by Ben Johnston
Ryan blasted the orders, which were immediately echoed around from shouting, screaming subordinates, and within seconds, an ear-splitting alarm blared.
Jennifer turned to Anniya. “Get in one of those jeeps, they’ll get out first.”
The alarm blared. Troops dropped everything. Motors rumbled to life. The landship’s ramps retracted. Anniya simply stood there amid the panic.
She stared at Jennifer.
“You’re the first lightmaker I’ve ever met.”
Jennifer blinked, turning her head slightly.
“How is that possible?”
They both stood there, just for a moment.
Then, in a flash, without warning, Anniya bolted. She made great, leaping strides, each bright burst of light hurling her towards the outpost wall, leaving behind fading footprints of canary light.
Jennifer watched Anniya flash-leap up onto the maintenance building’s roof, then drop down behind the structure into the night, vanishing away out of sight.
Chapter 9
Behind her, the outposts alarms blared and its vehicles roared to life. Anniya bolted out the same side entrance she had come in from, this time the maintenance door was already open, a warning light pulsing above it, no guard.
The clamour of the outpost faded behind and the ringing jungle approached ahead as she leapt away from the dark outer wall of the outpost, springing low and fast in three quick flashes across the open field to flit through the wall of overgrowth, vanishing into the jungle.
She jumped over a tall mound of gnarled fallen trees and vines, coming to land on her floatboard’s deck. Grinning, Anniya reached to her side to find nothing there.
Her eyes went wide as she shot a glance down to her empty side. “My satchel!” Her eyebrows pulled together. “Spirit! those shattered shards of soldiers took my splintered satchel! I fracting lost your fracted harness!”
Anniya kicked off the ground with a strong flash of light. “I’m not going fast enough. I’m not going to be able to get away in time.” She looked behind her. “Spirit, what do I do?”
Spirit was following her, effortlessly leaping, easily matching her moderate fast pace. “Anniya, you must burn the floatboard’s crystals. The momentum in their hoverlight can be diverted in a full purge and it will be enough to get you a safe distance away.”
Anniya frowned with a pained expression. “So you’re telling me I need to burn-out my board and shoot through the sky like a flecking fuel rocket?” She gave a furious kick off of a large boulder. “Blinding shards. Fine!”
With an angry groan, Anniya stomped down hard on the back of her board. Instantly the board’s three rear crystals flared, first like a rising sun, tingeing with a grainy undertone of sulphur yellow. The board began to accelerate on its own.
She narrowed her eyes, reached in her cloak’s inside pocket, and withdrew her protective clear glasses, placing them onto her face and pulling her hood tight at the same time.
Then, kneeling low on the board, she gripped the front lip with her hands. “I can’t believe I have to break my board!” The board’s crystals grew sunbright and Anniya’s knuckles went white as the board accelerated hard. The trees and plants around her began to rush by, bright and verdant as if lit by a full day’s sun. She groaned amid the growing rush of warm, jungly air. “I just made this flecking board!”
She pulled the nose of the board upwards, pointing it to the sky above the treetops ahead and leaned back. In an instant, the already sun-bright crystals grew yet brighter as a bubble of red popped around Anniya and the floatboard.
Rays of sunlight bust out from under the trees as Anniya shot up and out of the forest, over the canopy and into the starlit sky. Riding her board with its blinding, gleaming crystals, Anniya gripped the lip as she soared up and over the dark jungle below, shooting through the night. The deafening, rushing wind, although hard and sharp as it needled her face, roaring painfully and deafening in her ears, somehow managed to still be hot and humid. She leaned slightly, angling her bright meteoric rocketing path towards the rim of the flat valley.
The instant the bright crystals on the back of her board went dark, her acceleration stopped. With a feeling of weightlessness soaring powerless through the air, she buffeted up through slightly different temperature patches before reaching the top of her arc, the solid jungle canopy far below moving in the dark, the cloudy but clear night sky with the stars and full moon above.
