by Greg Ramsay
“So you have no remorse about destroying the land where Janey’s buried, where Tory died?” James asked pointedly. Lia looked at him with disgust like he’d hit her with a low blow.
“It’s not like I wasn’t attached to Earth too, okay? I get why your upset, but the planet – everything on it – was doomed anyway. Well, except for the alien-warped monsters, but I get why you’d pity them,” Lia argued sarcastically, now agitated also.
“You’re unbelievable!” James said with anger and exasperation.
“I’m just the monster you made me, honey,” Lia said coldly with fake gentleness.
“I didn’t tell you to blow up the fucking planet!” he yelled.
“Oh whatever, we both know if the situation was reversed you’d do the same. You love holding lives in your hands,” Lia said.
“Bullshit!” James yelled.
“You are your own evidence, you hypocritical bastard,” Lia retaliated angrily.
“Modifying nature to bring about improvements and obliterating nature to instill fear are totally different!” James retorted.
“Okay, what exactly do you think your miracle strain was going to do long term, huh? You really think nature could bounce back from this once it transmitted beyond humanity?” she said, pointing to her armour.
James went silent. He couldn’t believe her. Giving her a final dirty look, he turned away. He continued ignoring her as she flew them both back to Utopia Prime. Lia engaged the docking tunnel so it stopped just shy of the airlock door, mindful not to cause an unnecessary breach.
“I’ll open it, you run in.”
They did just that. James struggled at first to shed layers of armour, unlike Lia who did it intuitively.
“That was quite the sensation...” James remarked.
“Were you able to breathe between the tunnel and the airlock?” Lia asked.
“No,” he replied.
“Then I’ll have to get you two of those splooge douches to munch on. One might be enough but I held my breath so I’m not sure ‘bout that...” she said distractedly. James just gave her a judgemental look, not in the mood for her made up descriptions for things. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’m gonna take the purple-mutant-people-stealer there,” she said indicating the glowing off-purple coloured light coming from her alien ship, “while you take over Utopia Prime. I’ll go tear up the alien ambush while you bring up the rear. This dump still has ammo right?” she asked.
“Hell if I know,” James said irritably.
“Well figure it out, you ain’t just playing damsel while I do all the work!” she said seriously before walking back to her ship.
James muttered arguments under his breath while walking away to tinker with the ship’s console. Lia laughed quietly and took off, engaging the ship’s autopilot to take her to the mothership. What seemed like an hour passed in relative silence.
Lia sat comfortably in her ship playing with menus that outwardly looked like hieroglyph jibberish, but made perfect sense to her. She found what was essentially her wanted poster; it had been modified to say she was a serious threat. Lia laughed at the casual distinction. Destroying an entire planet only makes you a serious threat, huh? Wonder what I’d have to do to be considered evil by these ugly fucks? Lia thought to herself. Her mind and body both felt a little strained. Lia looked at her katana-form kynari in her hand with admiration. The kynari could manifest both willpower and collected energy into her crimson energy, but it wasn’t without slight effort on her part. Now that she could use a rough version of its effect via her armour she was beginning to understand how much weight it took off her shoulders.
What felt like an hour passed before Lia saw an armada of ships in the distance surrounding the mothership, a vessel so massive it dwarfed her ship by ten times. When she looked back, she confirmed she was much farther from the Sun than she would need to be to release multiple planet-obliterating strikes. However, her enemies didn’t need to know she wasn’t quite at planet destroying level. Lia surmised she might be able to wipe out much of the fleet including the mothership in one blow, but didn’t want to underestimate her opponents. Instead she opted for her initial guerilla tactics plan. The alphas sat ready for anything she asked so Lia commanded them to attack anything that wasn’t her, ignoring all other commands. A quick check of her shield and weapons systems inspired the idea of adding a blitzkrieg element to her plan.
