Universe in Flames – Ultimate 10 Book Box Set: An Epic Space Opera Adventure

by Christian Kallias

“Of course, and thank you, Captain. I’m really sorry again it came to…that. You have my word that it will never happen again.”

  “Lieutenant Athanatos, you apologized for that already. And off the record, I have to admit that you did exactly what needed to be done under the circumstances. If it wasn’t for you, the Zarlacks would have destroyed Earth and, from where I stand, your actions today may have very well ensured us a future ally. We are outgunned, outnumbered, and in a part of space we know nothing about. We need help repairing, we need a place to stay, and we need to think about how we will survive. At least now, we might have a place to start doing all of that—Earth. Let’s pray it’s a welcoming sanctuary; our last sanctuary, dare I say.”

  “I agree, sir. We need to rebuild our forces, and I’m hoping with the help of the humans, we might actually have a chance to achieve that.”

  “I hope so, Lieutenant. But I’m not so sure about what they can do for us, at least technologically speaking.”

  “Maybe we can help them help us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if we share ancestry with these people, we could bring them up to speed, technologically speaking.”

  “First contact protocol dictates that we don’t give technological advantage to primitive races; history has shown that it usually leads to their own destruction. Give too much power to an unprepared civilization and the results could be catastrophic. That’s why we have the protocol in place.”

  “I believe the protocol doesn’t apply in this case, Captain.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Well, because we wouldn’t simply give them weapons and go on our merry way. We would supervise their evolution. Teach them, work together. In doing so, we have a good chance to prevent their thirst for power taking control over their destiny.”

  “Yes, but we can’t be sure of that.”

  “No, of course not. But at the end of the day, do we really have any other choice? Can we hope to free our homes from the Obsidian Empire and rid the galaxy of the new Zarlack threat if we don’t grow our numbers? It’s risky, Captain, I realize that, but it’s a risk we have no other choice than to take and hope it’s the right one. I feel as uneasy as you sharing technology centuries in advance of the people of Earth but, with their manpower, we could quickly rebuild a fleet of ships, as well as some planetary defense systems that could protect both the planet and our own fleet.”

  “I concur, Lieutenant. As much as it pains me to be responsible for the fate of an entire planet and civilization, our coming to their system brought upon them an enemy that will most certainly return, and in greater numbers.”

  “Oh crap,” Chase blurted suddenly, slapping a hand to his forehead.

  “What is it, Lieutenant?”

  “It was something Aphroditis said… That the Zarlacks are a slave race to another major player and, with their newfound alliance with Obsidian, they’ll soon discover where we’ve disappeared to.”

  “We may have doomed not only the Alliance then, but…”

  “Yes, Earth as well.”

  The captain sighed. “It seems our destinies are now intertwined with the people of Earth. I’m not sure how they’ll react to this when we break the news…”

  “Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t tell them we brought the enemy upon them.”

  “You mean, we lie to them?”

  “Unless you have a better idea. I mean, now that we’ve won the battle, the Zarlacks will come back. The rest of Obsidian might be with them. Even if we were to leave and never return, it would leave Earth completely defenseless.”

  “I hate to admit it, but we’ll need their help. No, Chase, you’re right. We must not give them reasons to be angry at us, at least not for the time being. As much as I hate to build an alliance based on a lie, I don’t think we have much of a choice.”

  “Technically, we could manage not to lie.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, we tell them the truth about what happened to us. We just omit the fact that we know there’s a link between the Zarlacks and Obsidian.”

  Captain Saroudis took a moment to reflect upon Chase’s words. “Agreed. But now we should prepare for our visit. Meet me in the flight bay in three hours, in uniform.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain!”

  9

  Commander Sarah Kepler climbed into the cockpit of her F-18, ready to fly out and fend off the incoming UFOs that were roaming the skies and wreaking havoc around Washington. Her hands trembled with a panic that she rarely felt. She was customarily strong willed and almost never lost her nerve. But she had been at a family barbecue when tragedy struck and fire rained down from the skies. And that was enough to do it.

  She could still smell the meat being prepared by her Uncle Peter: hamburgers, hot dogs, T-bone steaks. Then the smells changed. Burning metal, acrid concrete…charred flesh.

  The first to get hit was her sister’s son, Johnny. He was running around with the other kids, playing soccer, when the laser fire cratered not far from him, catapulting him at least fifteen feet into the air. He had already lost consciousness when his body hit the ground. Sarah had run through the screaming children with her sister and had immediately begun first aid. His heart had stopped. Her sister, Anna, fell to her knees, crying and holding her head, while her husband, Paul, was already calling 911. Sarah performed CPR for a good five minutes, until, when hope was getting as thin as the air, Johnny finally started breathing.

  It was only then that Sarah broke out of her trance, and looked around her. She didn’t understand what she saw. The sky was falling down.

  On her race to the airstrip, she was finally able to gleam some answers. The whole country was under attack. With absolutely no warning whatsoever, alien craft had descended into the atmosphere and started shooting at people, killing them by the hundreds, if not the thousands. As Sarah did her pre-flight check, some of the details she’d blocked out in her attempt to save Johnny came back to her. Almost every house in the block had been hit. In retrospect, the first hit could have been much worse, it could have hit the barbecue area and taken most of her family, herself included, in just one strike. But Johnny hadn’t been the only one hurt that day, far from it. The radio crackled and interrupted Sarah’s train of thought.

