Celestial Incursion (Edge of the Splintered Galaxy Book 1) Read online

  The four fled, leaving behind random fleeting shots to cover their escape. They arrived at an area of the mall which still had its ceiling intact, giving them protection from the wyverns, or so they thought. The three wyverns that did dive down followed the four like hungry beasts in pursuit of their next meal. The high ceilings of the mall gave the wyverns enough room to flap their wings and still remain an airborne threat. Raging plasma-breaths from the wyverns, dive-bombing, tail swipes, and fear-inducing talons reduced shield power of the four to almost nothing.

  Taking cover was useless, not when your adversary could fly over it and claw at you, staying mobile and shooting had to make do. Chevallier saw Boyd perform some impressive moves, leaping up toward the walls with the aid of a jetpack and perform a parkour-style wall-running sprint with his rifle blazing.

  The brown-haired woman remained idle for the most part and flicked her wrists at any of the beasts that got near her, they were pushed backward instantly. Chevallier knew all too well what a telekinetic push looked like. It didn’t add up. Humans were incapable of psionic abilities unless the conspiracy theory rumors were true about the Titan base. The woman was probably a Linl, a species of the Radiance Union that looked exactly like a human, Chevallier concluded.

  “This is getting too hot,” the blond mohawk man said as he flung a piece of a broken pipe at one of the wyverns.

  Without touching it.

  Telekinesis was used that time, no doubt about it.

  “Need a top up, sir?” the woman asked.

  Boyd ended his wall-running stunt and charged toward her, dive rolling away from a wave of plasma fire in the process. “Yes, do it!”

  “Everyone, gather around,” the woman yelled. “Barrier going down in five!”

  The three balled up close to each other, something told Chevallier she should do the same and join them, that, and her shield had hit a critically low percentage. The woman extended her left and right arms out, and her armor began to emit beams of blue light, while the holographic bracelets circling her wrists dazzled the sides of her body with a faint lavender color in an enigmatic manner. It resulted in a purple psionic dome of light that encircled the four as Chevallier approached. The wyverns crashed into it and screeched angrily as their talons, jaws, and plasma breath failed to penetrate the barrier.

  The woman remained in place with her eyes shut, armor and spinning bracelets glowing and reflecting their light off her porcelain skin, as her hair waved about in the psionic energy winds formed as a byproduct. Meanwhile, the blond mohawk man strapped his rifle to his back and formed his left hand into a ball. Purple bolts of psionic energy surged across it like a plasma orb. From there he placed his fist into his chest, and an energy exchange followed. He repeated the same skill on Boyd, only it took seconds longer.

  “Maxwell, hurry the fuck up,” Boyd said drily to the blond mohawk man. “This is the slowest psionic shield recovery I’ve ever seen.”

  “Hey, I’m not the one that’s sitting at twelve percent shield strength,” he replied.

  Chevallier was stunned. The two were indeed psionics, using Earth equipment and weapons. “We enlist Linl psionics now?” Chevallier said.

  Boyd laughed while Maxwell tried to hold back a smirk. “Maxwell and LeBoeuf are human.”

  “Wow. She really is a sleep-in,” Maxwell said.

  “You’ve missed a lot over the last seventy to eighty years you’ve been gone,” Boyd said to Chevallier.

  Boyd and LeBoeuf confirmed to Maxwell that their shields had been restored after he performed the energy transfer technique on them. It was Chevallier’s turn. “Let’s hope this works,” Maxwell said to her. “I’ve never restored shields to armor this old.”

  Maxwell placed his fist on Chevallier’s armor and watched as the psionic discharge transferred away from him and forced the percentage of her shield’s power to rise slowly.

  4 percent.

  6 percent.

  12 percent.

  Chevallier chuckled. “I like the future already.”

  “This is going to be a while,” Maxwell said, grimacing. “Our gear was specifically designed to allow psionics to recharge shields, yours wasn’t.”

  Three minutes of listening to the frustrated wyverns beyond the barrier scream and bash their heads against it had passed. Chevallier’s shield power made it 40 percent. LeBoeuf’s face began to wrench from the stress of maintaining the psionic protective dome. Like all psionics, the longer they used their powers, the greater the stress on their brains. LeBoeuf was probably in the early stages of having a major migraine, or worse.

