by J. Kirsch
All of which made General Meng either the biggest pain in the ass or a superb tactician, depending on who you asked. Civilian bureaucrats had one opinion of the man, his soldiers quite another. He had spent a good portion of the sleepless night looking at the message from General Chao's Beijing Command. Two fighters were reportedly being sent with the new Dragon Missiles equipped. Two cockroach fighters. The Enemy's own technology repurposed and used against Him. Just the thought should've made the average soldier giddy with the possibility. Proud of human ingenuity.
The average soldier General Meng was not, and that dour-faced old fossil, now stooped with a spine as crooked as his front teeth, saw it as a shot in the dark with no chance to succeed. But that wasn't his job. His job was to do all in his power to keep his city, his Shanghai, from the hands of the Enemy. He would launch his surface-to-air missiles at the carrier ships as soon as he received the transmission from the two infiltrating cockroach fighters.
Much could go wrong. Who was to say that the Enemy wouldn't simply recognize the Chinese-manned cockroach fighters as rogue the moment they entered Enemy-occupied airspace? General Meng knew what he had to do, though, to make this mission more likely to succeed, despite its hopeless odds.
So at 7:43AM he launched the missiles.
The entire night the Enemy's five carrier assault ships had been flinging fire and death throughout the city of Shanghai. The Bund was nothing more than a smoking crater. The river itself was on fire with ships that had bottlenecked themselves in the lanes, trying to escape. They'd lit up the city like a wicked bonfire. Ash and smoke still choked the struggling sunrise.
General Meng listened to the dispatches from his commanders as they came over the secure com link.
"Sir, the Enemy are showing something we haven't seen before. There appear to be two troop transports, one landing north and one landing south of the Huangpu on Luban Road. Our mortar shells have no effect, I repeat, no effect."
Another commander's frantic voice reached him over the com. Gunfire rattled and spat so that he could barely shout over the chaos. "Sir, our small arms have minimal effect on their troops. We can't hold them! Request to pull back!"
"Do not pull back! Stay and fight," General Meng ordered. He listened quietly to the com as entire battalions of his men were being wiped out. He could do this with complete calm for one very simple reason. At last his aide, a young man named Jie, son of the General Secretary, could stand it no longer.
"Sir, they're getting slaughtered out there! My God, why don't you help them?"
He turned to the young man. The man had a handsome face, expressive eyes wide with alarm. He pitied this young man, a boy who should have been wooing his sweetheart rather than watching a world shatter.
"Jie, do you trust me?"
With some reluctance the boy nodded. "That is good." Meng slapped Jie across the face and the young man froze in shock.
"Do you know what you're doing, boy? You're pitying those soldiers. They don't need your pity, you young fool. They have a job to do, and not only are they doing it, they're doing it with honor and courage. Now keep your mouth shut and do your job. Have I made myself clear?"
General Meng forgave the young man for his ignorance. For the benefit of the young man, as the fierce sound of gunfire grew more and more desperate, General Meng revealed a tidbit of the truth.
"As you know Jie, we haven't had time to deploy the Dragon Missiles. Our civilian leaders didn't think it prudent to store any near Shanghai - too accessible, not remote enough for security purposes. But a small number of the Dragon Missile prototypes were among my stockpiles. The missiles were faulty and so expensive to fix that the powers-that-be chose to leave them here. But the warheads themselves are still viable."
Jie gaped at him. "General, are you saying what I think you're saying?"
General Meng had no time to explain the rest of his plan to Jie. The battle had reached the point of no return. PLA missiles were arcing into the sky, exploding impotently against the invisible shields of the five carrier ships above. Cockroach fighters from those same ships were now zeroing in on the positions of the hidden missile silos and reducing them to scrap. At the same time the Enemy landing parties to the north and south of the river were threatening to spill into the city proper, fanning outward in a two-pronged assault.
This all seemed like good news for the Enemy. On the perimeter of the de facto beachhead which the Enemy had established, General Meng received updates from his well-placed scouts.