She charged headlong towards the armada, keeping herself above their relative height. Engaging every weapon her vessel had, Lia proceeded to bomb every ship under her with near-invisible blasts. Were it not for the eyes she gained when fused with the mask she wouldn’t have even seen the massive energy waves reverberating into the enemy craft. Her ship’s many thrusters surged as she carpet-bombed countless ships, not stopping to finish them off. The mothership’s escort started to break formation, opting to attack her from the rear while the mothership’s many guns fired at her front. She could see the energy shield surrounding the exterior of her ship had failed. Ceaseless attacks on all sides severely jeopardized the integrity of the vessel as a whole. Her control console generated countless alerts, threatening full-system shutdown for repairs. Lia set it to manual override, not interested in things like hull integrity, shielding or atmospheric control. All she cared about was getting her new team aboard a vessel that would crush her like a bug if gravity were applicable.
Many of her weapons were damaged according to the live feed from the control console. Her dog fighter-style maneuvering helped keep her ship operational just enough to bring her closer to her target. Lia focused all fire forward, abandoning all efforts to dodge enemy fire. For every shot her ship took, a few would just miss. Lia knew she was out of time, the hull of her ship was being slowly chewed apart, thrusters were failing, the ship was no longer able to self-repair, and whole pieces of the back section were beginning to break free under fire. In a moment of sheer insanity Lia disengaged a side door mid flight. She leaned out katana first. “Release!” she growled, swinging her blade like a gesture to charge. She focused her mind on a compact battering wave akin to the lesser power level she had in PsychoLife.
Lia closed the door, strolled calmly back to the cockpit, then angled the ship behind her strike before bracing herself in her seat. Bemused, all Lia could think was she was following a big red waypoint like she was in some twisted video game. Stray shots from twenty ships that split from the armada formation to chase her, combined with her own fire and energy wave, proved to be just enough to blow a hole in the mothership’s shielding. Beyond that, the hull of the ship had a considerable gash. Lia angled her dying ship to match the angle of the damage before putting everything the ship had into forward thrust. As a last consideration Lia used tendrils to fasten herself to her ship, in part to bolster its structure, but also to secure herself. She smiled a wicked smile right as her ship slammed full force into the already self-repairing damage.
Futuristic metal screeched with a cacophony of assailing sounds. Pieces of unidentifiable parts from both vessels became nothing more than lethal shrapnel flying freely. Lia’s enhanced hearing was overloaded. Either the metal or her tendrils failed, sending her flying through the breech ahead of her careening ship. She slammed into a wall with enough force to buckle it. Despite how fast she was moving, Lia could clearly see shocked aliens trying to raise gun-like weapons before pieces of their own ship impaled them. Though she didn’t have the time to react, the remains of her ship slammed directly into her, briefly covering her. Lia bellowed a war cry.
Above her she could hear her alpha army roaring above the jarring sound of energy weapons. One alpha smashed the partition separating the cockpit from the rear section so hard it sent an alien reeling on impact. Seconds later her forces were on an animalistic rampage, viciously destroying anything in their path. Smiling to herself, Lia pushed the entire ship off herself and rolled free. She marvelled at the mess her new friends were creating. Calmly she jogged through the unknown vessel following th
e sound of bellows that she knew were screams of suffering. By then, her alphas had done all of the work with devastating speed. She knew things were about to get fun. Where danger was highest, the enemy’s best forces were bound to assemble. She was keen on eliminating them when they did.
After a while Lia found herself in what she could only assume was a hangar. Which made sense considering she’d only breached the outermost layer of the vessel. Lia stopped dead in her tracks. She and her alphas were surrounded by multiple active ships, as well as about thirty heavily-armed ground forces in cover below them. Those on ground level bellowed suppressive commands, essentially trying to hack her alpha programming while the ships opened fire on her. At such close quarters she was blown back with a force she’d never felt before. To her horror, Lia’s armour was somehow being overwhelmed. Her left leg was gradually torn clean off, like she’d stepped on a landmine. Reaching for the stump, instinctively Lia screamed in unimaginable agony. Seconds later, her left arm that she’d used to cradle the stump met the same fate. All over her body her armour was failing at an increasing rate. Although it almost didn’t matter because the blast seemed to penetrate directly into her innards right from the beginning. Going mad with pain, Lia ignored the tendrils desperately trying to re-attach her leg while also ignoring the roaring of alphas, and the blasting of weapons. All she could think about was how much worse this was than the nuclear explosion at MiraiCorp in PsychoLife.