  “Tower to Commander Kepler. How’s your pre-flight check?”

  “Pre-flight done; good to go.”

  “Very well, Commander, you are go for takeoff.”

  “Roger that, tower.”

  She slammed the throttle to afterburner mode and soon felt the Gs from the fierce acceleration of her fighter plane. Within seconds, she was in the air, climbing toward the sky to intercept whatever it was that had caused so much devastation.

  While her craft gained altitude, she had another flashback. Once Johnny was safe in Anna’s arms, she’d turned to look at the rest of the house. It was still there, but columns of smoke rose from almost every other house up and down the street. People poured into the street in sheer panic, and the noise was overwhelming. Crying, screaming, broken pipes spilling water everywhere. It was total and utter chaos. As a good soldier, Sarah’s instinct told her to help whomever was in need, so she scanned the perimeter and that’s when she saw a little girl trapped under a car, her parents already crushed in the front seat. She could see the girl was crying though she couldn’t hear her over the sounds of destruction and panic all around. She had just started to sprint toward her when she heard the same sound she’d heard right before Johnny had flown into the air. She reflexively turned her head to follow it and, the next moment, her sister’s house was obliterated, just thirty feet away.

  The explosion threw Sarah facedown into the dirt. Now it was like she couldn’t hear anything. People seemed to be running in slow motion, and everything sounded like it was coming from very far away. Her vision blurred for a moment, but then she shook her head and her senses started coming back to her. In a few seconds, she scrambled to her feet and looked up to find the litt
le girl. But there was just a crater where the car had been.

  Belated tears stung her eyes and Sarah wiped her face briskly as she ascended through the clouds. One thing was certain; she wouldn’t be able to save everyone. No matter how hard she tried.

  Her plane finally arrived at sixteen hundred feet, her wingman Frank Gerald in formation on her right, when her radar beeped a warning. There were more than ten bogies in the vicinity. She didn’t like those odds. Within seconds, both fighters were engulfed in a tornado of small alien ships firing all over the place, both at other aircraft, and at ground troops and civilian targets.

  “Frank,” she gritted her teeth, “engage enemy craft at will.”

  “Affirmative, Commander. Engaging.”

  Then all hell broke loose. The F-18s were vastly outnumbered, and whatever gunfire they managed to hit the enemy with only lit the shields on the alien fighters. Missile lock produced the same result, only affecting the enemy craft’s trajectory but not managing to do any real damage.

  “They have some sort of shielding, Commander.”

  “I see that, Sergeant. Let’s try something else. Concentrate on one fighter together; you light them up with your cannon, and I’ll engage with a missile.”

  “Understood.”

  Both F-18s went into a tight formation, miraculously dodging a hailstorm of laser fire, and executed the commander’s plan. Lieutenant Commander Gerald rained his cannons upon the nearest target and, after a few seconds of impact upon the enemy craft’s shields, Commander Kepler’s F-18 fired a missile. The alien craft was hit with the full force of the blast and exploded like Fourth of July fireworks.

  “That’s a kill. Good call, Commander!”

  “Let’s engage other bogies using the same tactic. Once I’m running low on missiles, we’ll switch roles.”

  “Understood.”

  They proceeded to the next group of targets and dispatched two more enemy craft the same way.

  “This is Commander Kepler to Fleet Command. The enemy fighters are shielded; we have discovered an effective means of destroying their craft but it requires a wing of fighters. Shoot cannon fire at their shields to weaken them while the second fighter lights them up with a missile. Both cannons and missiles on their own are being repelled by the shields. Transmit this info to all fighter pilots in any country currently fighting the alien invasion. It may be possible to achieve the same result solo, but it’s hard enough to engage these suckers in a dogfight without having to get a good missile lock at the same time.”

  “This is Fleet Command, roger that. Transmitting info.”

  “Frank, let’s get a few others.”

  “Roger th—”

  Before Lieutenant Commander Gerald could finish his sentence, his craft was hit by an enemy and blown out of the sky.

  “FRANK!”

  Sarah felt a desolate numbness creeping up her body. The body count was rising, the city underneath was in flames. And with the sheer number of enemy aircraft in the sky, how could they win? This could very well be the end of the human race. It certainly felt like it. In the sky directly in front of her, another plane went down in a fiery blaze and Sarah’s eyes narrowed dangerously. If she was going down, she was going down fighting.

  She lined up with a bogie and started engaging it with her cannons. After a few seconds of showering the craft, she locked her last missile.

  “That one’s for you, Frank.”

  The missile hit its target and the craft exploded. But when Sarah looked at her radar, she saw another wave of enemy craft approaching at a high velocity. She had probably gotten their attention by managing to bring a few of their craft down.

  Her lock radar started buzzing. She had an enemy on her six, one she didn’t even see coming. The next second it opened fire. She could see the bright laser blasts streak past the left and right side of her canopy even though she was doing all the evasive maneuvering she could think of. She wouldn’t last long without reinforcements, and everyone else was either in the same situation or crashing down to the city.