  “Sir, if you want me to light these assholes up, I’ll need to drop this barrier soon,” LeBoeuf said, opening her tired eyes.

  “Maxwell, how much longer?” Boyd said to him.

  “I’m going to be here for another five or seven minutes at this rate, sir,” Maxwell said. “This Hammerhead shit is too old school for me.”

  “Don’t have that time,” Boyd said.

  Watching the wyvern’s endless assault against LeBoeuf’s barrier made Chevallier realize she was the one holding up their chances for survival. They needed to act soon before LeBoeuf’s mind became weakened and useless. “Leave me, I’ll be fine,” Chevallier said, pushing Maxwell away.

  He shrugged and rearmed himself with his rifle. “Suit yourself.”

  “Maxwell, LeBoeuf,” Boyd said, raising his weapon up. “Light ‘em up on my mark!”

  “Understood.”

  “Ready?”

  Maxwell’s cybernetic-armored body lit up with psionic energy like a Christmas tree. “I’m ready.”

  The four stepped close to the edge of the barrier. The three wyverns on the other end did the same and clawed at it furiously. Boyd grinned. “LeBoeuf, you’re up!”

  LeBoeuf forced the barrier to vanish and quickly followed-up with a telekinetic cleave by swinging her arm horizontally. The three clustered wyverns launched backward briskly, rolled, and tumbled to the floor. Her holographic bracelets started to glow a deep burgundy as she took hold of her rifle and pulled the trigger. Bullets didn’t come out of it as Chevallier had expected, instead a steady beam of what looked like electricity discharged.

  The lightning bolts from her rifle hit the middle wyvern dead-on. The wyvern’s body began to convulse, as if it was suffering from an electrical shock, while the electric energy that hit it splashed away, burning and shocking the two others next to it. That’s when Maxwell slipped away from sight as blue psionic energy made his body fade, and rematerialize behind the left wyvern, a psionic jump port. He pushed the barrel of his rifle to the back of the head of the wyvern. A point-blank shot blew its brains out, what remained of its head burst into flames. Chevallier had doubts his rifle used bullets too.

  The wyvern to the right was next. Focused fire from Maxwell, Chevallier, and Boyd put it down before it got to its feet to fly. There was one wyvern left, being the one LeBoeuf had locked down with her lightning attack. Chevallier shifted her sights onto it, and then lowered her rifle. The wyvern had collapsed from the relentless discharge with smoke billowing up from its crispy body and smoldering wings.

  Maxwell kicked the body of his first kill. “Not so tough when they’re grouped together and can’t fly.”

  “Maxwell, what the hell did you use?” LeBoeuf said as he returned to their group.

  “Fully channeled incendiary round.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for the future,” she replied.

  “Regular rounds weren’t working when they were flying,” Maxwell continued. “Guess you gotta hit them with the good stuff right away.”

  Whatever the hell that means, Chevallier thought. She’ll have to brush up on the new combat tactics humans now employed.

  Boyd waved his hands and created a small holographic window which he used to establish a communication link. “This is Sergeant Boyd to all UNE forces in the area, hostiles have been neutralized.”

  “Copy that, Sergeant,” a voice replied
from the projection. “I have a group of noncombatants here that need immediate evac, sending you the details via HNI.”

  New information populated the hologram Boyd had summoned, including a top-down map of Geneva. Blue and red dots were speckled across it, though the vast majority of red dots were further east, away from the mall. Boyd tapped one of the blue dots on the hologram. “Putting in a request for you now, hang tight,” Boyd informed the projection.

  Boyd’s work with the hologram had Chevallier impressed. This HNI, whatever it was, seemed to have allowed him to make various requests instantly with a personal holographic interface. LeBoeuf and Maxwell too conjured holograms of their own which apparently had been linked with their HNI. They all took the time to look over the tactical data it provided, and later pulled up stats based on their recent combat performance sharing it with one another during the downtime. Weapon accuracy, average heart rate, vital signs, kill counts, it was all listed.

