Forever Defend Read online

  “That’s just like me, to not ask first!” Bethany Anne huffed. “Darryl, Scott, Eric, cover your sides!” Bethany Anne turned to Stephen. “Support John for a few moments until these things hit.”

  Bethany Anne had no more issued her command when Stephen had rolled over, jumped up, and was over by John, raining hell down from above.

  Bethany Anne smiled as her eyes started to glow and the veins of power branched from her eyes, although the helmet she was wearing held her hair down.

  ---

  Grindlock and Tholt had hit the ground at the right time as another burst of deadly rounds came at them. He could tell one of the two figures up above had a rifle, and while that should mean he was more accurate, Grindlock couldn’t tell any difference between the precision of the two shooters on their side.

  Two.

  “It’s only two damned aliens!” Grindlock turned his head and yelled in frustration to Tholt. “How are the gods going to support us if we can’t take down two aliens?”

  “Maybe because they aren’t Karillians?” Tholt asked as he jerked to his right, bumping into Grindlock when the arm of the Q3 next to him shattered.

  “C’mon!” Grindlock locked his feet down. “They’re just aliens,” He turned to Tholt. “We fill them full of matter, they explode like all of the rest!”

  Grindlock’s exhortation to embolden Tholt was completely wasted, as Tholt was looking up toward the top of the pyramid. Grindlock followed his gaze to see what had caught his attention, and his eyes opened wide. He turned, grabbing Tholt by the shoulder and yanking him hard, pulling them off the side of the pyramid.

  He wasn’t trying to go up, but rather down.

  No alien that could conjure massive red balls of plasma, or whatever that shit was, was anything less than one of the gods.

  Grindlock and Tholt started a small cascade of bodies as they fell more than scrambled down the side of the stone edifice.

  Moments later, the two of them were thrown the last few body lengths off the pyramid when the balls hit those behind them.

  Grindlock was pummeled with body parts and the occasional piece of stone debris for what seemed like forever. Finally, he was able to turn his head toward the pyramid again.

  Tholt looked at him and shouted, “Just what is that damned alien going to do next?”

  “Seven by seven-two,” their communicator squawked. “You have incoming kinetics!”

  Grindlock’s tusks shifted left and right as he ground his teeth. “Next time you have a question, Tholt, keep it to yourself!”

  ---

  Stephen looked at the columns, his eyes opening wide. “Bethany Anne!”

  She stepped away from her sector and out of the line of fire to turn her head toward Stephen. “What?”

  She saw what he was looking at, and her eyes flashed in fear. “HOLY SHIT, FOLKS,” she yelled. “TIME TO LEAVE!”

  She ran for the middle so everyone had to cover the same distance to reach her.

  Everyone left their positions. “Get the lead out, Eric!” Gabrielle yelled as she pulled up her husband, who had been fighting from a prone position.

  They all ran toward Bethany Anne, who hoped she had enough time to do this right.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  QBBS ArchAngel II

  This time ArchAngel wasn’t going to waste any effort being sneaky. She didn’t know enough about these aliens to try.

  But she was going to lay down a colossal amount of firepower and pummel the ship coming through the gate. That was for damned sure.

  ArchAngel didn’t announce her plans because she had been ordered by the Empress to protect the Etheric Empire, which now included the planet beneath them, and she had no lockdown protocols.

  No lockdown protocols? No reason she couldn’t do what she thought was best.

  She had been entrusted by her Empress to keep them safe, and that capital ship that had just come out of the gate was a significant threat.

  “ArchAngel!”

  “Yes, Empress?” she replied, allotting a small percentage of her power to conversing with her liege.

  Bethany Anne was pissed. “Next time you decide kinetics are the answer, make damned sure we didn’t place enough explosives around us to pancake our asses right where you are sending them!”

  ArchAngel devoted additional computational power to the conversation. “Are you ok?”

