B00BKLL1XI EBOK (25 page)

“I got you now...” seethed Nelson as the crosshairs on his heads up display locked onto the enemy ship.

The bomber fired the last of its missiles into the spiky blob. Each missile calculated the optimal trajectory for a devastating impact and sent its planned maneuver to it counterparts. With pinpoint precision, the missiles arranged themselves into a cloud which wrapped around the enemy ship and struck at the same exact millisecond, turning the alien blob into black and chrome shrapnel and generating a powerful shockwave which distorted space and time as the alien craft’s black hole engines were torn apart by the blast.

As the explosion settled, Nelson brought up a holographic screen which showed Steve anxiously typing on a computer terminal.

“Steve, the alien probe is done for,” he said. “But we’re probably not out of the woods yet.”

“Tell me about it,” cried Steve. “I lost all weapons systems.”

“That’s not what I meant. While I was fighting with the probe, it didn’t give ground or try to escape. It shot back without changing its angle as if it was in the middle of something. I think there’s another little surprise from the Dark Gods.”

“I need six minutes here to format and reinstall the weapons system and then I could get new sensor data.”

“Let me know as soon as you’re back online.”

“Roger that,” nodded Steve and ended the call.

Nelson caught up with the still stable warp bubble. His sixth sense was seldom wrong and he could feel the familiar chill running down his spine. Something big was either happening on planet’s surface or it was going to happen very soon.

On the broken and battered street, Ace stood over the charred corpse of the alien monster as other cyborgs swept every building nearby for more spawns in hiding. At his side, Dot inspected the weird creature. In her travels she never saw anything quite like it.

“Is that what the Rexx spawn looked like under his cloak?” she asked.

“Yeah, pretty much,” nodded Ace. “He was a little fatter and a little darker in color, but yeah, pretty much the same.”

He yanked his blade out of the cadaver, spraying himself with an orange goop that stuck to his carbon skin and crystalline hair.

“What the hell is that?” wondered Dot.

“Looks like brains,” grimaced Ace. “Oh and this shit is all over my uniform too. Great, now what’s left of my armor is a biohazard. Ah well...”

He tore off his shredded, stained armor plates and wiped them off near the cadaver after running them through his crystalloid hair.

“Note to self,” he scoffed. “Alien guts suck as hair gel.”

The numerous scratches all across his torso were almost healed. Despite the power of the spawns’ massive, shearing claws, the marks they left on Ace’s body were now no thicker than a hair. Inspecting his armor he decided it was clean enough and put it back on.

Suddenly, the ground began to rumble ominously. A shockwave rippled across the mangled asphalt. Ace froze, his sword pointed at a spot just a few hundred feet away. His sensitive ears detected exactly where the sound originated.

“You have got to be fucking with me...” he hissed.

With a roar, something horrifying tore through the asphalt and shot straight up into the night sky. A giant monster the size of a high rise building now dominated the battered street. Made of jagged rock joined by what looked like fluid spirals of magma, it stood on four legs, its six eyes planted in a domed head emanating smoke and fire. As it armed its immense claws, each as big as a ballistic missile and made from translucent, jet black material, its two massive arms scraped across the buildings lining the street.

“Fucking son of a...” cried Ace, knowing full well that there was no way he could even dent this brute.

“Ace?” started Dot tugging at his sash. “Is there a plan?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Care to share?”

“Yes. I’m going to run as fast as I can and you do the same, heading the other way, yelling at everyone else to do the same.”

The monster spotted them and sank its claws deep into the black asphalt, scraping the walls of a nearby high rise. It missed as Dot and Ace warped out in opposite directions, forcing the monster to choose who it would follow. The creature didn’t even think about its options and immediately went after Ace, trying to smash him. Slamming the ground with an open palm, it generated a blast wave that sent the cyborg’s 180 pound body flying like a leaf in a hurricane.