Then it hit her. Struggling hard, Lia slammed her katana into the ground, channeling her tendrils to form the dome shield. To her dismay it was barely able to form while under fire. Once more she was being ripped into by concentrated fire so painful she wished she was human enough to die. Lia’s last insane idea was to ram her blade forward, focusing all her mental fortitude on direct energy absorption. Somehow it worked! She could feel her kynari within the blade’s hilt adapting to the power, using the blade itself like a lightening rod. Finally able to stand, Lia braced herself for the next stage of her insane plan.
She rammed the black spike protruding from the back of her hilt directly into her chest. Energy like nuclear fire raged into her. She screamed like her innards were being roasted. With a barely responding hand, she ripped the blade free, growling and gasping with pain. In her peripheral vision she could see hair thin cracks snaking along the katana blade. Unable to be concerned because of the pain, she attached tendrils to the spike then threw her blade like a javelin towards one of the ships. Her black energy surged forward at her will in an attempt to reinforce the failing weapon. It just managed to penetrate the ship at cockpit level. Unsatisfied, Lia unchained the new energy boiling within her which was threatening to make her implode. Lia’s blade blasted through the ship assimilating its pilots as well as anything it touched into nothing more than carbon.
Release! she commanded internally and her combined crimson energy burst forth from the run of her blade joining with power which could only be described as harnessed nuclear fire. In one amazing swing her katana flew around her creating a circle of unstoppable power that radiated outward, completely erasing everything in its path. Ships fell to the ground missing their entire top halves. Aliens stared down at her through perfect trenches that burned all the way through to the ships reddish-grey exterior. Unnerving cracking accompanied the sound of sand falling. Lia looked down to find her blade disintegrating into nothing, too stressed to handle all that power. Pain finally released its hold on her mind enough for her to be shocked by what she felt. Lia could tell they were hitting her with something similar to the power created by a nuclear blast, but even with her mind clearing, she couldn’t tell what they’d done to modify it. If direct solar radiation created by nuclear fusion was fine, why wasn’t this? Somehow, whether it was the frequency, or wavelength, or intensity, she knew she’d barely survived something purpose built to combat her hybrid armour.
Lia’s insane recovery shocked the remaining ground troops so much they stopped firing. Her attack was angled high, focused on the ships since they were a big target and her vision had been failing. She could see their weapons shaking, hear their bellowing lose focus. She bellowed out her kill command with deafening ferocity. About twenty or so alphas that had managed to survive the fighting thus far, set about ravaging the elite soldiers. Other aliens got to watch through the trenches as their brave soldiers were savagely dismembered until they slowly died, crying out in agony. Lia could clearly understand all the meaning in their noise, feel the agony of their thoughts telepathically, but it was all too cliché for her to care. They were crying, praying, begging for family to save them, admonishing her existence, cursing everyone she ever loved to death, and calling on something called a Yanmoushala to guide them. Amongst all the commonplace chaos of invasion the walls of the hangar began to quake.
Lia turned, expecting a massive explosion accompanied by a rescuing force. Instead, from somewhere deep within the ship, the hangar was told to open. Lia stood facing almost all the ships that had doggedly chased her before. Reflexively she reformed her katana; this time combining its normal formation with the energy she’d begun to adapt mere moments before. To her surprise the ships weren’t yet facing her. She repressed her kynari’s urge to explode in a massive destructive cyclone as the blade formed, despite the fact she could feel its instability in her hand. Raising her pulsing unstable blade, she could see her hybrid material wasn’t adapting correctly. The katana was holding, but looked as if its very molecules were in flux, like the solid object was fluid in another space. Lia tried focusing on stabilizing it, depending on her inherent ability to adapt. Just then, she was distracted by a familiar sight in the corner of her eye. Utopia Prime was inbound firing everything it had.