  “Yes, but almost all of our shit is underneath a fuck-ton of rock. Poor staging and planning on my part.”

  “Do you want air support?”

  “Uh, hell, yeah!” Bethany Anne replied. “Make that happen. We’ve got a lot of angry Leath who are eventually going to get their bombed-out asses up off the ground. How far away are you?”

  “Far and going farther,” ArchAngel replied. “The admiral has been able to keep their air support away from your area, but there are also cities under attack that we haven’t been able to protect.”

  “All right, I’m switching to the admiral. Kick ass.”

  “I always do,” ArchAngel replied.

  ---

  Admiral Thomas was watching the reports coming in from all the war zones when he was interrupted.

  “Admiral Thomas.”

  “Yes ArchAngel?” he asked.

  “This isn’t ArchAngel, this is Bethany Anne,” she replied.

  The admiral looked up and realized that her tag was showing as the caller. “Damn, sorry, Bethany Anne.”

  “No worries, but that shows we have another issue with communications. The after-action report grade is going to suck. To the point,” she asked, “what kind of support can you give us? We seem to have lost our ammunition.”

  “You ran out?” he asked.

  “No, bad communications between ArchAngel and myself. Hell, everyone and myself. We were fighting, and had columns set to blow. Then the kinetics hit. All it took was one explosion for the columns to collapse from the kinetic strike, and the next thing we knew, our ammo was no longer available.”

  “Where are you now?” he asked, pulling up a map of her location.

  “Holed up in some sort of ceremonial entrance at the top of the pyramid.”

  The admiral sent two commands. “I’m sending one of the G’laxix Sphaea-class ships to you.”

  Bethany Anne sighed. “I appreciate that. So long as she’s close enough, we have an exit plan. Now, how about making sure you guys send enough air support that we get all these sonsabitches?”

  The ship rocked, lights turned red. Admiral Thomas looked around to see what had happened to ArchAngel. Fortunately it looked more like cosmetic damage than a reduction of her combat abilities. “I’ll work on that, Bethany Anne. We just had a massive ship come through their gate, and we don’t know how many other ships are behind it.”

  “Fuck it,” Bethany Anne told him. “Send an EI fighter through and have it recon to the best of its ability. Make sure it knows to self-destruct before capture. If it runs low on energy, tell it to find a place to land and power down. We will pick it up when we get there.”

  He didn’t bother asking her what she meant about getting there. They would eventually take the battle to Leath. There was no way this could be every ship they had available. No intelligent species threw everything into a single fight; there was always a home fleet.

  He glanced at a message on his left screen. “ArchAngel heard, and had one of her teams focus on getting her partner through the gate.”

  There was a loud explosion in the background. “Ok, I gotta go. I think the pissed-off neighbors might have figured out where we are.” She broke the connection.

  Black Eagle Team of Fregin / Ricky Bobby

  Captain Julianna Fregin heard the command and bit back her comment. Theirs was not to question, but for her and her wingman to fly the impossible mission.

  Right past that large ship spitting out its own fighters so her EI partner could slip through that gate and do a little nosing around.

  Which meant that she was going
to be unprotected as she tried to fight her way back to ArchAngel.

  Fucking hell.

  “We can do this, Ricky Bobby!” she commed to her EI partner.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to be stuck with the moniker Ricky Bobby for however long this takes!” her EI spat back. “You only won the right to change my call sign last week.”

  The two fighters circled a landing ship that was under attack by a Yollin battleship which looked remarkably like the original design of the first ArchAngel.

  Shit wasn’t going well for the Leath ship.

  Unexpectedly, their little fighters were lit up by the reflection of an explosion. Julianna looked back to see that the Leath capital ship had spared a few moments to attack the battleship, which had gotten too close to it. She pressed her lips together as she surveyed the damage.

  Turning around, she commed, “New plan. Fly by that landing ship and do a strafing run, then circle back to the gate.”

