by Derek Baker
Why they would be attacking Mecca, they didn’t know. There was no water in the desert. They might all get slaughtered just so the men from the sky could discover the uselessness of it all after the fact.
An Islamic soldier knelt behind the men, muttering prayers under his breath. “Allah, give us peace…”
“Hey,” another soldier looked around towards the Muslim, he looked American, “No one wants your stinkin’ religion. You really think your Allah’s gonna save us from the aliens? I thought religion tried to tell us we were God’s only creation? Well, there’s your disproof right there!” He pointed at the landing Wendrans.
“Man, just let him be…” another soldier chimed in.
The two got into a shouting match, when suddenly an explosion blew them all to smithereens. Where they once stood were now body parts. Within the hour the coalition forces had salvaged what they could and let the city be ran over. It didn’t take long for the Wendrans to figure out there wasn’t any significant amount of water around.
~~~~~
The family huddled in their cellar, listening to the barrage of bombs reducing bits and pieces of their city to rubble. Never had they known such a thing could happen to London…once again. The sirens that had until recently only been ceremonious were now blaring, placed every couple blocks or so.
“They’re gonna call this The Third Battle of Britain or something like that when they’re writing history textbooks someday,” said the brother, sneaking a glimpse out the small window that showed some of the action happening outside.
“Get the hell away from there, son!” bellowed the Father.
The sister, barely five years old, huddled in her mother’s arms, her mother trying her best to soothe her daughter while simultaneously blocking out the insanity around them.
“But pa…”
“Now!”
“Mum…”
“Do what your father tells you. Last thing we need is you getting glass in your eyes if a bomb lands close!”
Won’t bloody matter then, we’d all be dead, he thought to himself, trying to hide his inner anger from his parents. Instead he walked sullenly back across the tiny shelter, dodging piles of storage and kicking cobwebs off his shoes.
“I wanted to see the aliens…” he muttered childishly. He was only a couple years older than his trembling sister who lay beside him.
“Trust me, my son, you don’t. They wanna take over the whole damn world!” his father whispered loudly to him, his alcoholic breath unrelenting in making the brother’s face squirm with distaste.
A faint humming noise that had been subtle before now grew in volume, sounding like it was coming closer. This time it was the father who rose up to look out the window. His eyes skittered around, then opened wide in horror.
“Get down!”
An explosion filled their eardrums, popping them open to bleed in a frenzy of pain. The whole house shook. Then it stopped.
“My eyes! I can’t see!” the father shrieked, fumbling around with his arms.
“Oh my god!” the mother screamed.
The son looked over towards his sister and mother. They looked fine. Half blind and half deaf, he got up to help his father back over to his mother, then turned back to look out the window again. Through the thick smoke that engulfed the street, he saw the house across from them totally gone. The one next to it nearly gone, but the survivors were struggling to get out. One of them was burning alive, flailing his arms about until he collapsed in death.
The son wished it had been his house.
~~~~~
The newly christened aircraft carrier, now carrying spacecraft and planes alike, was being bombed extensively by the Wendran scout ship hovering thousands of feet above. Some of the pilots had been able to take off before their means of escape had been obliterated.
The captain and his first mate knelt over the radar in the control room, trying to get an idea of what was happening outside.
A sailor burst in, carrying a tablet for the captain. The grey faced man quickly read the message, eyes barely skimming the details.
“Can’t take much more before this lady sinks,” he muttered to his first mate, facing downward with resignation in his expression.
“How long ‘til reinforcements come, sir?” his second-in-command asked.
“We’ll be sunk before then, they’ve got skirmishes going on all over the planet. Doubt they’re gonna prioritize a ship sitting ducks in Panama.”
“But sir, the canal’s here! And we’re carrying spacecraft fighters, damn it! How could they not put us on high priority?”
“We both know they couldn’t give a damn about Latin America. Too busy trying to protect America. Sailor –” he looked back to the young man who had given him the message, “have the life boats ready. Then they can pick us off one by one…”
The sailor looked reluctant with those last words, but turned around to leave and obey anyhow.
“Captain, I’ve never seen you like this…” the first mate brought his hand up to his superior’s shoulder.
“We’re outgunned, outnumbered, and outmatched. We can’t hold them off. Might as well wave the white flag… not that they would know what that means. Bastards. I remember a time when it was the Chinese we had to worry about. 2091, when they tried to attack California, I was there. I was only 18. I can’t contend with this nonsense. Aliens…c’mon, what do they expect us to do?”
“Sir…I wish there was something I could say…” the first-mate shrugged incredulously.
“Go on, get out of here, try to get out of here alive. A captain has to go down with his ship.”
The first mate’s eyebrows raised. “No, sir! That’s old tradition, man! No one’s going to think less of you for trying to live!”
“I’m an old man, and I’m stuck to my old ways. Leave me be. That’s an order.”
The first-mate wanted to argue further, but the bombardment grew ever louder by the second, so in a second’s quick decision, he left the control room to try to escape.
