Celestial Incursion

by Eddie R. Hicks

  Nothing happened.

  She quickly examined the rifle and its flashing lights and holographic windows, unable to make sense of what they did. The Dragon Knight swirled its staff weapon above its head and entered an aggressive stance while holding it and channeling its psionic power back into it. It began to glow once again.

  “Chevallier . . .” Boyd’s weakened voice called out. She faced him, and with what little strength he had, he pushed his rifle to her. “You can’t use . . . psionic rifles.”

  Boyd’s weapon was a lot different than LeBoeuf’s rifle and Chevallier’s eRifle. However, it was still able to perform the basic duties of a rifle. Aim, pull the trigger, and watch the person you don’t like fall. Everything except the fall part occurred after she got ahold of Boyd’s rifle. The Dragon Knight leaped to the side and continued to channel its psionic energy, ultimately buying her time to get to her feet and tinker with the rifle’s settings.

  A small display gave her the impression that the rifle had two settings, the current one being listed as ‘physical.’ She tapped the screen switching the rifle’s firing mode. She felt it vibrate slightly, as if it was a car switching gears. It was all the testing she had time to do as the Dragon Knight slid, glided, and drifted toward her once again with its eyes set on her rifle.

  She pulled and held the trigger and the rifle discharged short particle beam bursts, lighting her face with bright flashes of white light with every shot. The Dragon Knight’s psionic shield shattered after three direct hits, causing it to cease its pursuit of her and place its Voelika staff weapon across its armored chest. A burst of light flashed causing the presence of the Dragon Knight to fade and vanish. It laughed hysterically at her before she was able to make a fourth particle beam blast connect.

  Boyd and his team recovered seconds later, each of them rubbing their heads, moaning and groaning. “And you call me the sleep-in . . .” Chevallier said to the three.

  “My . . . head . . .” Maxwell said.

  “Ugh, I’d rather be hungover than feel like this . . .” LeBoeuf said.

  Boyd addressed his team. “Did our HNI seriously just get hacked?”

  “I’m really hoping it was just a glitch,” Maxwell said.

  LeBoeuf gestured to Chevallier. “She wasn’t affected.”

  “If it was an HNI hack, that would explain it,” Boyd said. “They didn’t have that tech back in, what? 2033?”

  Chevallier kept silent, all the talk about HNI, as well as discovering the existence of psionic rifles, reinforced the reality that she was a relic from the past. It wasn’t her place to put in her two cents.

  She tossed Boyd his rifle back. “Thanks for the assist, Sergeant.”

  “No, thank you,” Boyd said. “You’re something else.” Chevallier grunted. “I’m serious, Hammerhead gear and eRifles are found in museums, and you just kicked some serious ass with that. We, along with those civilians down below, would be dead now if you hadn’t shown up.”

  6 Foster

  Transport departing from Carl Sagan crash site

  Geneva, Earth, Sol system

  August 2, 2118, 18:43 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Foster’s hand waved an emotional goodbye to the Carl Sagan as the transport, she and the crew boarded, pulled up and away from the ship of exploration’s final resting place within the waves of Lake Geneva, and into the afternoon sunset. By the time the transport built up enough altitude to pull away, the Carl Sagan looked more like a boat that came to a full stop with small flames burning from the bridge.

  Geneva’s skyline came into view, a grim reminder there was a lot more lost today than the Carl Sagan. Pillars of smoke rose from the city as emergency transports flew away or landed in areas where people needed assistance while UNE fighters circled in the skies. From what Park had told her, the dragon-looking creatures they saw during the crash-landing had plagued these skies not long ago. The last group had evidently been killed at one of the malls downtown after the struggling fighters and defense drones had managed to turn the tables in their favor.

  Foster stepped away from the windows of the transport and glanced at her crew, still puzzled at what became of the non-senior staff and Hammerhead team. Oh God, Chevallier. Foster had ordered her to the docking bay, which was probably being slowly flooded with the lake’s waters, and she wasn’t among those recovered from the crash site. Sending people to their deaths was the job of a military captain, not an IESA one.

  She entered the cockpit where Park and her team stood behind the pilot as he guided them away to safety. “Any idea if we can get an update on what’s happenin’?” Foster asked.

  “Sit tight, there’s some promising chatter on the HNI network,” said Park.

  There was a bit of silence at first and a whole lot of nodding of heads, as if there was a non-vocalized conversation going on. HNI in action Foster figured, most likely listening in to some sort of military broadcast message being beamed into those implants.

  “Okay, Foster, here’s the plot,” Park said to her. “We’re gonna make a small detour to Earth Cube.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, EISS HQ to be exact.”

  Foster’s lips curled. Earth Intelligence and Security Service, or EISS, is to the UNE what the CIA was to the United States, back when it was its own nation. Commander McDowell was revealed to have been a secret agent from EISS that infiltrated the Carl Sagan and ended up dying with a smile on his face. She and Williams often joked and laughed about them getting black-bagged upon their return to Earth to explain why one of their agents ended up dead.

  Neither of them was laughing now.

  “Can’t believe I’m flying Captain Foster of the Carl Sagan,” said the pilot.

  She smiled at him. “The one and only!”

