Chevallier shook her head. Her lips twisted upon noticing the writing etched onto LeBoeuf’s shoulder pads. ‘Witch Queen.’
Questions had to be asked.
“What’s with that name?” Chevallier said, pointing at her shoulder pads.
LeBoeuf chuckled. “It means what it means.”
“I don’t follow.”
“We call her kind ‘Warlocks,’” Maxwell interjected, having joined the two at the edge of the ship.
“Human psionics are divided into three categories,” LeBoeuf explained. “We nicknamed them Warlocks, Ravagers, and Mystics. How talented you are with psionic skills and the amount of cybernetic augmentation you are willing to receive determines your class. I happen to be one of the top Warlocks and earned the title Witch Queen by my peers.”
“Or in the case of her ex-boyfriend.” Maxwell snickered. “Bitch Queen.”
“Fuck off, Maxwell,” LeBoeuf spat.
Maxwell laughed like a hyena. His laughter was loud enough to turn the heads of a number of flight deck crew personnel.
“Boyfriend, eh?” Chevallier said to her with a smirk. “With all due respect—”
“Why is it whenever someone says, ‘with all due respect’ they follow-up by saying something disrespectful?”
Chevallier looked up and down at LeBoeuf’s skintight gear, and numerous cybernetic parts and cables hanging off it. “How do you have sex with all those implants and wires?”
“Very, very carefully . . .” LeBoeuf rolled her eyes.
“Foreplay requires a safe word.” Maxwell snickered.
An hour had passed, with no signs of enemy forces, no detection via scanners, nothing via ESP, and Chevallier was getting tired of watching the same plumes of clouds roll past while she sat with Boyd and the rest of his team.
“Well, this is exciting,” Chevallier said to Boyd sarcastically.
“The other ships haven’t reported anything,” Boyd said.
Chevallier looked at the landing strip, now devoid of all fighters. “How much longer are we going to stay out here?”
“All other enemy forces have been eliminated; this is the last group that needs to be dealt with.” He rubbed his forehead in frustration. “Command doesn’t want to pull out since we’re so close to finishing them.”
“What happens if they don’t show?”
“We’ll return and keep an eye on things for another day. If nothing then we’ll probably send you to get your implants, and then head back out into deep space to search for the invader’s fleet—”
“Guys!” It was LeBoeuf.
She stood up from her rest on the floor looking distraught as the holographic bracelets twirling around her wrists pulsed red.
Chevallier and Boyd stood behind her and saw LeBoeuf’s cybernetics hum and flair up with blue colors. Her body entered a quick trance, her breathing accelerated, and her face flinched. She broke out of the trance, crafting a small three-dimensional projection of the region with a brief wave and twirl of her hands and fingers. There was something big directly below.
Chevallier’s body felt the effects of adrenaline pour through her. She went for her rifle, and her mind ran a quick review of what she learned of the new gear she had to use and how to operate it without HNI.
The sea below began to slowly part as if a submarine the size of a small fortress was rising up. The UNE fleet above held position and waited for what came next.
“We got something big down there!” Chevallier yelled as she witnessed the mystery below unfold from the edge of the flight deck.
LeBoeuf’s eyes looked away from the hologram. “Holy shit, get ready!”
A long-necked scaly monster, no, a dragon raised its head, neck, and upper body from the sea, rapidly sending violent tidal waves in all directions. It scales were blue like the oceans of Earth; its tail alone was nearly double the length of its body and head combined. Its massive arms and legs stroked the waters around it, helping it propel across the Mediterranean at impressive speeds, speeds that forced the UNE group above to flare their thrusters and keep up with it. Numerous apertures ran along the tough back skin of the beast, the sea wyrm, as LeBoeuf began to call it. The apertures slithered open and allowed slime-coated wyverns to squeeze their bodies out, shaking their form and wings swiftly to rid themselves of the goo.
There were four at first. Then eight as more apertures opened, each one releasing two to three wyverns. Ten more opened thirty seconds later.
The skies became populated with wyverns seconds later.