Here at the top of her arc, in a fluid ballet of motion, Anniya got up from her kneeling position to a crouch while simultaneously sweeping the hoverboard around one hundred and eighty degrees so that its rear was facing forward and she was riding it in reverse. The last two hover crystals that normally faced forward were now rear crystals under her rear left foot.
Once more she slammed her foot onto the rear deck of the board (formerly the front of the board) and these last two hover crystals flared to life like a red coal glowing into an orange fire bursting into a blinding yellow sun. In that moment as she came arcing down out of the sky, hurling towards the roof of the canopy, the sounds of the jungle suddenly audible through the rushing wind, the crystals burst out their strongest and brightest sunflash, illuminating the branches, leaves and overgrowth with the light of three noons.
Anniya and the sun-board came tearing and snapping blindingly through the vines and branches. In this final moment, the blinding crystals burst out a last great nova of incredible light in a brilliant shimmer and Anniya jumped off the board.
As she was bathed in white light mid-air next to the board, all went dark.
The dead board slapped into the leaf-covered ground, bouncing and tumbling.
In a quick burst of lime light, Anniya landed just ahead of the board, skiing feet-first along her minty light trail, spraying dead leaves and debris. She skidded up a large root like a ramp, launching herself into a small jump which came down to a sliding stop by the huge straight trunk of the great and tall tree. The dead floatboard slid to a rustling stop on the ground next to her.
Her face drooped as she looked at her now dark board.
“How dim.”
She gave one slow shake of her head before heaving a sigh, and then crouching down. For a few moments the jungle’s indifferent chorus sang its song around her before a sour-fresh flash kicked Anniya up the tall straight trunk again, the tangled, mossy light spraying out leaves and scattering dirt and dust as it launched her upwards.
She pulled her way through the branches, snapping and cracking smaller twigs as she bobbed up and down, stalking out into the crown until she found her former spot. With light like a fire through emerald, Anniya threw a bunching of branches aside, causing them to whip away so quickly that the branches screeched and squeaked as they bent, a few breaking and fracturing. The chaotic light from her hands vanished and she looked through the new opening in the branches out over the moonlit valley.
Spirit was to her right, peering in the same direction, out over the forest valley. She turned to look at the lightfox. He glimmered with a diluted rust sheen in the subdued moonlight shadows of the tree. “This was the worst possible outcome, Spirit.”
As she turned to look back, her face was suddenly lit with an ice-green. Everything was.
Chapter 10
Shouting troops sprinted by, the engines of every vehicle in the outpost roared to life. After a line of scurrying soldiers ran past, he saw Jennifer. Surprised, Ryan immediately yelled at her. “You were supposed to leave with the first jeeps!”
Jennifer raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “I can’t leave you out in the rain, boss. You never left me.”
Ryan fixed his eyes on her, then opened a toothy grin against the night.
Rumbling vehicles, one after another, roared out the front gate, their whining jet engines and their wheeled and tracked fuel motors grumbling, complaining at full throttle. He turned to Jennifer. “OK, looks like everyone’s moving, let’s get on the big boy.” He pointed to the landship. The front window
s of the driver’s area were phased open and Jennifer saw Corporal Jones angrily, or annoyedly, waving for them.
As they ran towards the landship, the outpost was suddenly drowned in an intense and saturated green light.
Ryan looked up with dread. “Hurry!”
They ran up the rear ramp, the big hovering vehicle already moving backwards, turning as it moved in a beeline towards the front gate. The jetbikes roared ahead of them out the gates then turned upwards into the sky. The massive landship was the last thing to leave the base, whooshing out the front gate at full speed, easily catching up to the tail-end of the scattering of the other fleeing vehicles.
Jennifer ran into the driver’s area. “Don’t crash into the other vehicles, Jones!”
Jones flashed Jennifer an open mouthed look of amazement. “Wow. Thanks brighty for the advice.”
Jennifer’s mouth made a line, her cheeks dimpling.
Behind them, the outpost was glowing like the sun through a green sea. The beam was making the ground rumble, slightly at first, but then more intensely as the light increased.