~~~~~
Evan Coholte and his squad tried to make themselves invisible to the Wendran scout ship that had landed only a moment before a block down the street from their barricade.
“They must have this as one of their targets,” Coholte whispered to his men, eyes going back and forth between them and the ship. His men nodded back in agreement.
A door opened behind them, and they looked back to see a man in a gown, obviously a patient, pointing straight at the ship.
“IT’S THEM!!” he shouted, oblivious to the fact that he just blown the squad’s cover. “Don’t you see them?!?! Why don’t you stop them!?” he looked bewilderedly at Coholte and his men, as they waved their hand and made cutthroat gestures with their hands in an attempt to shut him up.
“Who the fuck let this idiot out?” Evan asked to one in particular.
Before anything could happen, a red dot appeared at the center of the patient’s chest, with an almost simultaneous burst of light that separated the man’s body into chunks. Then more blasts came their way, damaging the barricade that had protected them.
“Don’t just gawk, fire back!” Evan shouted in the rush of the moment, trying to hold bile down in his stomach from the sight that had just become sealed in his brain permanently.
He turned his head back around to see a squad that was a similar size to his own coming at them, only these were not human, nor the friendly Martians who had supplied them with the rifles they were holding. He looked down at the weapon, wishing then he had a familiar gun to contend these alien invaders. Instead he rose instantaneously to fire upon them, pulling the trigger to see a mimicking flashing of energy flawlessly rip one of his adversaries to shreds. He quickly backed down.
Each soldier in his squad did likewise, all impressed by the immense power of technology they now possessed. Within thirty seconds the Wendrans lay scattered about the rubble that littered the street.
“Good work, men,” Coholt
e nodded in approval to his squad, as they exchanged small cheers and high-fives. “Probably more where they came from…” his voice grew weaker with the last few words, as he bent over, no longer being able to hold down the vomit fighting its way up.
He soon grew accustomed to the constant gore.
Chapter 25
Lar’Taum’Sev died quickly, ked ship disintegrated in a flash before ke could know it. The laser, seemingly intended for me, blocked at the last second by the Martian Eto’s quick maneuvering. If I had ever been given the opportunity, I would thank ked for my life.
There was no time to react in the heat of battle, the pair of us that was left out of the original trio had to keep flying on, had to keep the intensity going. My mind went numb of pain, of anything else tragic that might happen in this battle. I just kept flying, kept on pulling the trigger to inflict the same kind of fate for the Wendran pilots. Fuck them, and fuck what they’re trying to do.
The pattern continued just as before, the fighters that were left kept up the same strategy: attack the mother ships’ fuel cells. This went on for another couple times until the Admiral Gup’Dis’Sev, not our rogue commander Vok’Lem’Boark, got on the comms:
“Enough, fighters! Pull back to our battleships!”
Pull back? Are we retreating? I thought we were doing a good job…
Sure enough though, the fighters that were left, perhaps a little over half of the original size of us, started reversing course to gather around in even distribution around the armada of battleships that approached behind us. It made no sense that they were charging if we were retreating. I was certain we were going into defensive mode, but couldn’t figure out why for the moment being.
The Commander Vok’Lem’Boark got onto the comms, addressing the fighters: “I ask Admiral why we pull back, he say it because Wendrans leaving Earth, come to attack us full force now.”
So that was why; we were winning after all! We had inflicted enough damage on the Wendran fleet that they decided they could no longer handle the two front battle, and decided to focus on us as we were the bigger threat. If they could muster the force to beat us with their by now fledgling fleet, the rest would be simply cleaning up the mess.
I looked at the Earth in the distance. I wish I could tell what was going on down there. The day side, showing me America, looked perfectly serene as it had looked before that day. I figured it was too far away to be able to discern any damage caused by the Wendrans. The dark side where the Middle East and part of Eastern Asia lied that I could see proved to be a different story, however. There looked to be a glowing red dot on the Arabian peninsula. Damn it, they’re nuking the desert again, or so it appeared. The cities of India were dimmed, not much light came from there. It all seemed so surreal that it could have hardly had an effect on me in that moment.
I tried to feel sorry for all the families that lost their lives, all the people killing themselves before the Wendrans could kill them, but I was too numbed. I wondered how many were already dead by this point. I had to ask myself why the Wendrans had to control everything, why they couldn’t have just perhaps asked us to trade water with them in exchange for something they had that we desired. But according to Chym, that was against their nature, or at least against the personality of their dictatorial Emperor. All these deaths, I realized, were pointless, caused by his dominating flaws. They had to be stopped here and now.
I watched the movement of the Wendran ships, my attention going back to my immediate surroundings. The mother ships were forming a new pattern behind the swarm of small ships and Wendran fighters that were still intact. It became clear that they were now desperate, willing to do whatever it took to win this battle. This could mean the beginning of the end of their aggression, this could be the turning point the Martians had long sought. Our species combined against a common enemy, to save the numerous worlds that they had enslaved over the past generation. Today could be that day.
