Between her and the Obliti were a few Americans who had slipped through the enemy line and some Obliti who were patrolling behind their own lines. Closest to her were the SEALs. She could feel the radio waves coming from Officer Scott’s equipment as he contacted his commanders. He was nearest to her, just a few feet to her right, taking cover behind a parked vehicle.
Jenn looked up to the sky in the direction of the ship. She wished Natalie luck, then turned straight ahead, closed the portal behind her, and started walking forward. Gravity walls, consisting of dozens of extremely powerful yet infinitesimally small wells of gravity, slammed up around her, protection from any weapons fired in her direction. As she walked, the SEALs moved with her, their guns against their shoulders scanning the area for targets.
Jenn hadn’t walked far when she felt movement in front of them. The Obliti spotted them and were closing in.
“They’re coming, gentlemen,” she said, pointing to the oncoming line of soldiers. The SEALs moved into defensive positions behind whatever structures they could find.
Jenn felt small pulses of energy from the weapons the Obliti were firing. She immediately deployed the gravity walls in front of her and the SEALs. The bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the invisible forces.
If Jenn wanted to, she could wipe the soldiers out in mere seconds, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The Obliti soldiers were essentially slaves, abused by their masters and sent to fight against their will. She held out hope that some of them could be freed to live the life they wanted.
Jenn focused her field on the soldiers in front of her, pinpointing the location of each one. There was a dozen spread out and firing their weapons in her direction. As she moved from soldier to soldier she created a small gravity well between each one. As the wells were created, the soldiers were pulled in their direction as if ripped from where they were standing by a giant invisible hand. The soldiers slammed into each other and were held there, unable to move. Although she couldn’t see them, the sounds of the soldiers colliding came through clearly over the other sounds of battle.
Jenn repeated the attack until she had the entire group disabled in midair. She smiled, satisfied, and motioned Officer Scott over to her. “You will find a group of Obliti soldiers seventy meters ahead. I have disabled them, and I need them to be secured. Do it quickly and don’t hurt them, please. I have to take care of the ship weapons before they do too much more damage.”
“Let’s go.” Was all he said as the group moved forward cautiously.
As the men moved away Jenn focused on the weapon fire from the ship with a greater since of urgency. She pushed her field up and away from her to enter the path of fire. A powerful cloud of charged gas finally passed through her field and she analyzed it as quickly as she could. She had to come up with a plan to stop these plasma missiles until Natalie could disable the weaponry on the ship.
After another blast of energy passed through her field, Jenn had a plan. She just needed more energy. Jenn focused, waiting for the heavy weapon fire. A few moments later she felt one and quickly opened up a wormhole in the path of the huge plasma projectile. She placed the other end of the portal a few feet above where she stood and readied herself to absorb the energy.
The plasma projectile sped through the portal and slammed into her. Jenn staggered back and pulled on the energy as hard as she could. The charged particles and heat flowed over and around her like an ocean wave. Her skin tingled and the muscles in her body tensed as the energy entered her body. It felt glorious.
As the last remnants of energy were absorbed, her body released its tension and she let out a long, slow breath. The energy was enormous, but still wasn’t enough to offset the large wormhole she had to create and sustain to redirect it. At this rate, she was going to run out of energy. She didn’t know how many more wormholes she could manage. She tapped her finger on her lips, thinking. Smaller wormholes should work, she thought. If she made them smaller and closed them immediately after the projectiles passed through, it would save her a good amount of energy.
Another plasma projectile streaked through the sky and she opened a second portal. The projectile slammed into her again. This time she made the portal slightly smaller and closed it as quickly as she could to save energy. As the energy flowed into her, she realized that her changes would still not be enough to sustain her power levels forever.
Her only hope at this point was for Natalie to stop the bombardment before all her energy was spent. Jenn looked up in the direction of the ship and sighed.
Natalie
Natalie knew the route to the launch bay well. Her hands were held at the ready, prepared to grab whatever weapon she may need in the face of resistance. She thought it unlikely anybody would try to stop her. She was, after all, a Praetorian on her assigned ship. There would be no reason, as of yet, for anybody to suspect her intentions.
The few crew members in the halls stepped out of her way immediately and bowed their heads in deference. The crew members were almost indistinguishable from regular soldiers. Only her helmet display would be able to indicate the difference.
As she passed them she wondered about who was really inside those black armor shells. Nobody in the Legion talked aside from official business. There were no idle chats or friendly discussion. No inquiries about their day or personal lives. The truth was, nobody here had lives. They were all slaves to something Natalie didn’t fully understand. Everybody here was made to obey, and it seemed only she and two others were aware of it. What chilled her to the bone was the knowledge that many here were so institutionalized that they would fight to the death to keep things the way they were at present, even if the truth was revealed.
If she had lived on Earth, the people she passed would be coworkers, friends, maybe even family. They would smile and ask after each other’s well beings. Here, they were indistinguishable fellow soldier-slaves. Simple weapons. People she had no feelings about and who were now her enemies. She had to treat them as such until someone found a way to help more of them to be converted or freed. The thought of killing somebody who could one day be freed sickened her. She tried to convince herself there was no way around it. To win the day and survive she would have to spill the blood of anybody in her path.