Ace landed hard, smashing his head into the carbon tungsten bar protecting the third floor of a high rise and falling flat on his back. It was a very painful landing. Every joint and muscle in his body sent a warning to his brain as the deafening  ringing in his ears tried to subside. Another flight like that and his back would snap in two. He pushed off the wall and clumsily warped out as the monster tried to sink its claw into him.

With a series of swift and practiced moves, he climbed to the top of a ten story office tower. The monster’s head began just above the ledge of the building. It had no neck, but it easily swiveled its head like the turret of a tank. Its burning eyes locked with Ace’s piercing red gaze. Bursts of fire from the cyborgs below didn’t even phase it.

“Oh, I am so fucked...” Ace sighed.

The giant monster’s forehead lit up with two familiar symbols, a pair of red Shadow runes that ignited for just a few seconds. Mai was watching through the eyes of this hulking brute and she wanted him to know who turned this night on Earth into a bloody mess. And now her seal flashed across the forehead of an alien spawn who was just seconds away from crushing Ace.

Aiming for just a moment, the giant monster plowed its immense claws deep into the wall of the high rise, shattering the support rails and concrete walls. The building folded in and collapsed under the overwhelming stress, sending a wave of dark gray dust into the street below.

[ chapter _ 023 ]

The high rise collapsed in slow motion, its long fall obscured by the cloud of dark gray dust that started as a wave. It splashed into what was left of the street next to it and rose as a dark pillar that shrouded the monster in smoke. Over the roar of the many of tons of concrete falling to the ground, few heard the sonic boom of a bomber coming in from space like a falling star and scooping up a cyborg trapped on the roof of the high rise.

Ace sank his claws into the bomber and hung on for dear life as the craft shot straight up at like a bullet, parting the air above with ease. Inside the bomber, Nelson evened out the machine’s flight path and started circling around the monster a few miles in the air.

His intercom came alive with Ace’s voice.

“Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!” he chanted. “You saved my ass back there.”

“You all right?” asked Nelson carefully watching the irate monstrosity.

“I thought I was going to slice right through down to the engine and fall for a second there, but I’m ok.”

“What the hell is that thing?”

“No fucking clue. Never seen one of those before. We’ll need an assist from the destroyer.”

“Yeah... Well... The probe infected the destroyer with a virus so we can’t get it to fire.”

“Nelson, you’re killing me!”

“No. That thing was killing you a second ago.”

Ace growled in frustration, eyeing the giant monster and sinking the razor sharp claws of one hand deeper into the bomber’s hull as his other hand gripped the sword he sank into the bomber almost to its hand guard. The giant raised its huge arm and spread its claws. In the middle of its palm a glowing, pulsating red-orange circle started getting brighter and brighter as it took aim at the bomber.

Watching the giant on his heads up display Nelson tried to think what he could do. The bomber might handle one hit from something like that cannon in the monster’s arm. Two and it would shatter and this monster was taking its sweet time, aiming like a sniper. Leaving the atmosphere now would leave Dot and Christine defenseless and Ace wouldn’t be able to hold on to the bomber at hypersonic speeds for more than a fraction of a second. In fact, if he went any faster than a few hundred miles an hour, Ace would be permanently parted from the flyer, leaving only a mess of blood and metal on the street below.

“Um Ace...” he said. “I can’t stress enough how much we need a little trick from your alien training right about now.”

“I think I have an idea,” came the reply. “But you’re gonna have to give that thing a good, clear shot at us.”

Nelson shook his head. At least they had some kind of a plan. He set course directly for the giant monster’s head. The giant’s glowing palm ignited with a hellish fire that seemed to consume its entire arm in orange-red plasma. It fired a terrifying pulse at the bomber with a primal roar. The recoil from the shot rocked the monster, its torso wobbling on its sturdy tripod leg arrangement.

“Uh... Ace...” worried Nelson.

“Level out the ship,” shouted Ace.

As the bomber hit its perfect balance, Ace released his claws and yanked his sword out of the hull. The nanobots that fused to create a flexible yet strong hull for the craft crated thick stems which secured his feet to the bomber. Holding the sword at his side, Ace started to charge his body to full power, focusing on the incoming fireball that would hit them in just a few seconds.