The fighters started rushing at our battleships. Without hesitation the Admiral addressed our entire force: “Martian and Human fighters, prepare to guard those fuel cells on the battleships! We cannot afford to sustain the same damage we inflicted upon them just prior!”
So now the tables had turned for the small engines on the front lines. My remaining partner Stacy and I stood our ground underneath the belly of one of the battleships, prepared to die trying to keep the battleship from being destroyed.
Within a minute the Wendran fighters were upon us, but we were ready. I quickly shot at one right as it was about to discharge right into the heart of the fuel cell. Every shot counted, so while the fuel cell could take quite a bit of damage before disrupting, we had to keep the Wendrans off. Suddenly another came close to my ship, and I fired multiple times at it, but each shot missed. Frustrated, I took off after it.
It dodged debris and other fighters alike as I tried to get a good angle before I was sure my automatically aiming laser wouldn’t catch something undesired or a friendly ship. Before long I was able to maneuver right behind it, but it was just as it collided with another Wendran fighter. It took the strongest reflexes I had to be able to dive out of the way of that explosion.
Letting out a short laugh, thinking, Whew! That was a close one! I circled back around to my original position.
-Getting cocky? Stacy asked me via message.
-Nah, didn’t you see how that one was pretty much coaxing me out in the open? Guess there’s nothing like a good chase.
-Gotcha. Don’t need to lose another partner.
-Sorry, won’t happen again.
-Good.
These defensive measures seemed to last forever, the two fleets now at full force against one another. I thought we’d never see the last Wendran fighter.
Suddenly though, they stopped coming.
It took me a second to realize what was going on. I could hardly believe it, but the next message the Admiral sent out was the confirmation I had been hoping for: “It would appear the Wendran fleet is now retreating, excellent work everyone!”
I buried my face in my hands, floating there in space, crying for joy. The comms were flooded with cheers, jeers, and more cheers. I didn’t care what happened or how it happened, just the fact that they were leaving Earth was everything I could have hoped for. My home was safe for now.
~~~~
The chamber of the Martian legislature was abuzz, the Prime Minister Shri’Buk’Tai calling for order. All emotions were present, from absolutely ecstatic to furious. Everyone trying to give their input, each having their own opinions on what course of action needed to be taken.
When the Representatives finally decided to listen to what their Prime Minister had to say, he spoke slowly and seriously: “Friends and Colleagues of Mars, a new stage of the war has finally come. We have finally forced a turning point, and the time to push back at Wendra has come at last. Their expansive ambitions will now be quartered. Our human allies have proven instrumental in turning the tides in this long, costly war that has taken millions of lives, from species across the light years. Long live Earth! Long live humanity!”
An outspoken representative towards the front of the assembly called out: “We all know they would have at a loss if we had not interfered on their behalf, my good sir. All our money pouring into their pockets and now they will be the ones who bear the honor of turning the tide in this conflict.”
A murmur of agreement surrounded him, obviously his party were all of the same point of view.
“Now, now. Some of us are too keen to fail the realization that not helping them would only have given the Wendran forces a highly strategic position from which it would be too easy to lay siege on Robhustare.”
“Ha! It would have given me a considerable deal of joy to watch the Wendrans try to fight their way down through the tunnels into our cities! It would take them years to get a fraction of the way through our defenses!”
“Yes, but in the mean time, Representative, we’d be cut off to trade wi
th outside factions, leaving us without an ample supply of food and textiles. We could only last so long without the basics. So you see, defending Earth was the best decision we could have made. This new integration we have seen of our species has been nothing but beneficial mutually, and those of you conservatives who refuse to acknowledge this will suffer greatly in the next election.”
This seemed to finally shut the Representative up, until another one piped in: “Prime Minister Shri’Buk’Tai, since we have beaten them here, why are we not chasing them back to Wendra? Why not make it so there is no fleet left to return to their home world?”
“That is precisely what I am about to discuss with the new Earth Minister, Ashton Presley. For now, it would be best to take caution. We never know if there might be traps obstructing our path to victory.”
He rose from his seat, leaving the chamber to go to his office, connected by a long corridor to the Legislative Chamber. His tablet lay atop his desk, and he motioned it on to make a call to the woman of the hour. She answered quickly, expecting his call.
“Good day, Minister Shri’Buk’Tai, and may it be remembered that way in the years to come. On behalf of my entire planet, I thank you for all you have done. Words cannot express my gratitude for what you’ve done for us. There is nothing nobler, more gracious act of kindness than I have ever encountered in my lifetime in your help you have lent, nor shall I likely ever see any surpassing achievement of this moment.”
She bowed low on the screen, awaiting the Martian leader’s response. “You are quite welcome, Minister Presley. It is only, however, a precedence that we follow, our shared histories long speak of an alliance, a teacher to a student sort of relationship. I merely acted in such a way that would bring honor and consistency to our long tied friendship.”