Proxima

by Chase Hildenbrand

  When Dyran was finished, Liam stood and everyone looked up to him. “We don’t know what the circumstances are yet, but be ready to leave. I’m going to the bridge. You all prepare to fight if necessary.

  “Percy, Zale come with me.”

  Liam thought he should remain calm and collected and walk to the bridge, but after everything they’d gone through to get here, he wasn’t ashamed that he broke into a run. Zale and Percy hurried to stay with him.

  When they entered they found Dyran standing next to an oversized hologram of Proxima.

  “Where are they?” Liam asked.

  “I traced their ship’s signatures based on those of The Hawking as reported by the EPSD and provided to me by Zale. It took some time because I was looking in the wrong place. I believed the four ships would be in space, but they’re not. Nor are they in the twilight temperate areas on the hemisphere line where the original plan was to seek settlement. Instead, I found them here,” Dyran pointed to four dots on the planet’s surface, “just inside the nightside of the planet.”

  Liam walked closer to the hologram for a better perspective. “Did they crash?”

  “I don’t believe so. I have a probe en route that will arrive at any second. We’ll get a good look at what exactly they’re doing in that curious part of the planet.”

  “I don’t like it,” Percy said.

  “Me neither. The plan was always for the majority to live on the ships for years while research was conducted on the planet and an infrastructure created. Landing mile-long ships was considered only for emergencies.”

  “Is it possible they woke up years before you did? Perhaps they’ve already built an infrastructure,” Zale suggested.

  “Not if they followed procedure. Our countdowns fleet-wide should’ve been synced to awaken on the same day,” Liam replied.

  An image flickered to life on a nearby monitor. Video of the planet being streamed by the probe filled the screen.

  “Ah, here we are. Let’s see what’s really going on down there,” Dyran said.

  The probe entered the planet’s mesosphere, flames licked the lens as it burned its way through. Then in an instant all was clear, but the image was dark.

  “What happened?” Zale asked.

  “Nothing, it’s just there’s no light. Give it a second—oh, there they are.”

  Far away on the ground there was light, and lots of it. The probe soared through the air on its way to a better viewpoint, advancing hundreds of miles per hour. As it got closer, the distinct shape of the four long STS ships came into focus.

  “Is that fire?” Percy pointed out flickering orange light just beyond the ships.

  No one answered as the probe made its final approach before coming to an abrupt stop a few thousand feet above the ships.

  “Why’d it stop?” Liam asked.

  “It stopped where I’d programmed it to. I didn’t want any possible unfriendlies spotting our probe. Don’t worry my friend, it has a powerful lens.”

  Dyran began working on a keypad underneath the monitor and the image zoomed in, automatically racking its focus as it went. But Dyran zoomed too far and landed on the roof of an STS ship.

  “Sorry, hang on.”

  He zoomed out to anarchy.

  A massive battle was taking place—thousands of humans and Proximians at war.

  “Oh shit,” Percy said, shocked at the carnage he was seeing.

  Bodies littered the ground on both sides. Riders rode terrifying creatures through the battle. Some Proximians wielded weapons and fired at the others.

  “You were right, Zale. They’re savages. We have to go. Now!” Liam turned and ran for the intercom system. “Prepare for combat. War is raging on the surface. The tribal savages are attacking our people who seem to have taken ally with the more intelligent group that lives on the nightside of the planet.

  “None of you had to be here. You volunteered your lives in case they needed you to save theirs. You’re heroes. But we don’t have time for a speech because today The Hawking fights! Prep the dropships. We’re going to war.”

  A Proximian guard wasn’t even bothering to take cover. It stood fully armored and exposed in the battlefield firing its weapon at tribal warriors and humans alike. Victims fell one after the next. It set its sights on a human male thirty yards away scrambling to find a place to hide.

  “Hey!”

  It turned to the voice. A woman stood feet away to its side, no weapon, her hands up in the air. It raised its gun to her, readied it to fire. A violent pain erupted on the back of its head and the guard fell to one knee. Again the blinding pain on its head, then once more on its back, rattling its body through the armor. The guard turned its head to find the source of the attack. Another woman was behind it wielding a thick steel pipe above her head. It came crashing down on its face, the last thing the guard would ever see.

  “Put those muscles to work!” Blaire said.

  “Your turn.” Ann tossed her the pipe and picked up the guard’s gun. It was heavier than she expected, but she was able to hold it firmly. She swept the area looking for a target and found another guard trying to shoot down a horned beast with not much luck. She aimed the weapon and, in the absence of a typical trigger, pushed the side button with her thumb like she observed the guards doing and fired the weapon's energy pulse, sending the guard flying.

  “It works,” she stated. “Stay behind me, gather others as we go.”

  “Where?”

  “To get our guns back.”

  Blaire smiled. “Lead the way.”

  “Is this what you had in mind?”

  Ray stood next to the hot bonfire observing the battle before him. He was too injured to participate himself so Salena, armed with a bow and a quiver of arrows, stayed with him in the back of the Proximian Land’s army.