  “I read about you in Time Magazine once word got out you and your crew stopped an invasion of Earth from Sirius.”

  “Did we make persons of the year?” It was Williams. The group in the cockpit turned around and saw he had entered unannounced.

  The pilot nodded. “Hell, yeah, you did.”

  Well, at least some good things happened during our missing years, Foster mused.

  “The Carl Sagan was talked about a lot when Tolukei’s first psionic message was received,” the pilot added. “Then came your disappearance and the data transmissions from your reports.”

  The Carl Sagan’s data transmission would have taken at least eight years to arrive at Earth, the joys of fast-as-light communication. Any signals sent between the colony at Sirius and Earth, also would have taken the same amount of time.

  “Even before you arrived at Sirius, your journey to it inspired a lot of people,” Park said. “Like myself . . . I was a little girl when you left for Sirius. Joined EDF because I wanted to see what was out there in space just like you all.”

  “Couldn’t you have joined IESA?” said the pilot.

  “Recruiting had been scaled back for years,” Park said, prompting Foster to remember the hard time she and Williams had recruiting people for the team. It was one of the primary reasons in fact why they operated with a skeleton crew since there weren’t enough bodies due to the cutbacks. “That, and I didn’t have the grades; I did, however, do a lot of track and worked out. I used that to my advantage to get into EDF.”

  But enough about that. “So, what’s up with that promisin’ news?” Foster asked.

  Park used her HNI to create a large enough holographic window for Foster and Williams to gaze at. Live video feeds from across the planet and in orbit around Earth played. “The invaders’ fleets seem to be withdrawing,” Park said. “They left behind their ground forces, however, so we’ll still have to deal with them, but at least they won’t be getting any backup or orbital support.”

  It took another minute for the transport to arrive at Earth Cube, since it was built on an artificial island that floated in Lake Geneva. The cube-shaped government building, covered with windows from top to bottom, remained untouched during the
attack. Foster guessed it had to do with the six squadrons of fighters making circles around it.

  Under Earth Cube was the EISS HQ, which from what she recalled was a lengthy elevator ride down below sea level. She didn’t know if she should be excited to be visiting one of the most heavily guarded structures in UNE space, or afraid that they were visiting people that had more than enough influence and resources to make you ‘disappear.’

  Disappearing from a spacefaring nation was a big deal. Anyone can disappear from Earth; just hop on a ship and leave. But disappearing from all known planets, moons, ships, and space stations in the galaxy? EISS had ways to make that happen, and there was a very good chance it wouldn’t be an enjoyable experience.

  The transport lowered onto a landing pad on the rooftops of Earth Cube, next to its rooftop elevator. Foster and her crew leaped out of the transport and were greeted by a team of Marines out from the elevator. The Marines aimed their rifles at them.

  “Please tell me this is just some kinda gun salute for our heroic return,” Chang said.

  “Captain Foster,” the lead Marine said. “I need you and your crew to cooperate with us right now.”

  Foster gritted her teeth. “Park?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Park said, shaking her head. “My orders were to bring you here, they didn’t say for what.”

  The Marines moved closer to Foster and her crew, demanding they all place their hands in the air. “Captain?” Pierce said to her.

  “Misunderstanding, I’m hopin’.”

  Foster followed the commands of the Marines, and they aggressively dragged her and her crew to the elevator at gun point. Foster noticed Williams’ face become drenched with sweat as he looked around a lot, very nervously. She thought it was due to the position they now faced, until she saw him look to the skies repeatedly. His eyes focused on the swarming fighters above, the Earth-built stratosphere carriers and cruisers soaring above the smoking Geneva skyline.

  Williams’ breathing became visually erratic, his hands twitched, his legs weakened, his face contorted, and his lips began to move, as if he was whispering to himself.

  “Dom?” Foster called to him.

  “No, no, no, no, no!” Williams screamed, and flung his body to the ground, curling up into a fetal position. “We got to get to California!”

  He repeated his cries over and over, drawing the attention of everyone, Foster especially, as she broke away from her Marine escort to kneel down to examine her friend.

  “Dom!” she said, shaking his trembling body. “Dom, what’s wrong? Talk to me!”

  “That’s enough! Get up you two, now!” a Marine shouted.

  Foster faced the Marine, ignoring the fact that his rifle was aimed square at her head. “There’s somethin’ wrong with him!”

  “Acting sick? Please, I wasn’t born yesterday,” the Marine said. “Both of you, up, now.”

  “Get him a medic!”

  “Don’t make me repeat myself!”

  “Private!” Park yelled, drawing the Marine’s attention away from Foster. “What are you waiting for, soldier? Get this man a medic!”

  The Marine nodded and lowered his weapon. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Foster was forced back up and watched Williams’ body lay on the floor below her, still trembling and panicking, wondering what the hell triggered him. Park gave her a nod while ensuring that a medic was called to deal with Williams and his condition, while the rest of the Carl Sagan’s crew was hauled into the elevator with their Marine escorts.

  The doors slid shut, and the elevator made its quick drop to the EISS HQ.

  “This is bullshit,” Chang said.

  Foster sighed. “Tell me about it.”