Her stomach twisted at the crass disregard for life, but she suppressed her emotions and kept moving forward.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw something unexpected and came to an abrupt stop. Down a side hallway, Jenn was walking in the opposite direction. She turned the corner and disappeared. Natalie ran after her. As she rounded the corner, there was no sign of Jenn or anybody else. Natalie stood, puzzled.
She thought that perhaps Jenn had teleported to another location within the ship to look for her. Natalie shook her head in confusion. The portal couldn’t have been opened and closed before she made it around the corner. She stood for a few more seconds then decided she must have just imagined Jenn being there. It was likely some optical illusion and wishful thinking on her part. She finally scoffed at her foolishness and moved toward her previous destination once more.
Natalie
As Natalie approached the bay she tried to walk in a more relaxed fashion. The only way to get into a position to stop the deployment of the soldiers would be to simply walk through and get to the main control panels in the back of the large bay area. She knew she couldn’t fight her way through all the soldiers in her still diminished state and she didn’t want to spill more blood than was absolutely necessary. With access to the control panels she could place the area on emergency lockdown and all the docking bay doors would lock.
She would have to move through hundreds of soldiers and get to the control panels without attracting much notice. Once there she would disable the crew members at and around the panels. That would be the tricky part. She would have to get to the right controls after getting rid of the crew before anybody intervened.
Natalie walked through the open bay door and continued on like
it was the most natural thing in the world, as if she belonged. Little did the mass of people around her know, those days were far behind her.
There were soldiers everywhere. Most were lined up in ranks in front of the deployment ships. They stood perfectly silent, waiting for their orders to board the ships. There were a few officers mixed in with the regular legion soldiers. They stood just as still and silent, never looking or speaking to their soldiers. Obedience was an order that was never in question. Disobedience was death, and Natalie knew that without control of their own minds, these soldiers didn’t even have the option to die for their freedom.
Some of the specialists in the large room looked her way upon entry. She spotted three more Centurions with their deadly swords strapped to their backs. Several artillery and heavy weapons crews were busy moving their equipment into place on the deployment ships.
Natalie walked by it all like it was beneath her notice. She headed for the far wall where three crew members were stationed at the main control panel. The key would be speed. She would need to incapacitate the crew members and be at least most of the way back to the exit before the other soldiers knew what was going on.
Halfway to the control panel, an alarm sounded. All the soldiers, officers, and specialists stood silently as information was shown on their helmet displays.
Natalie’s own display went dark. She cursed, blind in the near complete darkness. She had trained in the event her helmet display malfunctioned, but it had never happened to her in actual combat before. Fear clutched at her as she realized her helmet wasn’t malfunctioning. Natalie had been found out. Someone had shut the helmet off completely.
Cursing again, she understood why. She hadn’t reported her mission a success before returning to the ship. Her orders were to succeed. Failure meant death. A small sense of relief hit her. At least they didn’t know she was a traitor… yet.
Natalie tried to remove her helmet, but the locking mechanism was remotely disabled and wouldn’t release.
So much for subtlety, she thought.
In one lightning fast motion she grabbed a sword off her back and swung it in an arc directly in front of her. She couldn’t help but pull back as the impossibly sharp blade bit into the front of her helmet and sliced straight down. Light streamed onto her face as the blade finished the cut. The dislodged piece of helmet fell to the floor with a loud clank.
Her face exposed, Natalie looked around to see what was happening. A dozen soldiers with a Centurion at their head were standing a few feet in front of her with their weapons drawn, as they looked upon her in what could only be shock. Soldiers in the Legion never saw each other out of uniform and they had certainly never seen another soldier do what she just did.
Their momentary hesitation gave her the window she needed. She threw out the previous plan of getting to the control panel and essentially locking the army in the ship. Now, her only option was to delay the army by engaging them in combat and causing as much mayhem as possible until Jenn made her way onto the ship. She had no way of knowing if Samuel and his companion were able to disable the ship’s weapons, so it was a large gamble on her part. No choice now, she thought.
“Sorry, in advance, for killing you,” she blurted out as she lurched at the Centurion and pushed him back with all her strength. He slammed into three soldiers behind him, scattering them like bowling pins.
As the soldiers toppled over in a heap Natalie spun and cut into a surprised soldier to the left of where the Centurion had stood. The blade neatly sliced through her neck. Blood gushed out as the soldier gripped her neck in a futile attempt to staunch the bleeding.
Natalie continued her spin, pulling out her other sword as she twirled. She impaled two more soldiers in the chest, pulled the blades free, and leapt over the one on the right as he began to fall. Several more toppled over as Natalie tucked and rolled, then swept their feet out from under them.
Bullets began to pepper the air around her as soldiers everywhere opened fire.
