“MC, she’s a friend.” Pierce said.
“Dr. Pierce? What the fuck happened to you?”
“No time to explain.”
The ground began to shake sending slight ripples of waves across the shallow waters. Pierce and the woman moved behind Chevallier as she stood watching the ocean and horizon before them. A horizon that was eclipsed by the sudden sight of an egg-shaped alien ship rising out of the ocean like a whale, only unlike a whale, the ship didn’t dive back into the ocean where it came from, it rose into the skies, faced them head-on, and hovered.
“Prepare for battle, Chevallier,” the woman said as she held her glowing staff.
Chevallier looked at the oval-shaped alien ship. Its main weapons locked on them as the sides of it evaporated away, revealing the inside of it. There was an overlord and six grunts looking out as they prepared to leap off.
Chevallier, Pierce, and Nereid stood back to back in the ankle-high shallow waters. Behind them was the inactive wormhole gate, before them a hovering alien ship as the small squad of Architect soldiers splashed down with their laser blasters blazing. There wasn’t much any of them could do for cover, Chevallier’s still weakened shields kept her alive for the time being as Nereid used her psionic powers to create a dome that protected her and Pierce.
The alien ship in the air didn’t fire its main weapons as Chevallier had expected. Clearly, they wanted someone alive and wanted the attacking grunts before her to make it happen, the question was; who was to live and who was expendable? As if she didn’t know the answer, her shields took all the laser fire, Nereid’s barrier took none, it just twinkled its purple colors and looked pretty.
Chevallier returned fire, and engaged in a very brief weapons exchange as a transport of human design made a daring and risky maneuver by landing in between the line of sight of the alien ship and them. Its side doors slid open, Lieutenant Dennis Chang stood next to the entrance, waving for them to leap aboard quickly with an eRifle firmly grasped in his hands.
The three of them rapidly ran through the shallow, splashing water all about in their wake, and climbed aboard. Chang quickly returned to the cockpit and eagerly awaited the chance to pull up and out of the chaos, laser fire from below collided with the transport’s blue ripping shields.
Chevallier counted a four body total aboard. “Get us out of here, L.T.”
She watched Chang’s piloting skills go to work, guiding the transport as it lifted off into the skies. Then it rumbled and shook. The alien ship began to fire its white-hot energy beams upon it in an attempt to disable or force them to land. She grimaced at the thought of them crash landing, let alone crash landing in the deeper parts of the ocean.
“Ah, shit!” Chang yelled. “OK, ladies and gents this is your pilot speaking, buckle up, ‘cause we gonna get fucked.”
Ignoring his request, Chevallier stood behind his chair and watched the action unfold via front row seats. “Keep it together!”
Sparks blazed up from a nearby console, a follow-up blast sent everyone except Chang to the floor. “Yeah, I wasn’t joking about the seat belts, guys,” Chang said. “Inertial dampers tend to get wonky during situations like this.”
The side door was still open during their rise to the skies, had the shields not been active Chevallier would have rolled outside to her death. She got to her feet and saw the ship swing about and prepared to discharge its main energy cannon at them. Chang managed to evade most hits, but quickly found the closer he was to the surface the less they were fired upon. The Architect’s men were sending a message, land or we’ll make you do it.
Nereid stepped next to Chevallier and eyed her rifle from top to bottom, then stroked the sides of it as her eyes shut. Chevallier looked at the bizarre half-naked psionic woman as she continued to touch her rifle, Nereid’s hands began to radiate a soft lavender color. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I remember this,” Nereid said. “Human magnetic rifle, originally developed by Radiance, correct?”
Chevallier rolled her eyes. “Pierce, your girlfriend is creeping me out.”
Nereid lifted her hand away from Chevallier’s rifle, it began to glow a bright blue and purple. Chevallier was now the one that looked at her weapon from top to bottom in awe at what had become of it. She turned around and looked at Nereid who stood holding onto her immaculately crafted staff weapon. “I have imbued your weapon with psionic energy, please fire it quickly . . . the effect . . . will not—”
Nereid’s body became limp and slumped over. Pierce was quick to spring to action and hold her seconds before she collapsed onto the floor. Nereid looked exhausted and dizzy, her psionic powers were overworked, her brain wouldn’t be able to take much more without a few minutes of rest.
“Uh . . . sure,” Chevallier said, then addressed Chang. “Iris the shields up front here, and bring my side of the transport to face that ship.”
“With all due respect, ma’am, the Carl Sagan had a hard time blowing those things to hell; I doubt your eRifle will do any good.”
“This glowing mystic shit says it’s our only way out of this. Unless you got something to add, Pierce?”
Pierce shook his head as he secured Nereid’s body on a nearby seat. “My expertise is astrophysics not metaphysics.”
The transport spun around placing the alien ship within both Chevallier’s line of sight and the targeting scanner of her rifle. She saw the ship aim its forward energy cannon directly at them and charge its weapons.
She pulled the trigger. And hoped for the best.
A loud blast echoed throughout the skies, her bullets tore cavernous holes through the ship including its main weapon, a chain reaction of blasts and flames erupted from the interior of the ship, blue flames burned uncontrollably and eventually consumed the craft, sending it crashing into the ocean below, black smoke billowing upward.
She was surprised at how effortless she did that, a weapon of the size and power she had shouldn’t have had that much firepower. The holographic display of her rifle reported that her slugs traveled at speeds forty times faster than the speed of light. It was impossible. The impact on a shot like that should have done damage to her and the transport, hell the amount of energy required would have been much more than the combined power output of all of Earth’s ships.
Said energy existed in her hands and had no lingering side effects.
With the ship a nonissue, an escape route was paved allowing the transport to escape back into space as the side doors slid shut, something Chang should have done once they got aboard. Chevallier floated into the cockpit as gravity ceased to exist inside of the transport while Nereid slowly returned to the land of the conscious. “Chang, thanks for the rescue.”
“No problem, MC. What happened to everyone else?”
“McDowell and Kingston are gone. I don’t know what happen to the captain.”
“If we’re lucky she might still be alive.” Chang pointed at a larger ship in orbit harassing the Carl Sagan with a torrent of energy beam cannons similar to the ones the smaller egg-shaped ship used. “Some dickhead known as the Architect is aboard that ship, and apparently she’s being held captive there.”
Chevallier looked at the interstellar slugfest between the Carl Sagan and the Architect’s ship. Both ships overshields flickered purple as energy weapons and rail gun fire blasted back and forth between each other. “So, if the Captain is aboard, why are we trying to destroy it?”
“We’re trying to disable it.” Chang and Chevallier quickly shielded their eyes from a bright chain reaction of explosions that illuminated the interior of the transport like a second sun. “But I don’t think that plan is working.”
Chevallier heard Nereid release an innocent yelp from behind. She turned and saw the strange psionic woman struggle with the lack of gravity. Pierce pushed and glided toward her to help her get right side up.