Inside the landship, things began to rumble. Jones looked over to Ryan and Jennifer with a painful smile. “It’s been fun, guys.”
At many times the speed of sound, the black ovoid dropship glowing red from atmospheric friction came tearing down through the sky, its beaming shaft of emerald flashing into a tremendously blinding explosion as at the moment of its impact, all the momentum of the enormous ship was transferred instantly into the material onto which its green light had been shined.
The dropship just stopped. No deceleration. The outpost and the immediate surrounding jungle, however, all immediately exploded outwards in an ring-like cloud of expanding destruction.
The dark and black dropship hung there at the center of the expanding tsunami shockwave. Hovering in the air, it floated still and motionless above ground zero, firm as if cemented in the sky while the massive cloud of destruction flew outwards from it. Then from dozens of openings in the side of the huge black ovoid dropship, hundreds of federation shock troops shot outwards in flash after flash of lemon light, immediately firing their high-powered rifles in the direction of the fleeing Federation vehicles.
Ryan, Jennifer, and Jones felt a few impacts hitting the landship’s rear shield, but there was not even enough time for Jones to make a smart remark before their vehicle was hit by the shockwave and sent rolling.
The horizontal avalanche, a supersonic wave of pure destruction, tore-apart the jungle like a volcanic explosion, tossing and tearing apart the federation vehicles like paper boxes.
And still further, before the deafening roar of the shockwave and all the slamming smashing uprooted trees, rock faces, boulders, dirt and other massive debris had passed the tumbling troops and vehicles being ripped apart, the rapid snapping and banging of hundreds of high powered rifles cut through the flurry of chaos. Blue and green lines of light seared the air, causing the thick dirt and ash around them to glow like city lights in the fog. When the green rounds impacted with the ground or any of the debis, they exploded with the force of small bombs.
As the roar of the shockwave subsided, the noise of the blast was replaced by the ear-shattering explosions and booms from the attacking Vectan shock troops. Jimmins crawled out from his overturned jeep amid the chaos to find a fellow soldier covered. “Lipkin! Get up, man!”
Lipkin, coughing, pulled his leg free from a tangle of overgrowth and tree branches. His grinning face was lit momentarily blue as a line of light streaked past them over their heads. “I’m ok!” he said, as the bluefire round struck a tree some ways off behind them, causing a massive explosion which threw them both down to the ground again.
Lipkin got up, covered in ash, his face lit with the green lines flying through the dark and opaque sky. He smiled. “Still alright!”
Jimmins looked to where the bluefire round had completely blasted away a small grove. “This way, man! Come quick before we’re sparked!”
Skull-slamming snaps and chest-punching booms burst from all sides as the two troops ran and jumped headlong into the deep crater that the bluefire round had created in place of the trees and plants it had obliterated. The freshly upended ground still sizzled and hissed as they slid down the inside wall of the crater.
Jimmins shook his head, checking his rifle. “Man, Lip’, this night’s sure gone from flecked to fracted!”
Jennifer ducked and exited out the upside-down passenger window of the overturned landship. The Gigantic vehicle lay on its back and side, it’s undercarriage now dead, no orange hoverlight, facing away from the firing Vectan shocktroopers.
A few greenfire rounds slammed into the now-unshielded vehicle, causing it to ring out in complaint as its sophisticated materials absorbed the massive energies of the rounds. A bluefire round glanced the top, causing a massive ringing twang.
Then, there was a pause in the fighting.
Jennifer emerged from under the overturned massive vehicle to see Vectan shocktroopers making their way over the mounds of tangled uprooted overgrowth and debris, trying to get a clear view of the big vehicle.
Jennifer’s eyes narrowed, and from her shoulder a silvery flechette lifted into the air.
The flechette shot off, making a strong cracking sound like a giant whip, then passed directly through the shocktroopers before they could spot Jennifer. She saw more Vectans making their way towards the vehicle. A dozen more silvery flechettes rose from Jennifer’s shoulders, and with the rapid cracking sound of a dozen giant whips, shot off to pass through the bodies of the other troops.