  Ricky Bobby didn’t answer, but she knew the EI had heard her.

  Dodging the incoming fire, the two started at the back of the landing ship and fired at anything that seemed damageable as they streaked to the front and turned back toward the gate.

  And that damned capital ship.

  Leath Ship Deluge

  “What the hell is that thing!” Space Commander Kazakstone ground out as the enemy ship shrugged off enough firepower to destroy cities and returned a hell of a pounding.

  The Deluge was the top of their line, and so far no race had produced anything even remotely close---until now.

  He glanced over to see that his people had seriously hurt a medium-level ship which had come into range.

  “Focus on that capital ship!” he ordered. While it was nice that the ship was damaged, he didn’t want his people forgetting what the real challenge would be.

  That’s when his shields started flaring from thousands, no, tens of thousands, of simultaneous hits.

  What the hell?

  He looked up in time to see the opposing ship starting to glow red at the front, pointing straight at them.

  Then the beam struck the Deluge, and hell became a reality.

  His ship never paid attention to two tiny little fighters which had slipped in behind it.

  Black Eagle Team of Fregin / Ricky Bobby

  “See you on the other side…eventually.” Julianna commed her partner as the two of them snuck behind the huge capital ship. With the massive barrage ArchAngel was providing, that ship didn’t pay any attention to the two fleas.

  Which was good, because the damned gate was armed.

  Twenty-two missiles were fired at the pair, and twenty-one were destroyed. Julianna flew her ship in front of the last one, allowing Ricky Bobby the chance to dart behind her and slip through the gate.

  Now her carefully-laid plan to pull up out of the attack and fly off was fucked.

  The missile had damaged her ability to fly via mind link.

  “Are you telling me,” she pulled her arm out of the matrix link, “that I have to do this the old-fashioned way?”

  Julianna hit two buttons on her screen and slammed her fist to the right. A small hand controller slid up from the side and she grabbed it, twisting it to the right and forward to shove her nose down and to the right, angling away from the gate.

  She used her left hand to touch four more buttons as the thrust pushed her back against the seat.

  She was well away from the two ships pounding each other. Glancing back, she noticed the enemy ship seemed to have a lot more damage than ArchAngel.

  “Good, maybe they will leave pitiful ole manual-control-stick me the hell out of their party.”

  Moments later, a massive explosion rocked the Leath ship. Julianne figured that was the end of that discussion, as ArchAngel had put her metaphorical foot up their ass.

  Planet Karillian / Tournette

  Bethany Anne had been able to get everyone into the Etheric with her before the kinetics hit.

  It took her a few moments to move everyone far enough away that she could look out of the Etheric to see what had happened, and sure enough, where they had been a minute before was gone. A large portion of the pyramid had collapsed.

  Perhaps the kinetics themselves had been too much for the columns, or perhaps their explosives had taken part of it down. It didn’t matter.

  She had made a tactical error by placing all their firepower underneath that much rock. Her thought had been to use it to squash a shitload of Leath.

  She was able to move everyone back to the cave above the pyramid and bring them out of the Etheric.

  Bethany Anne addressed everyone. “Figure out how much ammo you have on you right now, because we don’t have any more.”

  Scott had walked over to the disused-looking container. He turned to Bethany Anne. “Is this the honeypot?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “It’s busy calling them names in seven different common alien tongues. Apparently,” she shrugged, “one of them was enough.”

  There was a commotion near the opening to the cave, so the two of them jogged over to see what was getting everyone’s attention. About half a mile out, there was something, or many somethings, causing the trees to buck and sway.

  By the look of those trees, it was headed their way.

  Bethany Anne turned around and walked back into the cave a little way. “I’ve got to make a call. Let me know if anything happens.”

  The team heard Bethany Anne call ArchAngel as they tried to stay back from the main opening and still see what was coming in their direction.

  “I count four,” Darryl said. “Yes, definitely four.”

