Celestial Incursion (Edge of the Splintered Galaxy Book 1) Page 7

  Five seconds to impact. The bridge crew assumed crash-landing positions.

  Three seconds to impact. The EDF personnel activated their shields, it was the only thing they would have going for them.

  Two seconds to impact. Foster held her breath, in case the windshields gave out.

  One second to impact. There was silence.

  Then there was chaos.

  Furious and unpleasant tremors arrived followed by the sound of metal being twisted and ripped apart. Foster’s body was thrown from left to right, forward to back, still held in place by her seat belt. Her vision was blurred from the constant vibrations of her head. Something that looked like sparks flared from a computer console while a tidal wave of water obscured all sights via the windshield.

  The nightmare wouldn’t stop.

  The ceiling lights flashed on and off, then eventually off when a loud bang went off from the rear of the ship. EVE’s hologram vanished, and with that, the holographic star charts and all computer activity.

  It felt like an eternity had passed when the Carl Sagan finally came to a complete stop, floating on the surface of the lake. Earth Cube, the central government installation for the UNE was nowhere to be seen, they must have overshot it.

  Disorientated, dripping wet with terror sweat, and distraught, Foster unbuckled her seat belt and slipped away from her chair. The bridge was dark without the power, save for the sunlight that came in from the windshield now the waves had pushed away. The sunlight that beamed in was partially obscured by rising smoke on the bridge from one of many new fires that would burn uncontrollably in the coming minutes.

  With hesitation in her voice, Foster gave the order she had hoped to never give since being appointed captain. “Abandon ship . . .”

  The Carl Sagan allowed her to live a dream she thought she’d never have. It allowed her to travel to a star she and her father used to look at through a telescope and ponder what was orbiting it. It gave her the ability to save the galaxy from an ancient evil.

  The party was over. The Carl Sagan was dead in the water, literally.

  As the crew made their way to the emergency escape hatches, Park, from behind, grabbed Foster, yanking her shoulder back to her. “Hold up, what the hell was that with your AI?” Park asked her.

  “We’s alive, aren’t we? I think she did a hell of a job.”

  “EVE experienced concern for its safety,” said Park. “She’s an AI, a computer, a machine, one that shouldn’t fear termination. That outburst was an emotional response.”

  It was a fair observation, one Foster failed to notice.

  “Captain,” Park said slowly. “What the hell did you guys do at Sirius?”

  “At the risk of soundin’ like a broken record.” Foster grimaced. “I don’t know.”

  5 Chevallier

  ESRS Carl Sagan, Docking Bay

  Upper Stratosphere, Earth, Sol system

  August 2, 2118, 17:47 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Minutes earlier . . .

  Master Chief Petty Officer, Mathilda Chevallier discovered the hard and awkward way that she was most likely the only Hammerhead member aboard. Nobody reported to the docking bay when she put out the ship wide broadcast, she also didn’t recall anyone else in cryo when she had left the chamber. From what she saw, she’d been the last person to awaken from their sleep.

  She pushed her body up from the intense turns the Carl Sagan had made earlier, thankful that her combat armor and shields had been active. Many unsecured objects got tossed around like she did during the fall, including a transport ship that came loose from its magnetic grip, nearly crushing her.

  That’s when the real sense of worry made it into her head, she, and everything in the docking bay, was bound by gravity. Only the habitat ring and bridge had gravity. The gravity on the bridge was subject to the psionic, if there was one present and their mind not tired, otherwise, that too, had no gravity.

  Gravity in the docking bay meant one thing. The Carl Sagan was no longer in space. But, if they weren’t in space, where were they? She opened the docking bay’s doors from a nearby computer terminal and watched in awe as the large doors slid open and the azure skies of Earth appeared.

  It wasn’t a beautiful sight.

  It was a bad sight.

  And might be the last thing she’d see unless she made her escape from the docking bay. It was located on the underside of the ship, and, therefore, would be the first section to be crushed on impact or suffer extreme damage.