Each time a flechette would turn, it would flash and make a cracking sound. As one of the flechettes turned, flashing blue and amber as it did so, taking aim at a line of shocktroopers, there was a ringing bang as it suddenly exploded in a silvery cloud.
A coppery flechette now floated in the air in the place the silver one had been.
Jennifer looked up immediately to her destroyed flechette, the rest of her swarm all snapping at once to return to hover above her shoulders.
Rising over the ridge, followed by a large group of shocktroopers, came a tall blonde Vectan man wearing a long, dark green jacket. Around him orbited a swarm of coppery flechettes.
He pointed at Jennifer, and all of his copper flechettes snapped towards her.
She held up her hands as all of her flechettes gleamed back, snapping violently to protect her. In front of her eyes, Jennifer fought with her flechettes against the coppery flechettes in a bursting, deafening storm of sparking noise and multicolored bursts of fire, metal, and crystal, before her entire set of flechettes was destroyed.
As the last of her silver flechettes exploded, one copper flechette shot through her right shoulder, and another shot through her left thigh. She fell to the ground.
The Vectan lightmaker colonel walked up to Jennifer where she lay. Only three of his flechettes returned to his shoulder. He frowned looking at them, then turned a steeply raised eyebrow to Jennifer who was writhing on the ground. “Well, well. What have we here? A master lightmaker running wild in the Vectan Empire? How did this come to be?” He turned. “Medics!”
Two soldiers with dim red lights on their shoulders appeared.
“Stabilize her.”
They quickly injected Jennifer with a blue substance.
“You two.” He waved back and forth to the medics. “Make sure she gets treated in the officers’ medical pods. We’re going to regenerate this one.”
“Yes sir!” One of them departed at full sprint.
Jennifer’s grimace relaxed as her eyes fixed on the emblem on the Vectan lightmaker’s chest. “You’re from the fracted Vectan Premier’s legion. Nice job you guys did on Orbin.”
The Vectan colonel’s smile wilted. “How did you know about Orbin?”
Jennifer frowned with a pained expression.
“You must have been there.” Cruelty crept back into the Vectan lightmaker’s face. “You were from Major
Wilder’s company. It’s been a while. How is he?”
Jennifer grunted.
The Vectan colonel continued. “Vectus lost that day, thanks to political dirty tricks and your company’s little stunt. Orbin now belongs to the corrupt Diestrai Republic, all thanks to you.” He turned and signaled to two Vectan soldiers who ran down into the driver’s area of the big overturned Landship. They came back with Jones and Ryan.
A squad of soldiers brought Ryan in handcuffs before the Colonel. The Vectan colonel held his hands wide. “Well! Look at the things you find in the Jungle!”
The soldiers pushed Ryan down in front of the colonel.
“We we’re just talking about you, the famous, traitorous Vectan major himself! Long time no see! You owe Vectus a great deal, but with your talent I’m sure you’ll find a way to work it off in a decade or so.”
“I’m a Federation major, Alex. Not a Vectan slave.”
“We’re all slaves to laws of nature, Ryan.” Alex’s smile fell. “They brought us together, tonight. Here.” He looked upwards, taking in a deep breath. “It’s the forces of the universe that decide which cause is highest.” He looked away from the sky, turned, his eyes searching for something, “You may not like it, but its a natural law.” He looked at Ryan and did not smile. “Might makes right.”
An orderly ran up to Alex. “Colonel Glatchez, You should find the warrant for Major Wilder on the upper right side of the capture, sir,” he handed Alexander a chip.
Alexander took the chip and phased it into a transparency. As he held his hand over its clear surface, written pages tilted and zoomed until the transparency focused on a sheet of paper with Ryan’s name written on it. Alexander drew his pistol.
He then read aloud. “Vectan Grand Army Major Ryan Wilder. Convicted of high treason. Standing order: summary execution on sight.”
Alexander, the Vectan lightmaker colonel, raised his pistol and shot Ryan.