  “That sounds a little Rain Man-ish to me,” Eric told him.

  The crashing of the trees at the bottom of the pyramid caused the guys to whistle. Even Stephen.

  Four large tri-pedal mechanical tanks were working their way out of the trees. “Where do they get all those wonderful toys?” Stephen wondered.

  “Definitely four,” Darryl told everyone. “I think I’m going to take a celebratory piss.”

  Scott grinned. “Where are you going to find a place to piss in East Bumblefuck, Karillian?”

  “We can always just aim down, see who can piss the farthest,” John commented.

  All four of the Bitches looked over the edge. Darryl and Scott winked at each other and smiled. Even Stephen stepped to the edge and looked over.

  “Oh no, you don’t!” Gabrielle slapped both Scott and Darryl on the back of their helmets. “We aren’t taking off the armor so you guys can have a distance pissing match!”

  “Holy Chesticle Torch lovers,” Scott griped, holding the back of his helmet. “You didn’t need to beat the shit out of my head, Captain Take-away-all-our-fun!”

  “Oh, fuck,” Eric said. “Time to get away from the opening, folks!” A rocket roared from one of the large tanks. “Head down, Bethany Anne!”

  The explosion hit the side of the opening.

  “I think we have their attention now,” Stephen confirmed, smiling at Bethany Anne.

  She walked to the edge and peeked over. “Wanking jizz-covered barnacle bitches.” Bethany Anne smiled and turned to see everyone staring at her in confusion as she added, “I want one!”

  John shrugged. “They have the only four I know about.” He turned and counted. “Seven of us, four of them. If they aren’t two seaters or better, then I got dibs on the second.”

  “Me three!” Scott called at the same time Darryl did.

  “Well, they are starting to come up here,” Bethany Anne told the group.

  “The walkers?” Stephen asked, stepping up next to her.

  “Nope, the regular units,” she replied. “I really miss all our supplies.”

  Stephen shrugged. “It’s not like we can’t kill them.”

  “Hey,” Gabrielle called. Everyone turned to look at her. She pointed to the shipping container. “Can we use this?”

  “Don’t know why not,” Bethany Anne answ
ered. “I imagine they’ve gotten the message now.”

  ---

  Leath Automation Tank Leader Three reviewed the missile shot. “Ok, reset the missiles to attack into the opening at the top of the pyramid. They should go inside, and the blast will either kill the aliens or push them out so that we can shoot them.”

  “SIR!” The Tank Driver reversed, causing the ATL to fall forward, since he had just disconnected his seat belt.

  “What are you doing?” the leader yelled, but then saw the large container flying down at them. “DODGE!” he screamed, but it didn’t matter.

  It was as if the large container was falling under some sort of control, or flying.

  ---

  “Well, that’s one down, but I still get one,” John commented as they watched the shipping container wipe out one of the tank-looking machines.

  The three others, once they stopped trying to dodge, each released four missiles.

  “That got their attention,” Bethany Anne shouted as they each raced to her and held on. “New tactic. Kill the assholes!”

  The team disappeared moments before seven missiles exploded on the outside of the pyramid and five exploded inside, wiping out the cave.

  ---

  Quarter Military Leader Grindlock and Tholt had moved back from that damned pyramid, and they heard the Automation Tanks push through the trees. “About damned time those assholes showed up.”

  “Let us take the hard shit, then they come and take the glory,” Tholt agreed.

  “Typical,” Grindlock took his helmet off and spat to the side before placing it back on his head. “We at least ran them to ground. They are stuck up on that rock and we will pummel it until they aren’t much more than---”

  He never saw Tholt’s head explode. In fact, he never saw anything ever again after the round punctured his helmet, his brains making a mess inside his suit.

  ---

  “That’s two more dead,” Bethany Anne commed everyone in the group. “They were just jacking their jaws, waiting to have their heads blown off.”

  “Sucks to be them,” Eric replied.