  Chevallier went for the exit, and then remembered how she was nearly killed by the transport that overturned and landed right in front of the door, on its side. She cursed repeatedly in French for a solid minute. There was only one option left, and that remained with the second transport still locked in place.

  She boarded the transport along with an eRifle from the nearby weapons locker. The last thing she heard was that Earth was under attack, but to what degree she had no idea, and so she ensured to be prepared for whatever was crawling down below.

  Her Hammerhead helmet came over her head, covering her short auburn hair. Its tactical HUD powered on and performed a quick systems check, while she sat in the transport’s cockpit and activated its main flight control terminal.

  Its thrusters flared its blue and white flames and she began the complex task of piloting it out and away from the Carl Sagan as it continued to crash to the surface below. She was no skilled pilot, and it showed as the transport scraped the sides of the docking bay doors, walls, and ceiling, triggering its shields to rapidly flicker blue.

  She managed to get the transport to pass through the irised force field that sheltered the main docking bay doors, and out into a sea of clouds. Her transport remained flying through the clouds, the Carl Sagan, on the other hand, sank through them. She was free and safe; her friends and crew were not. Those thoughts got pushed aside as distractions like that often got people killed.

  Or in her case, shot at by flying lizard-like creatures. Who was she kidding? They had large wings covered in red scales, a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, a long, spiked tail powerful enough to slice an unarmored and shielded man in half, or at least knock him out. Then there were its feet and claws, which were big enough to pick up an unsuspecting victim. They looked like flying dragons, with small cybernetic upgrades. Cybernetic wyverns to be more exact. The world was truly coming to an end if such things like that flew through the skies.

  She guided the transport away from the creatures. They pursued her, bathing her transport in a steady wave of plasma flames from their mouths, another hidden cybernetic upgrade she figured. Other wyverns had tachyon weapons mounted to their bellies, firing short and steady bursts of tachyon beams upon her failing shields as she pulled out of range from the plasma-breathing wyverns. Transports weren’t designed for combat, especially ones issued to exploration ships like the Carl Sagan. She needed to get to the surface quickly before the dragons blew her out of the skies.

  She cleared the cloud coverage and took in the majestic view of Europe below. The computers revealed she was directly over Geneva, so was the falling Carl Sagan and dozens of UNE fighters and attack drones. Every ten seconds she saw flames burst away from the fighter crafts, followed by a trail of black smoke that crashed into the city. They were getting decimated by the wyverns in the skies.

  So too were her shields as two plasma-breathing wyverns ascended upward from the battle below. The plasma fire from their mouths stripped away the last of her shields, alarms began to ring out, fires started to grow from the aft cabin, and the hull slowly vaporized. Three more wyverns glided in from the left across the horizon. They were fast at flying. She was faster at dropping.

  Chevallier shifted the nose of the transport to the surface, increasing her drop into the city on a path that seemed suicidal. A heavily commercialized district of Geneva appeared in the windshield, it was littered with burning cars and the scars of war and it looked like it had been for several hours. It was the perfect pla
ce to make a crash-landing. Civilian casualties, if any, should be small. Should Chevallier not survive the crash, at least she’d have the satisfaction of knowing the cybernetically enhanced wyverns did not get a piece of her in the end.

  The sound of Chevallier’s crash-landing echoed with a deafening thud throughout downtown Geneva.

  Centre Commercial Balexert

  Geneva, Earth, Sol system

  August 2, 2118, 18:21 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Chevallier came to. She discovered the shields for her armor sat at 32 percent and was convinced it had gone straight to zero at one point. Why else would she have been out cold? The transport she rode in on broke through a wall then rolled over in the central promenade of Geneva’s largest shopping mall. What remained of the hull integrity of the transport and her suit’s shields and armor kept her alive through the crash, which by rights, should have killed her.