  Ray was close to death when tribe members found them in the ruins of Inizio days after the attack. Salena had done what she could, but he was slipping away. She’d spent hours as he was unconscious walking the grounds from camp to camp looking for any survivors, but found none. Her and Ray were truly alone and no one on the STS ships responded to her calls on the Z48’s radio.

  One day after Ann was abducted, Salena held Ray inside the Z48 where they had taken cover, trying to pour some water she fetched from the lake into his parted lips, when an unbelievable sight drew her attention to the sky. An STS ship, she couldn’t tell which one from the ground, was entering the atmosphere. Fire engulfed its outer hull as it was coming in, but dissipated as it came further inside the planet.

  The powerful engines of the ship created an ear-splitting roar and as it soared overhead the blast of wind from the trailing thrusters blew half the remains of the camp away and disrooted a handful of trees out of the ground. The Z48 they were inside threatened to roll over, but at the last second the wind died down before it tipped all the way.

  Salena rushed outside to watch it fly beyond the horizon toward the nightside of the planet. Not long after, she saw another STS ship, but this one further north and the sound and wind caused by its entry was much less extreme.

  A few hours later Salena was out gathering fruit and inspecting the wind damage in the jungle while Ray slept when she crossed paths with half a dozen tribe members. They recognized her from their earlier trip to the village and she convinced them to follow her back to Ray. The largest Proximian picked him up and carried him in its arms back to the village. The tribe gave him a medicinal balm to rub on his wound and by the next day he was wide awake and speaking.

  Together, Ray and Salena spoke with the Past Keeper and told the Proximian leader about the attack from the nightsiders and how they not only killed and abducted their people, but also the tribal hunters who escorted them. This angered the tribal leader. Salena, seeing an opportunity, argued a case for the tribe to help. “They’ve attacked and abducted your tribesmen for hundreds of years. Now they have my people and our ships. If you were ever going to strike back against them, now
is the time. Our people will help you.”

  The Past Keeper agreed—destiny brought their species together. The leader sent representatives throughout the Proximian Land to spread the message to the other tribes that the time to end the oppression from the nightsiders was upon them.

  As the days went by, more and more tribes showed up at the village until at last they had an army numbering in the thousands. However, the only weapons they had were crude slingshots and daggers fashioned from carved stone. Salena and Ray took it upon themselves to show the tribes a new weapon for them: the bow and arrow. They knew they had limited time to fashion as many as possible, and as quickly as they were built from fallen trees they began practicing. Neither Salena nor Ray were any good, but some of the Proximians took it up rather quickly.

  Soon, the scouts dispatched by the tribal leader returned and told them about the camps and the work being done on the STS ships. The Past Keeper assumed the nightsiders were using the humans as slave labor to retrofit the STS ships with their technology that would enable the ships to travel through space in an instant like the ships of old that left Proxima, or Hyera as the planet was known to the tribes, a millennium ago.

  One of the tribes that lived on the other side of the nearby mountain range were efficient riders of the taleers, the large beasts with the ring of horns on its head, and had brought a pack to join in the fight. Others rode smaller, quicker creatures more similar to Earth’s horses, but with six legs, a longer tail, and a smaller face known as noxyns.

  For weeks they trained until the scouts reported that conditions at the camps had begun to rapidly degrade. The time to strike had come. The newly formed army left the village behind, leaving their families that were incapable of fighting, and began the three day march to war.

  Salena, arrow in hand, looked to Ray. The light of the fire bounced off his cheeks and reflected in his eyes.

  “I need to go join. Will you be okay?”

  “I have my handy dagger. Sorry my shoulder is shot to hell.”

  “I need you to stay back and stay safe. Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  She placed her hand on his waist and pulled him in. She kissed him hard and deep, putting all her emotion into it—the joy she felt being around him and the fear of almost losing him. Neither wanted the moment to end, but she had to go. She pulled away and turned to the raging battle without saying another word.

  The path to the armory was blocked at every turn. Reinforcements for the Proximian guards were now arriving from inside the mountain by the hundreds. Ann and Blaire led a group of fifteen to the fence gate closest to the base of the mountain and the weapons they desperately sought, but there were too many fresh reinforcements in their way even with the alien weapon Ann employed.

  Around them the battle continued between the armored nightsiders and the primitive tribes people. Some guards were struck by sharp arrows, but more often than not the arrows bounced off their armor. Ann felt the tide beginning to turn in favor of the nightsiders.

  “What do you think we should do?” Blaire asked.

  Their group was currently hiding behind the rear landing gears of The Linwood, several yards away from the gate.

  “Seems risky to move now,” Ann said.

  “We can’t wait here. Too exposed.”

  “I’ll go myself. I have the gun. You keep these people alive. Look for my signal when it’s safe.”

  “Be careful.”

  Ann half-smiled, aimed her weapon from behind the landing gear, and fired at the lock melting it down. She ran at a slight crouch. A tribesman riding a noxyn nearly knocked her over as it ran across her firing an arrow at a nearby guard. At the gate she pushed the door open and slid out.