  “I guess saving the galaxy is a punishable crime in the future?” Chang said.

  “Look around you,” a Marine cut in. “Does Earth look saved thanks to your actions?”

  “When these doors open again,” Chang said. “I expect a hero’s welcoming party.”

  Minutes later, the elevator arrived at one of many floors to the facility EISS. There was no party.

  “Dude,” Chang said drily to the Marines. “Where’s my party?”

  “Chang . . .” Foster snorted.

  “I know, I know . . .”

  The crew was escorted into examination rooms where they underwent various tests with psionic doctors in hazmat suits. After twelve hours of being probed, prodded, scanned with strange equipment from the twenty-second century, Foster found herself sitting on a bed within a holding cell, alone.

  It made her miss the craziness she endured at Sirius.

  7 Odelea

  Downtown Veromacon

  Veromacon, Aervounis, Luminous system

  (August 2, 2118, 18:45 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  The hour plus long trek Odelea, Iey’liwea, and Ienthei, led by their two surviving ranger escorts, took them into the more dangerous areas of downtown Veromacon as a result of the invasion. Most of the time was spent walking slowly and quietly, waiting for invader scouts to pass while they hid behind trees, mangled vehicles, or the ruins of what was once a tall building. The deeper they pushed, the more of the bronze-colored armored foot soldiers they encountered patrolling the streets.

  The Vorcambreum ranger had enough after they cleared the third patrol and stopped next to a squad of dead rangers. He plucked their pistols off their armored bodies, and then offered one each to the three.

  “Are you serious?” Iey’liwea said, looking down at the magnetic pistol forced into her hands.

  “It’s just the two of us left to protect you three, let’s not take any unnecessary chances,” said the Vorcambreum.

  Ienthei was offered his pistol and then Odelea, who held it with contempt. The grip, the texture, its weight, it reminded her of the first time she held one. Ironically, that also happened one-hundred years ago when she was a young woman. Painful memories of being forced to kill with the weapon tore her mind apart. She had to resist every urge in her body to throw the weapon into the nearby burning garden.

  “Odelea.”

  Her head jerked up from the sound of the Aryile ranger calling her name, she was thankful for it. Having nightmares of the past while still awake was dangerous.

  “Are you going to be okay with that?” he asked.

  “Yeah, yeah I will be fine,” Odelea said. “I just hoped I’d never have to hold one of these again.”

  Odelea felt her hands tremble for the first time in decades, hands that were held by the Aryile ranger as he guided and showed her the proper way to hold, point, and use a magnetic pistol. “These are different from the ones you must have used years ago,” he said. “Let it sync with your implants.”

  She followed his instructions and pulled up a menu of nearby devices her implants could link with. The holographic screen over her eyes located the pistol, and she selected it to be synced. A prompt appeared informing her that her implants weren’t military grade, and so the tactical data the pistol’s targeting scanner could provide would be limited. After accepting the message, new data appeared relaying the limited data the pistol was able to feed into her implants remotely.

  “Point the gun at someone you don’t like, read the data, and then pull the trigger,” the Aryile ranger explained.

  The numbers and screens the pistol transmitted to her implants were overwhelming at first for her. She minimized it all out of her vision for the time being, fearing she might spend more time analyzing the numbers and admiring how crisp the resolution of the targeting scanner’s camera was, rather than survival.

  She felt the ranger let go of her. Her mouth twisted, she had no idea why he’d been so nice and helpful to her, had he held onto her longer, she might have been able to get a better idea and analyze his intentions. She found it interesting how, of all the noncombatants the Aryile ranger had to protect, he chose her to ensure she was prepared, even took the time to learn her name, yet she didn’t know his.

  She faced him and his warm smil
e through his visor. She smiled back and gave him a nod that she’d be fine and made a mental note to learn his name once this was over.

  The five resumed their stealthy movements through the ruined streets until they reached the lobby of the Souyila Corporation. Fires and broken glass greeted them along with partially vaporized receptionists and lab workers that failed to flee, the floor painted with their blood. Two of the three elevators were inoperative, and their doors were half melted by the invaders’ weapons.

  The one working elevator had a deceased invader inside, his body sitting upright with its back against the wall. “I’m telling you, these aren’t Hashmedai,” said the Aryile. “Nor does this look like a plasma rifle.”

  “It’s in full body armor, how would you know?” Iey’liwea said.

  “Let’s solve the mystery once and for all then,” Odelea said, lowering herself and placing her hands around its helmet. She made four attempts to pull it off, none which were successful. Her soft and fragile hands hurt.

  Iey’liwea yanked Odelea back up to her feet. “How about we do this when we’re in the clear?”

  “If this isn’t a Hashmedai, this may be a perfect chance to—”

  “Study it later; we need to get what we came here for.”

  The elevator doors failed to close, yet it began to rise up the towering multistory building. The opened door became a blur of shut doors from connecting floors and bulkheads and continued to be so until it came to a stop at the desired floor.

  The two rangers ran out with their rifles drawn into the dark office floor, the fighting in the area had long ago knocked out power and backup power. The all clear was given and everyone fanned out with guns drawn, hoping they wouldn’t have a need to use them.