A huge, glowing red circle appeared between the bomber and the incoming fireball. Red flames began circling the circumference as one more red circle appeared above the shifting runes. Ace’s eye sockets and sensory runes ignited with a blinding red light. His aura erupted, setting the outline of his body on fire. His sword pulsed, the shifting corona around its edges exponentially multiplied.

With a strained roar, Ace unleashed a hyper-charged spiral into the inner circle of what floated in the air between the bomber and the incoming fireball. The floating circles and runes concentrated the energy wave into something vaguely reminiscent of a small star and shot it towards the monster’s energy pulse.

Nelson yanked the bomber up and away. Ace plunged his dark blade and his claws into the hull as not to break his legs during the maneuver. A fraction of a second later, the small red star created by the floating circles and the monster’s fireball collided with a horrific, thunderous explosion. The shockwave shattered windows for miles as the small star plunged into the fireball, spinning the monster’s pulse in the opposite direction, right into the arm cannon from which it came.

The bounced fireball finally accelerated back towards the cannon in the monster’s arm and a split second later, it was there. The entire arm of the monster started emitting beams of orange light in almost every conceivable direction. As the monster roared in pain, its huge arm shattered, throwing it to the side and ramming it right through a small office tower. Somehow, it still managed to keep its balance and stay standing, stumbling back to the center of the street.

Suddenly, there was a bright red light above its head. The brute’s huge head tilted up to see what was going on in the sky above just as the death beam from the main cannon of a destroyer pierced it with a picture perfect strike.

The explosion was so powerful that the sound wave was thrown directly upwards. All that was heard on the street level was an ultra-low pitched “thunk” as the monster’s giant torso dissolved into the red beam of energy and its appendages shattered, spraying shrapnel for almost a mile in every direction. When the beam faded, all that was left of the giant was a puff of orange smoke and black dust.

On the bridge of his destroyer, Steve let out a sigh of relief. His computers got the weapon systems online just in time and his sensors showed that the giant monstrosity he vaporized from space was truly the last wave. It crushed dozens of robotic ground troops and most of the buildings in that district would have to be rebuilt from scratch, but overall, he thought they got off pretty easy that night.

Ace slid to a stop on the ground, kicking up small bits of asphalt and concrete that littered the street. Nelson’s bomber performed a perfect swoop and land maneuver right behind him. The cockpit, shielded by the dark hull, slid open and Nelson jumped out with a triumphant cry. Dot, Christine, and a small group of cyborg soldiers jogged towards them.

“So Ace, why couldn’t you do that trick of yours sooner?” asked Nelson. “You would’ve taken out all the spawns in one hit.”

Ace rolled his eyes and turned to the ladies.

“I can’t hurt a giant monster and he’s mad. I hurt a giant monster and he’s still mad...” he sighed. “There’s just no pleasing that guy!”

“Now seriously Ace, come on,” pleaded Nelson.

“My body can only generate so much power before it has to tap my reserves. I can’t exactly run around blasting things with all the power I can put out just like that. I’ll burn myself out. Besides, all I did was spin the fireball backwards. It’s not like my shot actually threw it back.”

“What were those rings anyway?” asked Christine. “They looked almost like some kind of magic symbol.”

“It’s not magic. Just very old technology from an alien race that left our galaxy a million years ago and left lots of scrolls and other cool stuff for future civilizations to discover.”

Dot patted Ace on the back.

“Good work,” she said. “Now if you can tell us who chopped the good pastor’s congregation into chunky monster stew and planted all those monsters under the city streets, that would be terrific.”

“And what makes you think I know that?”

“I saw the monster flash a name at you but I couldn’t quite make it out. Those two red runes on its forehead... You know...”

“Yeah... that...” Ace looked like a kid who broke a very fragile and very expensive vase and got caught for it by his parents. “I really hate to say this, but the woman who sent this shit our way is... um... How can I put this delicately?”

“Just spit it out,” growled Dot.

“It was Mai.”