Aliens scrambled as they were murdered from within while their mothership quaked from the force of more torpedoes. Lia’s uncertainty faded for a moment, just long enough for her to think the tide was turning. Inside, her alphas were cleaning up while James managed to take down a few smaller armada ships. Unfortunately, even at a distance, Lia could see James was taking heavy fire without returning it anymore. Utopia Prime was literally coming apart around him. Lia’s eyes widened. If his ship’s hull is damaged in the right spot he’ll lose atmosphere and die! Lia realized.
Without a second’s hesitation, she leapt into the void of space directly into countless armada ships. Lia’s wings propelled her toward James gradually so she could line up with the most enemy ships. As she got closer and closer to Utopia Prime, she got a sense of the power the aliens possessed. Whole sections of the ship had been torn completely off by the sheer impact of their shots. James’ self-repairing tech floated through space like spilled paint, rendered as useless as her armour. Lia floated like a graceful winged torpedo amongst seriously damaged, caved in metal. It occurred to her that Earth metals didn’t disintegrate like anything alien based. However, floating structural sections looked as if a god-like fist caved them in with such power the whole ship should’ve been destroyed. How the hell could I survive point blank impacts from something like that?! Lia thought momentarily, kicking off from debris for leverage.
She had to swerve to avoid more pieces of Utopia Prime while trying to convince herself James wasn’t suffocating. Eventually she found a way aboard through a hole in the ship. Her super speed made short work of finding James, given she could sense him. James had sealed himself in the emergency pod section to the rear of the ship. Lia let herself in quickly so he didn’t suffocate too much.
“Hi honey! she said cheerfully, gently withdrawing and retracting her wings.
“Hi... I managed to get a couple ships, but UP ran out of ammo,” James said with an air of disappointment.
“Every little bit helps,” Lia said kindly. “Listen, I want you to get in one of those pods and head back in Earth’s direction, okay?” Lia asked with a tone indicating it wasn’t a choice.
“Shall I prep two then?” James asked.
“No, I’m gonna take ol’ UP here and park it in the middle of
that armada before I overload the reactor,” Lia said seriously.
“Are you insane? You saw what their guns can do; that’s a suicide mission!” James argued, worried.
“If you stay in this heap you’ll suffocate; you have to evac NOW,” Lia demanded. James crossed his arms like a disapproving parent.
“If you’re going on a suicide mission, I’m going too,” he said finally.
“Now who’s crazy?” Lia said sarcastically.
“You said if I ever leave you, you’ll kill me, remember? So, I’m screwed regardless,” James said jokingly with a gentle smile on his face.
“If you’re that damn determined, go prep the reactor and hope to hell we make it that far.”
“Yes ma’am!” James said with a small salute before taking off down corridors that were still intact.
Charging head first into fire again. Great plan, but hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Lia thought to herself while rushing to the bridge. Quickly she confirmed Utopia Prime was set to full forward, ignoring all the damage. She set up a tendril shield around the command console then met James at the reactor deep in the bowels of the ship. Lia was surprised at how intact the ship was; she was even more surprised and disappointed that James appeared lost at the reactor controls.
“You got this?” Lia asked, concerned.
“Yup. Just debating between an immediate overload which would leave us with one minute to evacuate, or a gradual one which might give us a bigger boom,” he said, looking to her for a decision.
“Well, as much as I love getting blown up while trying to bail, I say bigger is always better.”
James chuckled. “You should’ve stayed with John then,” he said jokingly.
“He wasn’t as easy to bully as you are, love,” Lia said jokingly, nudging him aside.