  Chevallier was officially obsolete.

  She followed Boyd and his team to a sizeable department store where cowering civilians had taken cover under the protection of Marines in their exosuits. With no confirmed enemies discovered in the mall and on their HNI radar feeds, they led the civilians outside.

  Evacuation transports descended from the orange-rich afternoon skies to the parking lot, a mess with burning cars and vans, cars and vans without wheels that was. Did they finally invent flying cars? Chevallier pondered as she looked at one battered vehicle while the tattered men, women, and children cheered with glee when the first transport began to lower itself.

  And then exploded instantly, raining flaming bits of debris down upon them.

  “Oh, what the fuck!”

  LeBoeuf erected a dome, shielding everyone from the hot burning remains of the obliterated transport. They weren’t out of this yet.

  “Transport is down, abort, abort—”

  The second and third transports suffered the same fate, as a strange object that looked like a meteor crashed through them, bringing them to their golden fiery end.

  “Get them back, get them back!”

  The civilians were whisked back inside by the Marines, while Chevallier and Boyd’s EDF teams watched the remaining transports return to the skies before the setting sun. Dead center in the parking lot was the randomly scattered and burning remains of the third transport. In the middle of the carnage was the single meteor-like object that brought it, and the others, down, nestled in the newly formed crater in the parking lot. Chevallier used her rifle’s scope to zoom in upon it.

  It wasn’t a meteor.

  It was a man.

  He stood and leaped out of the crater, strolled past the flaming wreckage he created, before dematerializing within a wave of blue light, psionic teleportation.

  “Did you guys see that?” Chevallier said.

  LeBoeuf formed a holographic window and directed everyone’s attention to its data. There was a pulsing red dot moving close to them. “I got movement on the rooftops.”

  Boyd looked to the three burning transports. “My HNI can’t get a fix on their vitals.” He tapped his head a few times. “Are there any survivors?”

  “Doubtful, after that,” Maxwell said. “Not sure why HNI isn’t reporting their vitals.”

  “LeBoeuf, what do you got?”

  Her newly summoned hologram filled with static and a computer error message, she growled and revealed. “Yeah, my HNI just took a shit.”

  “What about ESP?”

  “Too much chaos in the city,” she said. “I can’t get a solid fix on what’s up top.”

  Boyd faced the mall, looking upward to its high rooftops. “Let’s check it out. Chevallier, refresh my memory, did Hammerheads have MRF tech?”

  Chevallier raised her eyebrow. “Come again?”

  “Mass Reduction Field,” Boyd said to her. “Our suits can lower or raise the mass of our bodies.”

  Chevallier shook her head. “That’s a new trick to me.”

  Boyd gave LeBoeuf a smartass grin. “Give Chevallier a hug.” LeBoeuf replied with a groan. “Either that, or you teleport us all up, but I’d rather you conserve what little mental power you have left.”

  Boyd took point and jump-jetted upward, his mass-reduced body allowed him to soar high up, reaching the rooftops with one jump. Maxwell and LeBoeuf stared at each other. He laughed at her then used his psionic abilities to jump port out of sight, presumably to the rooftops with Boyd.

  Chevallier’s limited knowledge of psionics reminded her while a teleportation would have gotten them all up, it would have consumed much more of LeBoeuf’s power. And without the fancy jump jets and MRF, the quickest way for her to reach the rooftops with them would be via a psionic jump port. Jump porting as she recalled was a short-range teleport, and that it was possible to bring another person with the user, provided they were within physical contact with them, and more often than not, was only good to carry one person at a time.

  LeBoeuf’s reluctant arms wrapped around the armored body of Chevallier. The two ladies flushed as they stood in the awkward stance. “Let’s never talk about this . . .”

  Chevallier concurred. “Agreed . . .”

  Chevallier’s vision of the parking lot melted away as blinding blue light covered her. She felt her body become pure energy for a brief moment, and then return to its original state, only this time high up onto the roof of the mall with LeBoeuf quickly releasing her from her hold.