"Sir, they've wiped out most of our forces near the landing site. They're making a push now. They're advancing right over multitudes of our dead."
General Meng gave the order. "You have the green light, all units. Open the box."
Among the dying and the dead PLA soldiers, some had fallen during the fight on purpose, playing possum. These soldiers had bombs strapped tightly to their bodies in duct tape, and these weren't ordinary bombs. They were fusion bombs made from the dismantled Dragon Missile warheads. The warheads were too heavy and unstable to be fired with conventional ground weapons. But they could be properly wired and triggered to make that all-important chemical reaction happen. General Meng's pessimistic obsession had gauged that without the chaos of an urban firefight, the Enemy might detect the trap before it was too late.
"Go, go, go!" General Meng could hear the scouts shouting to their men, fleeing pell-mell as the reactions began. On the large monitor with video-feed of greater Shanghai, General Meng focused his attention on the Luban Bridge and the surrounding neighborhoods north and south of the Huangpu. Without warning, WOOOM. A blue ball of shimmering death thrashed outward from a central point, blinding the video-feed in washed-out glare. A second blue sphere of devastation followed the first, and a second shock wave surged over the face of the urban landscape. The entire city shook, rumbling to its core. Half the ceiling of General Meng's bunker caved in. Jie's diving push probably saved the General's life as a huge cinderblock jarred loose and cracked the concrete where General Meng had stood.
Meng looked like a mime in camouflage, his face covered in white dust. He lurched out of his disorientation long enough to order the next salvo of missiles launched.
Crackling with static, his com link still operational, Meng heard the words that made his old heart gallop like a stallion.
"Sir, the Monkey and the Jaguar are in the jungle. I repeat, the Monkey and the Jaguar are in the jungle." Meng had to smile. Those code words brought a ridiculous image into his head even as the fate of this city of nearly 33 million hung on a knife's edge.
He turned to Jie, and Jie said what he already knew.
"It's about to happen, isn't it?"
"We're about to see if your father and General Chao are as smart as they think they are. If that's what you mean then yes, boy."
Reports were coming in of the massive, massive craters that now scarred the earth north and south of the Luban Bridge. The bridge itself had fallen into the river and the Huangpu had diverted course, flooding the yawning craters with untold gallons of liquid force.
Meanwhile volley after volley of missiles exploded harmlessly against screens of cockroach fighters that the Enemy had begun to use defensively as skillfully as they had in their assault. Swarms of cockroach fighters, like schools of fish, were providing a moving barrier that shielded the carrier-ships from missile fire. The irony was that even if General Meng had had Dragon Missiles deployed on the ground by this point, they would never be able to get past those screens of cockroach assault craft. Blowing up a huge number of the fighters might have helped, but they needed to take out those carriers, all else be damned.
There was more irony to go around though. General Meng had to wait, impotent, to see what would happen as the two cockroach fighters manned by Chinese pilots approached their targets. In the urgency to protect their ships from the mayhem on the ground, the Enemy had closed up their carriers into a tight five-pointed star. The first cockroach fighter slammed aft of the neares
t carrier on the edge of the formation, sparking a froth of cobalt energy which tore the sky like weeping flesh. That widening sphere of annihilation not only destroyed its initial target, it also obliterated a second ship and left a third in such tatters that it began to sag to port before disintegrating piecemeal as it hurtled under the Earth's yanking gravity.
The second blast was every bit as spectacular as the first. Two more ships vanished, their matter consumed by the fusion energy. Meng wondered about the last flashing thoughts of the Chinese pilots before they'd navigated to their deaths. Glorious and noble as their sacrifices were, immortalized as they might be, Meng suspected that none of that had mattered to the nameless pilots. They probably envisioned their homes and loved ones and nothing else. It was always the simple things that served as the ultimate motivation for sacrifice.
"Report, damn it! Report! What's the Enemy's status?!"
