trapped him and screams as the floor and all around him explodes. Its shields are no match for the blast and he disintegrates in an instant.
Titan Fleet: The Invictus Page 24