Boyd reviewed his tactical hologram, and his face winced. “This is Sergeant Boyd to all UNE forces, we have confirmation of a super massive creature on a direct course to Lebanon. Alert all units in the area!”
The skies above the Mediterranean turned into a warzone.
Fighters sprung to action, launching in wave upon wave from their stratosphere carrier home. Their dogfighting skills filled the skies with plasma missiles and rail gun fire bullets. The stratosphere ships opened fire, lines of blue and white particle cannon fire formed almost perpetual grids of blue and white in the wake of their attacks.
Wyverns countered with dive-bombs and plasma flames from their breaths. Heavily augmented ones chased fighters with their mounted tachyon cannons. Fighter pilots, whose crafts became engulfed in flames ejected, well those that were lucky enough to do so in time. There was a seemingly never-ending stream of wyverns flying off the back of the sea wyrm as it swam at mind-blowingly high speeds. For every bloody husk of half-vaporized wyvern that fell into the sea, two more sprung up from the back of the wyrm.
Boyd called out to his team and Chevallier, gesturing to go back to the lower decks. There was no point in having the four up top. This was a battle for the flyboys and girls until the UNE regained air superiority.
Unknown to them, however, was the quick about-face the sea wyrm made in the sea the below, bringing its face to look up at the stratosphere carrier and the hundreds of swarming fighters it spewed out. The wyrm’s jaws opened and unveiled its collection of intimidating teeth resting inside a mouth more than capable of biting and tearing apart the bridge of any capital ship. Light began to build up from its throat, psionic light. The water and moisture that had rained down from the lips of the beast turned into vapor as the light from its throat shot into the skies in the form of a wide and continuous burst of tachyons.
The overshields of the stratosphere carrier flickered twice, then shattered when the beam from the wyrm hit in conjunction with the assault from swarming wyverns.
A red, glowing hole melted through the underside of the carrier, and then out from its topside. A chain reaction of internal explosions sent the carrier down from the skies, staining the white fluffy clouds a shade black from the billowing flames.
Chevallier tried to remain calm but doing such a thing proved to be a challenge when the shadow of the crashing carrier loomed over top. A collision with the Robert Borden was inevitable.
“Oh, for fuck sakes!” Chevallier roared.
The Robert Borden rocked violently when the carrier hit. Explosions repelled off its overshields before they shattered. Its regular shields came next as the carrier’s remains broke apart, creating explosion after explosion, crushing the entrance back to the lower decks. She faced away from the crashing carrier and fled across the flight deck.
Ferocious blasts of red and orange flames expanded outward, raging fragments of distorted metal and debris scattered, followed by the deafening sound of two colliding ships meeting their ends. Chevallier could tell by the look on Boyd’s face, he was glad neither of them had gotten around to entering the lower decks as he, Maxwell, and LeBoeuf ran alongside her.
A secondary blast sent the nose of the Robert Borden pointing to the skies at a forty-five-degree angle. The flight deck became a steep incline, one where artificial gravity and inertia dampers were no longer a reality due to the intense damage the ship received. The four and surviving flight deck crew tumbled backwards as if
the outside deck was a slide, a slide where a deadly inferno and the remains of a crashed carrier awaited them with open arms.
Two idle transports approached Chevallier during her slide, their magnetically locked landing gear kept them still. She kept her back to the surface while sliding and shifted to the left most idle transport. Her hands hooked onto its side handlebar as she neared. She ignored the wails of crewmen falling into the inferno or off the sides of the flight deck into the sea, bad enough the horrific cries could very well have been Boyd, LeBoeuf, and Maxwell as none of them were to be seen.
The burning Robert Borden continued plunging toward the sea thanks to the remains of the carrier jammed into its aft, forcing it down. With that plunge came diving wyverns searing the now shield-free, crashing ship with their plasma breath, adding insult to injury.
Chevallier tried to get back to her feet, using the magnetically bound transport as a step. She was denied by another blast.
And then another.
Sparks, fires, and smoke rose from the inferno, obscuring her vision. The sea below grew larger in size, as did the sea wyrm unleashing new wyverns into the deadly air to air bout. Alerts within her protect suit beeped repeatedly, an overlay on her HUD revealed their altitude was decreasing rapidly. Forget alien invaders, dragons were one tough adversary.