Meng waited while flurries of updates came in from the damaged com link. Static hounded every other word, but Meng managed to get the gist of the situation on the ground. The Enemy fleet was completely destroyed. The repurposed cockroach fighters had fulfilled their purpose. The Enemy's remaining cockroach fighters were falling from the sky like deadly but useless paperweights. The startled General gasped as Jie picked him up in a bone-crushing hug.
"You did it, General!"
"I did nothing young man!" Meng frowned. Oh, hell. He gave Jie a high-five.
"Compile a list of today's dead and missing. We will bury our fallen, and if we can't bury them, we can at least honor their sacrifice. Get to work!" No easy task, and normally not something a General's aide would be caught dead doing. But this war had turned many roles upside down, and Meng had to see that all needs were filled.
"All brigade commanders, assemble for new instructions by 1100." Meng glanced at the corner of this room which had until recently been his command center, office, and bedroom all in one. Half of the room was choked with rubble, and it was a wonder the doorway hadn't been blocked.
"Oh, and Jie...get someone to start removing some of this debris. Have the engineers check to see if the structural integrity is still sound. I've got a war to run, and I don't have time for this crap." Jie gave the General a quick bow and a grin.
"Yes, General Meng! I'm on it!" After the young man left, Meng slipped a cigar between his lips, lit it, and took a good, long pull. Even a humorless old man could savor a victory. He hadn't earned it, but his men sure as hell had. Meng grasped an opened bottle of rice wine and poured it onto the floor, imagining it soaking into the earth below.
For your sacrifices, my young, fearless fools. You make a shriveled, old fool proud.
Chapter 7
Skye, the Abducted
The alien's body was limp. I slowly knelt down beside it. Myla hung back, clearly traumatized by the idea of a corpse. Don't ask me why I wasn't traumatized. I've always felt a little not-normal…OK, maybe a lot not-normal. Jobe and I could see its facial features better in the fading orange glow. It had no discernible mouth and barely discernible eyes. Just two black pits the size of grapes. Ugh...yuck. The thought of food made my stomach lurch with the fresh corpse lying right there. I had to turn away.
"You all right, Skye?" Kane asked. Jobe clasped my hand and gave me a concerned look.
I yanked my wrist angrily out of reach. "I don't need any special treatment. We need to start thinking. We need to get out of here."
Jobe looked at me strangely. "What are you talking about?"
I pointed at the bracelet around the thing's left wrist. A sinewy, thin sliver of wire hugged around it. I couldn't prove it, but it just shouted 'KEY' at me. "I think that's our ticket out of this hellhole."
Everyone looked at me like I'd gone crazy. It was true that I seemed to live my life through intuition a lot more than most people. I'd always been impulsive, even as a child, but I'd also often gotten lucky too. You make your own luck, Kitty-Kat, Dad used to tell me.
Without thinking, violating my own protest from minutes before, I slipped the bracelet off the Glowing One's wrist. I put it on my own wrist and turned toward the wall. With all my heart I thought about that wall opening, the purplish muck sliding free on my command.
Everyone knelt there, staring at me like I'd grown a third breast. I waited for something to happen.
Nothing.
"Skye, even if we could get out of here, what then?" Kane asked.
"To hell with that. I want to know what she thinks she's doing," Oliver growled. "First you tell us to be careful, and now you start taking desperate actions, trying to escape. What do you think those things will do to us, hm? We've already experienced more than a taste of what they can do when we disobey."
We all shuddered at Oliver's remark. I remembered being mind-raped - that's what I called it, at least. When there were enough of them clustered together they could totally overpower your mind and make you feel like a hammered vegetable, no thoughts or feelings of your own, only pain. They could make you a slave, make you do exactly what they wanted. We figured that the only reason they didn't control us more often was that it seemed to take a huge effort on their part, agitating them as if it was almost just as painful for them as for us.
We knew so little, and trying to break free of this tiny cube on a ship of unguessed size…who was I kidding? This was a snowflake's hope and a prayer in a lake of fire.
Screw it. I didn't care anymore, and yet that's when it came to me.