  The city!

  She peered out the cockpit window at the city below and, before she could talk herself out of it, she plunged down toward the street. Some of the skyscrapers were in flames; huge towers of smoke rose from them like industrial chimneys. The sight was truly horrifying but, before Sarah could register anything, laser fire grazed her right wing and instantly decreased her maneuverability. She flew lower still, just a few feet above the busy streets. It was all a blur, but she could feel the chaos as she passed through. Cars in flames, bodies on the road, people shouting and running for their lives. A glance at her controls told her that the bogie was still hot on her tail. She’d have to step up her game if she wanted to lose him.

  That’s when she saw the bridge.

  “Oh Sarah,” she said aloud, “this is maybe one of those bad ideas…”

  She sped forward and, as soon as she reached the bridge, she started hitting it with her cannons. At the same time, she deployed her countermeasures and then hit the afterburner. To say it was a close call was underselling it, but she was able to lift her plane out of the way before the enemy craft, unable to see between the debris and the countermeasures, collided straight into it, exploding in a trail of fiery rubble.

  “That was close,” she breathed. But the game wasn’t over yet.

  As she rose a bit higher to get a visual reading on the next enemy target, a trio of bogies entered firing range. She broke right hard, but a few lasers grazed her craft again and sent some pieces of armor flying away. Warning lights lit up all over the cockpit, and she frantically checked the radar again. Using what little maneuverability she had, she broke left and set a collision course with the fighters. She’d take them down. One way or another. They opened fire and she went into a tight spin, aiming for the one in the middle. This was it. No going back now. In the final seconds before collision, she pushed back in her chair and screamed at the top of her lungs.

  …but nothing happened.

  She opened her eyes in confusion, when suddenly a barrage of blue laser light came from higher up, exploding the enemy craft one after the other with great efficiency. In a fraction of a second, the squadron she had been heading for was decimated. As she passed through the smoke of their explosion, she looked up and saw other spacecraft, different from the ones she was currently engaging.

  Her radio crackled.

  “Ballsy move down there.”

  “Who is this?” she demanded. “Identify yourself!”

  “This is Wing Commander Daniel Tharraleos, call sign Scorpion, of the Star Alliance battlegroup. We’ve come to help you eliminate the alien force currently attacking your planet.”

  Sarah couldn’t believe it. The same day Earth learned they were not alone in the universe and that the aliens wanted to destroy their whole world, another alien species came to their rescue? It felt so unreal that Sarah wondered if she was dreaming after all. Then her collision alarm sounded and brought her back to the present with a surge of adrenaline. She broke left to avoid colliding with a nearby building and climbed up outside the city.

  She tried to think of what to say to this Commander Tharraleos, but she came up empty. In the end, she settled on, “Thanks for saving my hide back there.”

  “No problem, um…?”

  “US Navy Commander Sarah ‘Firefly’ Kepler,” she said instinctively.

  “Very well, Commander Kepler. May I suggest you return to base? We’ll take care of the rest of these bastards. But you did a fine job under the circumstances. Well done. Scorpion out.”

  “Thanks.”

  And she had done a fine job. As the last few hours began to sink in, this fact resonated with her. With inferior weaponry and numbers, she had done well. But Frank was still gone. Her heart bled at the thought and a tear ran down her face. She wondered if his wife and young daughter had survived the day… Would there be anyone left besides her to grieve for poor Frank?

  As soon as s
he landed, she took her cell phone and tried calling her sister for an update on Johnny and the rest of the family. No signal. Well, that was hardly surprising considering the level of destruction that had befallen the city in the last hour. Who knew what was left? Who knew what had been hit? She wondered if the White House had survived…

  She descended the ladder slowly and began circling around to survey the damage to her trusted plane, when from the corner of her eye she saw a tall man sprinting toward her.

  Now what, she thought. And she braced for the worst.

  “Can I help you?” she said preemptively, as the tall, pale man came to a stop beside her.

  He nodded his head, unable to catch his breath, but gave her what looked like a sat phone. With a bit of hesitation, she took it and put it to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Commander Kepler, I’m so glad you’re still alive. This is General Adams. I have an important mission for you. This comes directly from the President.”

  10

  Captain Saroudis and Chase climbed aboard a shuttle transport and took their seats as the doors behind them closed. After a nervous pause, Chase took the controls and flew the ship out of the docking bay.

  “I sure hope they won’t hold us responsible for their losses. From our scans, many thousands of humans lost their lives today…”

  “I know, but countless more were saved,” replied the captain. “We compiled some information based on their geo-political structures, and it seems that on Earth, different nations are still waging war against each other, cultures are still pitted against one another, and different religious beliefs abound. While we’re being greeted by what seems to be their largest, most powerful economic and military force, a country called the United States of America, we have to hope the rest of their world will be willing to form an alliance as well.”

  “At the end of the day I don’t think they’ll have a choice, but I’m sure it won’t be an easy sell, especially if they were fighting one another prior to our arrival. Can you tell me more about their history and wars?”