Chevallier faced the sea below and gave the sea wyrm that swam through it a devious smile. She let go of the transport and allowed the blue thrusts of her jump jet to take her over the edge.
She was free. There was nothing above, below, or around her, just the rushing winds of Earth breezing across the shields of her suit and the Earth’s gravity pulling her into a freefall. The leap of fate gave her a better view of the battlefield and its relentless exchange of tachyon beams and scattering plasma breaths with particle cannons and rail guns. Dragons were pitted against UNE fighters above the glorious sea with a murderous sea wyrm chopping through the waters.
It was insanity. Their sane tactics weren’t cutting it.
It was time for something new.
Chevallier reached for her wrist holo screen to activate her MRF and slow her descent with reduced mass. She couldn’t find the button for it and dropped like a skydiver with no parachute.
Her fall broke when she crashed into the back of an unsuspecting wyvern below her. The beast arched its back hastily and shrieked loudly, drowning out the flapping noises its massive wings made. Chevallier held on, wrapping her hands around its thin and rough neck.
An aerial wrestling match ensued, as the two fought for the right to live to see another day. The wyvern moved and rocked its body swiftly, Chevallier held on. It somersaulted, her grip came lose, it shook, and, suddenly, Chevallier felt gravity take hold of her body again.
Looking up, she saw the tip of its right wing flapping. It was too much of a stretch for her hand to grab ahold of at first, reentering another freefall didn’t help. Its wing lowered to complete the flap, gravity no longer pulled her down.
The wyvern roared as her firm grip squeezed into the flesh of its wing and countered by positioning its body up right and wrapped Chevallier’s body up with its ten-foot-long tail. The strong muscles within its tail brought her body up and forward to face its menacing glare. Her shields held at 84 percent despite the strong grip holding her still. Lucky for Chevallier, her arms had been held high up during the unexpected binding.
Hands and arms, it was all she had to work with.
The two gazed into each other’s eyes once they met face-to-face. The wyvern’s jaws, dressed with implants, swung open, Chevallier grimaced. She saw three rows of pointy eight-inch teeth and dripping saliva that fell from the roof of its mouth. Chevallier pushed away the thought of what its teeth could do to her shields if its binding tail dropped them to 84 already.
It moved in to take a bite of her.
She reached back and searched for her rifle, she didn’t feel it.
Fuck!
The first bite caused her shields to distort and flicker rapidly. She saw blue swirling colors for a solid five seconds.
Then came the second bite, or so she assumed, once again, blue waves blinded everything around her. She made another attempt to confirm if her rifle, which was strapped to her back, had fallen off during the struggle.
She felt nothing.
Her shields fell to 50 percent.
She searched again for the weapon, nothing.
Shields: 34 percent.
Chevallier felt something solid, metallic, and human-made, it wasn’t her suit’s shoulders. She found the dangling rifle and aimed it forward with haste and fed the wyvern something to eat other than her, two point-blank particle beam blasts. The back of its throat vaporized, the intensity of the ionized particles spread to incinerate the rest of its neck. Red embers and ash blew away in the winds as the head of the wyvern separated from its body. Gravity, once again, became an issue, and this time she was wrapped within the death grip of a dead dragon.
Chevallier’s frantic search for the MRF controls resumed as her altitude dropped and the sea wyrm and sea surface neared. For a split second, she really wished she had gotten the HNI implants.
Seconds before impact, she felt the mass of her form reduce enough to slip away from the tail of the headless wyvern and slow the speed of her fall. She looked down and watched the beast tumble and splash into the sea next to the hulking sea wyrm still racing to the east, the back of the wyrm also happened to be her source of solid mass to stand on. Carefully timed thrusts from her jets with her altered mass, allowed her body to gradually glide down onto the back of the swimming wyrm. She stumbled briefly on impact, and felt the roaring winds attempt to blow her off the back of the wyrm. A quick readjustment of her mass rectified that issue.