  The windshield was no more as her body hung upside down still strapped into the cockpit’s chair since it flipped over. Chevallier unbuckled her seat belt and plopped to the ground which was the ceiling of the overturned cockpit. She crawled into the back of what remained of the transport, it wasn’t a pretty sight. She found her rifle lying with burning rear cabin chairs and blown out control panels.

  The shattered windshield served as her doorway out of the transport and into the mall, it too wasn’t a pretty sight. Every store was devoid of human life, its merchandise flung onto the floors along with shopping bags full of purchases probably dropped by their owners when the invaders hit. Flickering holographic advertisements and store signs had red flashing warning signs appear before them, demanding everyone flee and take shelter. Bodies of innocent shoppers that weren’t so lucky were partially vaporized and others were ripped apart with gaping claw slashes and teeth marks.

  These aren’t Imperial forces . . . Chevallier thought as she moved through the carnage and shattered glass, searching for an exit.

  The holographic mall directory flashed on and off too much for her to get an idea as to where she was. She cursed in French and pushed on with her aimless search within the huge futuristic mall shaped like a palace. She came to a stop when she noticed the dead that littered the floor weren’t civilians in the area she entered.

  She kneeled and examined a body. It was a man in an exosuit of some sort, the flag of the nation he originated from was attached to the back of his outfit as his rifle rested with his fallen body. It was an UNE Marine. Further up, she saw at least twenty to thirty dead Marines. The cavalry had arrived, only to get knocked off their horses. The sacrifice the Marines made weren’t all in vain as many of them had fallen upon bullet-ridden bodies of the invaders.

  The invaders had a humanoid form. Their armor was bronze in color while its surface was designed to resemble the skin of a dragon. Their backs were covered in six-inch spikes, longer spikes extended from their pauldrons, spikes that were almost as long as the horns on their helmet. Prickly talons covered the ends of their gloves and boots. It was nightmare fuel, and that was their foot soldiers covered in their full body armor. Then there were the other creatures, the ones that were probably responsible for ripping people apart.

  Chevallier saw what looked like a smaller dragon, a drake. She imagined it walked on all fours, judging by its body slumped over onto its side. It was almost the size of a car and wasn’t fully armored like the rest of the foot soldiers, though it did possess cybernetic implants and mounted weapons. Most of the dead Marines were mauled to death by the drake, and the others were most likely shot and vaporized by the tachyon rifles the foot soldiers used.

  Chevallier heard weapons fire echo in the distance. Her motion detectors directed her to the possible source of the sounds, the upper level of the mall. Nonfunctioning escalators took her topside where the repeated gunshot noises grew louder as she neared. She saw more invader and Marine bodies across the floor, all of them experienced a gruesome death on the battlefield. Their blood was fairly fresh, unlike the ones downstairs.

  She arrived at the estimated source of the gunshots. Rays of light from the afternoon sun beamed down from a large hole in the ceiling forged during the fighting. Twisted and mangled fragments of concrete with grade beams protruding out rested below the collapsed ceiling, providing her an excellent place to hunker down and take cover. She looked about and scanned the battlefield before her, fixing her eyes on four armored soldiers in a decisive battle against three invader foot soldiers.

  Neither side noticed her slip in. Perfect.

  She took aim and saw the back of the heads of the invaders via her rifle’s scope, and then lost sight of them. Like the human soldiers fighting, the invaders were frequently lifting up and out of cover from the fallen ceiling’s debris. They were exposed when they went to take a shot and hidden when they stooped down.

  The weapons exchange had ceased for a moment as the top of the heads of the invaders bobbed up and down facing each other, probably discussing a new plan of attack. Chevallier considered shooting but had doubts her bullets would do any major damage. She needed to see their whole head or body, not the horns at the tip of their helmets. The human soldiers weren’t able to clearly see what was going on, and so slowly pushed forward into the sunlight. They were walking into a trap.

  Chevallier aimed her rifle toward the area she expected the invaders to raise up and shoot, placing her finger next to the trigger. She controlled her breathing and imagined herself playing a game of whack-a-mole.