"I'm getting out of here and you all are coming with me. So help me Oliver, if I have to bitch-slap you into getting your ass in gear, you can look forward to the back of my hand." I glared at him for all I was worth and the tall, by-no-means-wimpy Oliver was the first to flinch.
Jobe nodded. "Okay, what's the plan Skye?"
"I don't have a plan. I have a gut feeling. Now please shut up and let me think." I walked over to the muck of the wall, studying its semi-smooth, disgusting texture. I began to reach out to it and realized that, as seamless as this wall was, it should theoretically be permeable just like the ceiling and floor. It was made of the same kind of stuff, wasn't it? What if the Glowing Ones used the key like that? What if this bracelet, this key, allowed its wearer to slip through the wall as just another permeable barrier? I tried to touch my fingers to the purplish gunk.
My hand went through. I cried out in a mixture of 'I can't believe this works!' and pure exultation.
"Guys, are you seeing this?" I looked back and all four of them were watching me, jaws to the floor.
"I'm going to step through and then try to hand the bracelet back through at just the right moment. If we do this right, maybe we can all use this key to get out of here."
"Yeah, but if you're wrong then you'll get stuck in the wall," Jobe pointed out. "And if you get trapped in that wall, Skye, you may very well die."
"Yeah, a severed limb would suck," I admitted.
"Skye, I can't let you take that risk," Jobe replied. This wasn't Jobe talking, this was his heart talking. He really did love me. I loved him. But I couldn't live my life around the thought of never losing him, and that crap had to go both ways.
"Sorry Jobe." I leaned into him, kissing him hard, stunning him as my arms encircled his neck to deepen the kiss. His heart was thundering as I pulled away and stepped through the wall too quickly for him to stop me.
Chapter 8:
News Flash
"This is Tanya Westenridge, reporting for CNN. London has been bombed and communications throughout the United Kingdom have been disrupted by air strikes on all major population centers as far north as Inverness. The Invaders are ruthless, and mass abductions previously reported have been confirmed. Suburbs in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Manchester have experienced widespread abduction events. Small and maneuverable ships launched from the Invader's carrier-class aircraft have carried out overnight raids in many vulnerable neighborhoods. Tens of thousands are estimated among the taken.
"Elsewhere in the world we have heard more
encouraging news. The Chinese government has broadcast the breathtaking accounts of two recent victories. In the Battle of Beijing and the Battle of Shanghai, Chinese forces were able to annihilate two fleets of heavily armored carrier ships. Military intelligence sources tell us that these carrier ships served as command centers for thousands of unmanned drone fighters, and their destruction has disabled much of the Invader's attack capabilities in Asia.
"The fate of the Middle East seems to be fast spiraling out of human control. Baghdad has fallen and eyewitnesses have identified brightly-skinned and heavily armored Invader troops occupying the city center.
"Wait...dear God! Please listeners, bear with us. We have a breaking news update. This has just been confirmed from my colleagues in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli-Palestinian alliance has successfully destroyed at least three Invader carrier ships near Jerusalem, killing all aboard. Disguised suicide bombers were placed in key positions to be abducted by Invader extraction teams early this morning. In an official statement the Prime Minister has said, 'We will use all weapons at our disposal, even the brazen sacrifice of human life, to protect the land that God has given us. We stand alongside our Palestinian brothers and sisters so that our children may one day walk freely upon this earth. We shall never surrender.'
"This is Tanya Westenridge reporting, CNN news. We now take you to my colleague Mikhail Lazengow, reporting from Mexico City. Mikhail, what can you tell us about the situation in Latin America?"
Chapter 9:
Skye, the Abducted
I stepped through the wall into the welcoming arms of 'Oh, crap!' and I didn't have time to pass the key to the others. I found myself suddenly face to face with ten, no, fourteen or more of the orange-skinned freaks. Great escape plan, Skye. Wonderful freak-ing idea. I'd jumped out of the hot plate and into the raging inferno.