  The strange figure from the parking lot stood at the edge of the rooftops, watching Geneva burn in the distance. He appeared to be humanoid, more so than the other invaders. His white glistening armor, similar to the invader foot soldiers, was designed to resemble the features of a dragon. And so, the surface of his armor resembled dragon scales and his gauntlets sported jagged metallic-looking talons. His helmet only covered his head down to his nose, leaving his mouth and jaw exposed, revealing that he looked more human than alien. Chevallier wouldn’t have been surprised if a dashing handsome human had existed under his gear, one with a brawny chest, and firm six-pack abs made clear thanks to how tight and formfitting his armor was.

  He faced the four as they surrounded him with their rifles drawn. There was no fear in his stance, no worry at what the four angry humans could do to him if he made the wrong move. He was like a brave knight, wearing dragon armor. A Dragon Knight.

  Boyd began to scream with agonizing pain, dropping his rifle, and holding onto his ears.

  LeBoeuf’s holographic bracelets vanished, as she too yelped and crashed next to Boyd, her hands holding her head.

  A third rifle met the rooftops they stood on. It was Maxwell’s as he joined the two, displaying the same symptoms of screaming loudly and holding his head before passing out.

  Chevallier remained standing with her rifle forward while the Dragon Knight’s mouth twisted, clearly puzzled as to why things played out as they did. With three incapacitated targets before him, the Dragon Knight reached around and pulled forward a Voelika strapped to his back.

  A Voelika being the same staff weapon Nereid and her people used to enhance their psionic powers. The ornament of the dragons on both ends of the staff began to glow a bright orange once the Dragon Knight firmly grasped onto the weapon and lunged at Chevallier.

  She held the trigger to her weapon, and the noise it made signaled the start of their bout.

  Chevallier’s shields took the first blow, then the second, third, fourth, fifth, and six. The Dragon Knight was fast as it circled around her, laughing, and taunting her in the process, before it leaped backward, curling its body into a triple summersault, landing perfectly on its feet. Feet that hovered above the surface of the rooftops with tiny red jets of energy propelling it.

  Chevallier’s armor began to ring it’s no shields alarm. Her training told her to get to cover whenever you heard that, her training also prepared her to battle Hashmedai and human terrorists, not psionic Dragon Knights. Ignoring the alarms, she dove back into the
fray with a blazing rifle. If Sirius and the Architect forces taught her anything, she had to make up her own rules.

  The Dragon Knight swayed back and forth while it moved to close the distance between the two and evade her bullets by gracefully sliding its hovering body from left to right. The way it moved its body reminded her of a figure skater on ice, an extremely dangerous one at that. The odd bullet that hit him repelled off a barrier, a psionic one judging by the lavender ripples it made.

  The gap was closed, and the Dragon Knight took another swing at her with its Voelika, now radiating blue waves of light. Chevallier recognized what was going on, psionic imbuement, Nereid fed her rifle some weird psionic energy once, and it increased its firepower by a huge margin, as in her bullets travelled more than triple the speed of light.

  She dodge rolled to the side, hoping to not find out the hard way what would happen if that Voelika hit her without shields. She landed back first and reacquired her target that was still standing and upset it missed. All her rounds connected, a stunning light show of purple waves of psionic energy sprayed away from her target, causing the Voelika’s glow to dim.

  It didn’t matter what species you were, psionic powers followed similar rules. If you used them too much, your brain becomes stressed. The more pressure she put on its barrier, the more mental work it had to do. Before she could jump back up, the Dragon Knight made another pass at her. In the span of three seconds it found itself above Chevallier, and its Voelika found itself sending her rifle swirling through the air.

  It went to make a final downward thrust upon Chevallier’s downed body and missed as she rolled to the side and returned to her feet with a combat dagger in hand. The two swung their weapons, utilizing the advantage they had. Chevallier had what armored protection her suit still provided as well as its enhanced strength, which made her stabs and slashes quick and hard. The Dragon Knight had reach, speed, and unbelievably high agility. Psionic powers were for the time being a nonissue as long as she continued to put on pressure and force it to divert all its mental energy into strengthening its barrier and deflect her deadly dagger strikes.