Most of the shots bounced off her armor, but she turned away from the weapon fire to protect her face and ran toward a heavy weapon rig to take cover. The armor would protect her body from the standard issue weapons, but her face was completely exposed. One solid hit there and she’d be finished.
She reached the other side of the heavy weapon and ducked down behind it.
“Anytime now, Jenn!” she said to herself as the bullets whizzed by and bounced off in every direction. There was only seconds to make a move before the soldiers were upon her. Natalie scanned the area, then abruptly stopped and turned completely around to face the heavy weapon she was leaning against.
She smiled. “Well, shit.”
Removing the safety card and tossing it aside, she hit several buttons to engage the machine. It was the size of a small compact car by Earth standards. There was a long skinny barrel sticking out the front a few feet. Natalie slammed down on the button to fire the weapon. The muzzle shifted to where she programmed it to fire and released three short plasma projectiles into the approaching soldiers.
The projectiles cut through the soldiers like paper. The super charged particles burned through armor and into the flesh of anything in their way. Over a dozen soldiers died instantly before the projectiles hit the back wall and exploded. Chunks of metal from the hull sheared off and flew in all directions, hitting and taking down more soldiers. Natalie was glad the hull was protected enough to not breach.
The devastation from just three blasts was catastrophic. Natalie grimaced and paused before firing again. Her hand hovered, shaking, inches above the fire button. She growled in frustration, let it drop, and ducked down behind the machine for cover once more.
“Come on… come on!” she said through gritted teeth. Jenn had to get here soon or this would turn into a mass slaughter.
A rain of bullets slammed into her from the right as a large group of soldiers flanked her position. Two soldiers lobbed shock discs at her with all their might. Natalie sprang forward, slapping the first disc out of the air with her sword and kicking the other away. The discs would fire when the motion stopped exactly one second to account for bounces or ricochet. The soldiers in the front ranks tried to move away quickly, but they were too bunched up for anybody to escape. The discs exploded in massive bolts of electricity which arched from soldier to soldier, knocking each one unconscious before they fell to the floor.
Natalie counted around thirty soldiers in the large group. They would survive but have nasty headaches when they woke in a few hours.
“Lucky bastards.”
Natalie heard a small boot scrape from behind her and dove to the floor. She came up in a crouch facing her attacker with her swords out. The blade, which nearly sliced her in two, cut into the floor from the tremendous force of the swing. The Centurion wielding it didn’t hesitate. He pulled the sword free and moved closer to Natalie as she crouched.
With his sword raised high over his head for another massive swing he had no chance of stopping her attack as she rolled forward and severed both his legs below his knees. The Centurion fell forward, and Natalie deftly moved aside as he slammed onto the floor. The blood from his wounds left pools around his legs. He writhed for a few moments then became still.
Natalie was disgusted. Not with the bloody scene around her, but at herself. “All I’m good for is death and pain.”
She kept down and moved back to the heavy weapon to see if the remaining soldiers were still taking cover for fear of another blast. A line of Heavies with their massive shields were forming a wall, slowly advancing on her position. Soldiers formed up behind the line in a lethal procession.
“Suicide.” She shook her head as the soldiers advanced. Their boots scraped the floor and their weapons clanked as they moved, a chorus of deadly force. The smell of burnt flesh and ozone from the Shock Discs lingered in the air.
Natalie reached up to activate the heavy weapon again. She readied the weapon, raised her hand to the firing button… and
hesitated.
The soldiers slowly advanced and would be on her in a few seconds, but she couldn’t bring herself to fire. She thought of the death and pain she had caused her fellow soldiers and deep regret settled uncomfortably in her chest. A cold sweat gripped her as the soldiers approached.
Her hand trembled as she reached up to fire the weapon again. Jenn and the rest of the soldiers on Earth needed her. Natalie couldn’t let Jenn down no matter the cost. She swallowed her emotions, burying them deep within, and moved her hand to fire the weapon.
Natalie flinched as a soldier in the rear ranks of the advance flew up and appeared to be suspended in midair, followed by another and another. In quick succession, dozens of soldiers were ripped from the floor and sucked into four different points above, forming writhing groups of soldiers trying to free themselves from some invisible force. The Heavies had turned around to face the new threat, but they were also pulled up violently. Giant shimmering balls of… something… appeared around each group in the air. Colors swirled along the surface of the fields, but they remained transparent enough to be seen through. Some soldiers tried to fire their weapons into the fields from the inside with no effect. They struggled to no avail.
Natalie stood up straight and looked across the now nearly empty docking bay. Jenn stood alone near the entrance, the same way Natalie had entered, casually looking around the large room. She paused as she spotted Natalie, lifted her hand up, and began to tap her lips with a finger like she did when she was trying to figure out some complex puzzle.
Jenn lowered her hand and started walking toward Natalie, hands behind her back. She stopped a few feet away. Natalie stood frozen behind the weapon. Jenn looked from the machine to her friend, her expression flat. Natalie knew she was deep in thought, trying to analyze what had happened before her arrival.
The Harmony Divide- Never Alone Page 17