One problem dealt with, now for the next, she thought as the Robert Borden and the carrier that brought it down exploded on impact into the sea. There was one UNE capital ship still in the skies and judging by the sheer number of wyverns circling and harassing it, it wasn’t going to swing by for a rescue anytime soon.
Chevallier was alone, stranded on the back of a wyrm making a marathon swim to the eastern portion of the Mediterranean.
Or so she thought.
“Chief!” Maxwell shouted, and waved to her as she spotted him and Boyd several steps across the blue-scaled back of the wyrm. She smiled at the two during her approach as they too had caught onto her idea of leaping off the crashing destroyer, though they obviously had a much smoother and less dangerous fall.
“Thought we lost you,” Boyd said to her.
“Where’s LeBoeuf?” Chevallier asked, looking from side to side.
“Further up with a survivor from the crash,” Boyd said, and gestured to a clearing across the skin of the beast before the three.
They marched over to the location in question. Chevallier’s face flinched at the various apertures they stepped over as they neared. Not long ago, said apertures were releasing swarms of wyverns. She held onto her rifle tightly, expecting the unexpected, and hoped the Marine that stood with LeBoeuf was as paranoid as she while his red hair blew in the winds.
“Okay so, we’re standing on top of a giant dragon, that’s taking us further and further away from the battle,” Maxwell commented. “Now what?”
“Now, we come to terms as to what the fuck happened,” said the Marine, Corporal McMillan.
“Not much we can do,” Boyd said. “Those wyverns got every airborne asset we have under a lot of pressure.” Boyd waved his left hand in a circular motion, and a holographic tactical screen appeared as a result. He examined the data. “We got reinforcements coming in to support them and cities to the east where this dragon is swimming to.”
“That’s it?” Maxwell bellowed in a worried manner.
Boyd pointed at the burning wreckage of the carrier and the Robert Borden floating up top of the sea’s surface, spewing black smoke into the sky. “This creature just butt-fucked two of our strato-ships in a matter of seconds, they a
ren’t going to take any risks right now.”
“Correction, sir,” LeBoeuf said. “It’s not a creature, it’s a ship.” LeBoeuf directed them to her hologram. She conjured a side-by-side view of the creature in the sea they stood on and one of the invader capital ships that attacked Earth. “The ships that attacked us were organic and from what I’m able to sense, this thing we’re standing on is nothing more than a smaller version of the ships.”
Chevallier looked to the horizon, and the head of the wyrm bobbing up and down as it continued to tread through the sea. “A ship that has a head, arms, and legs? The fuck?”
“You said it,” Maxwell chimed in. “The fuck, indeed.”
“It makes sense if they wanted it to swim and remain undetected,” LeBoeuf said. “We were scanning for large energy signatures which the invader ships did have. This thing below us operates mostly on elbow grease.”
“That beam it shot out from its mouth looked like it needed to be powered by a large energy signature,” Boyd said drily.
“That beam was psionically powered,” LeBoeuf said. “I sensed its psionic force seconds before it went off.”
“So, if what you’re saying is true.” Boyd paused to choose his next words. “You’re saying that inside this dragon turned into a ship, is?”
“More bad guys—”
Creepy noises silenced the four along with the surviving Marine, McMillan. Five rifles rose, and five targeting scanners reported no hostile targets. The noises sounded as if flesh was being torn and slashed opened. The apertures that littered the back of the wyrm vibrated, such as the ones closest to them. And the many they stood over top of.
Chevallier’s rifle fixed on the first aperture that began to open wide. “Look alive, people, we got incoming!”
A grotesque-looking collection of wyverns, invader foot soldiers, and drakes crawled up and out of the slit-like apertures before them like zombies in a horror movie. The newly arrived dragons and half-dragon-like soldiers were drenched in the same translucent goo witnessed earlier. The drakes lurched forward first and took on the role of a tank, as the tachyon-wielding soldiers stood behind, and the wyverns took to the skies. A fight with the five humans that imposed on their vessel was inevitable.
Celestial Incursion (Edge of the Splintered Galaxy Book 1) Page 20