  The invaders’ ambush went into play.

  It wasn’t what she was expecting.

  A wyvern from the skies swooped down upon the nearest human soldier, and savagely disabled his shields with its claws and furiously moving and gnawing jaws. The wyvern, with extraordinary high speeds, took to the skies, bringing the soldier with it wrapped in its claws. In an instant, the fight became three on three as the hiding invaders rose up and continued their assault with their tachyon beam rifles.

  Chevallier shook off the horrific event that happened seconds earlier and remembered her whack-a-mole game. She officially became an aggressor in the bout, as her weapon sung its battle cry and returned the conflict back into four on three. The conflict became two on four, then one, and then none, the humans were victorious.

  The remains of the soldier that was taken by the wyvern fell back down. His torso, legs, chest, and head weren’t connected to anything as liters of blood poured down and splattered moments later. Full body armor couldn’t hide the disgusted and angry body language the three soldiers experienced when they saw what became of their team mate, it also didn’t hide the fact that none of them trusted Chevallier when she approached them.

  Three rifles were aimed at her Hammerhead helmet. She lowered her weapon and raised her hands to show she wasn’t there to fight them. Their weapons lowered, the message had gotten across. At least she hoped so, as she did help save their lives.

  Static noises played within her helmet’s audio speakers, an incoming transmission from the three soldiers. She heard what sounded like English but couldn’t make it out. Given how much more advanced Earth appeared from her trek in the mall, she concluded whatever they used to communicate, wasn’t compatible with her equipment.

  Her hands undid the binding that kept her helmet attached, pulling it off and revealing her face to the trio. Face-to-face communication was going to have to make do. The three did the same as they neared. Chevallier glanced at the trio’s appearance, noticing, now she was closer, the equipment the three used, while similar, was different.

  The first soldier approached her. He was a black man, buzz cut hair and possessed the simplest of their equipment, rifle, full combat armor that looked like a wetsuit and a helmet. “Thanks for the assist,” he said to her.

  “No worries,” Chevallier replied.

  “There a reason you using that gear, soldier?” said the second soldier. “And that . . . rifle?”

  Chevallier looked at the second man. His dirty-blond hair was shaved int
o a short mohawk, and his armor, if you can even call it that, looked more like a web of skintight wires and cybernetic implants.

  Chevallier held her rifle up. “Something wrong with this?”

  The blond mohawk man pointed at it. “It’s an eRifle, haven’t seen one of those in decades.”

  “Its standard Hammerhead load out,” Chevallier said.

  Shocked and slightly staggered looks appeared on their three faces.

  “Hammerhead?” said the third soldier, a woman with brown hair and a pasty complexion.

  Her armor was the most fascinating of them all. Like the blond mohawk soldier, it was a skintight maze of implants and wires. Her gear, however, had additional round components attached to her waist and arms. Large holographic visages that resembled blue shimmering bracelets circled her wrists.

  “There hasn’t been a recruit for that program since EDF phased it out in the twenty forties,” the woman continued.

  “She’s a sleep-in I’m guessing,” said the first soldier. “And picked one hell of a time to wake up and smell the coffee. Got a name, soldier?”

  “Master Chief Petty Officer Mathilda Chevallier.”

  He nodded. “Master Gunnery Sergeant Chris Boyd.” It took him a few seconds, but once he made the connection. “Wait . . . Chevallier? As in Admiral Chevallier’s daughter?”

  Last time Chevallier checked, her mother was a captain. The news delighted her often cold heart and brought some much-needed good news to the terrible day she’d been having thus far. Her mother managed to get a promotion and was still fresh on the minds of people, suggesting she was still alive in . . .

  Whatever year she ended up in.

  “That’s right—”

  Chevallier’s words were cut off as the shrieks of the cybernetic wyverns roared. Looking up, she saw the beast and two others dive down for another attack against the four. Talking would have to wait until they were safe, running and diving for cover was top priority.