  There were fifty empty yards in front of her, but beyond that a squadron of soldiers providing reinforcement for the guards had emerged from the mountain and were charging into battle. Their weapons were ready and the pulse orbs on the tops glowed bright with each discharge from the energy gun. Tribesmen on foot charged at the soldiers, but despite outnumbering them five to one, they fell quickly. Stones flew through the air pelting the soldiers’ armor and bouncing off without leaving a dent. A few of the tribesmen armed with bows and arrows pulled up to a stop and fired. One found a sweet spot in the armor near a soldier’s neck and it went down with a spurt of blood.

  She came to a stop and raised her weapon thinking she could help the charging tribesmen. Her thumb was ready to press the button to discharge the energy pulse, but she held up at the last moment. Would it give away her position? Once those soldiers passed her, the path to the armory would be clear, but if they saw her and turned their attention her way, she wouldn’t make it. Her weapon lowered.

  But she couldn’t let them be slaughtered. She didn’t have it in her to standby and do nothing. She aimed at the line of soldiers and fired. The one closest went down with a hit to its weak spot between the chest armor and its waist.

  The two next to it stopped and turned her way.

  She ran. An energy pulse barely missed her as it flew through the spot she was standing in a half second earlier. There was nowhere to go. An empty field in front of her, the armory to the left, and the outer camp fence to her right. Now two soldiers chased her from behind.

  An energy pulse skimmed her right arm searing the flesh. She screamed in pain. This was it. She refused to be shot in the back running away like a coward. Fighting through the burning agony on her arm, she gripped her weapon and dropped to the ground. She rolled over and aimed, but her shot went wide.

  A beep from the weapon—a warning it needed a few seconds to recharge.

  The soldiers were upon her now, standing over her like giants. One of them spoke in its deep voice, the other aimed its weapon. She closed her eyes.

  But the kill shot never came. She dared to peek out. Two long spears anchored the soldiers’ bodies to the ground. A taleer huffed behind them. Long ropes attached to the back end of the spears and the two riders on the taleer’s back yanked the ropes, pulling them back into their hands.

  “Thanks.”

  One of the riders gave a nod and pulled the reins signaling the taleer it was time to move on. Ann watched as it ran off toward another group of soldiers. Then in an instant the entire creature and the two riders exploded. Gore flew through the air.

  A whoosh from above. She looked up as a Z56 swooped over her firing its weapons.

  “Holy shit.”

  She looked into the skies and saw that wasn’t the only one. The sky was filled with incoming Z56s lighting up the battle. But they were targeting the wrong side. The tribal Proximians were being shot down rapidly in the first wave of fire from the mysterious Z56 armada.

  It had to be The Hawking. They arrived at last only to misunderstand the situation. She had to tell them, but she was torn. She needed to communicate with the ship above, but her people also needed the guns which were currently only watched over by three guards. She made a decision.

  Back inside the fence, Blaire and the others were waiting where Ann left them.

  “Blaire!” Ann yelled through raining fire from the Z56s to get her friend’s attention. She shot a guard who was closing in on her and grabbed its gun off the ground on her way to the group.

  “Ann! Did it work?” asked Blaire.

  “I have to do something else, now. I need to get inside The Linwood’s communication room and speak with whoever the hell is flying these Z56s up there. They’re firing on the villagers. Not the guards and soldiers. I need you to take these people to the armory. Take these two guns. I know you can do this, Blaire.”

  Blaire took the two guns from Ann. She passed one to a man behind her and examined the other, then she passed Ann the steel pipe.

  “At least take this back, just in case. Go do what you have to do. We’ve got this. I’ll see you on the other side.”

  They both leaned in for a quick hug then Ann took off toward the closest loading ramp, pipe at the ready.

  L
iam stood inches from the dropship’s door, waiting for it to open and reveal to him the warfare beyond. The report of the battle already reverberated through the walls as the ship came in for a landing. They had eight dropships. One each landed inside the four fenced off areas, they didn’t know the camps true purposes, while the other four landed in the surrounding area near battle hot spots.

  He landed right in the middle of hell.

  The door opened.

  Beams from the alien soldiers’ energy pulse guns were criss crossing through the air. Some of the savages had even gotten their hands on a few, no doubt taken from the dead, and were firing at the superior soldiers. Others had primitive weapons and were letting loose arrows from a distance or fighting close combat with blades of some sort.

  One of the largest, and most terrifying, creatures he had ever seen barged into the fight and impaled a soldier with one of its many horns. It then swung its head and the soldier flew off into the air landing on one of its comrades. A savage took advantage and decapitated the soldier with its blade.

  He raised his PL-6 and fired before the savage had a chance to attack another. It fell hard with a hole in its head.

  Twenty other fighters fanned out around him with guns raised picking off targets with ease. The alien soldiers looked to the newcomers with confusion. He was getting better at reading the species’ expressions, but it was still hard to tell. Either way, they seemed to accept the help and continued fighting the savages.

  “Let’s go to work,” he said into his headset radio. “Debra, you guys good in the skies?”

  “Sitting pretty up here.”

  But like the Proximian soldiers realizing they had a new ally, the savages realized they had a new enemy. An arrow pierced one of the fighters on Liam’s left right through her heart and she went down, dead before she hit the ground.

  Ray stood by the fire staring into the skies in disbelief that Z56 fighters along with eight other types he’d never seen before had suddenly appeared.