“If we’re going to go out, might as well go out with a bang, Usk!” Teeth biting lip, Miko worked the controls as they came coursing up over the looming attack Orb. A host of locust aphid defense fighters dogged their tail, firing beams wantonly.
Deafening booms wracked the hull. Their shields got pounded, pitching to 40% integrity. Star wailed, the whites of her eyes a testament of her fear. All awaited sudden death only seconds away.
Orbs came streaming in from all quarters to surround them, like an eerie array of dark magnets. Miko and Usk lay into them with fore and aft cannon. Return fire knocked their hull, blasting shields to dangerous levels, but not before Usk sent a series of well-timed blasts into the hulls of a locust team leader and two flanking Orbs. The ships burned red then burst into doomed flames.
Usk gave a chirrup of triumph.
Shortlived triumph.
The dire tug of something oppressive gripped their starboard vanes. A tractor beam. The invisible magnetrons gnawed at their glowing hot fuselage and dragged them toward the massive spiked Orb flagship. A jagged landing portal opened. Saw-edged flanks swallowed them up, like the jaws of a giant steel trap.
They were going to take them alive.
Chapter 19
Yul had lost track of Miko as he swept planetside. Nausea pooled in the pit of his gut. A bad feeling grew. All paths and possibilities on this coaster ride seemed to lead to a predetermined outcome.
“I hate just sitting here,” grumbled Cloye.
“Yeah, you and me both. But what else is there? Break formation and waste ourselves like Miko? We contacted NOA. If they get themselves together, our job’s done. We can contrive to escape.”
“Where are those fuckers anyways?”
“We just contacted them,” sighed Yul.
“Don’t they have reserves somewhere nearby?”
“Why would they? Look at our location, Cloye, a stone’s throw away from The Dim Zone.”
The swarm of alien ships entered the atmosphere over the polar ice cap then spread out across the doomed planet. Yul’s wing headed for the foremost continent due south which showed as a brown mass in an illimitable ocean of green. Two other wings split to converge on the remaining continents and their plump cities.
The five thousand enemy ships surged in as one: the fiercest locust swarm in the history of the galaxy. The intent, to take the cities one by one.
The capital, Gibras, loomed up Yul’s sight: sky towers, ore refineries, parks and monuments. He gripped the controls, refusing to believe this holocaust was in progress. Skyscrapers and executive buildings, air rail and tram skyways, outlined on the pale saffron horizon. It was a lazy afternoon, and the unsuspecting targets went about their daily business.
The Mentera ships skimmed above the clouds then glided down in S-shaped units, a dark menace hovering above the air cars in the streets, unleashing stun rays on the bewildered and panicking citizens. Convoys landed to discharge Mentera troops to hunt down and capture live human specimens. The giant Mentera slaver ships hung in the cloudy air above like great bloated zeppelins, waiting for their moments to descend and collect their mass prizes.
The hollow pit in Yul’s stomach grew. He gaped in dismay as the ships unleashed their respective horrors. Miko was lost, Fenli had bailed. Now his ship skimmed the main boulevard with the rest of the horde. His fingers worked the holo pad, firing forward cannon aimlessly, hoping to keep up the illusion of an invader. Apparently their mission was to eliminate ground resistance while scouts and raider craft dropped to secure hapless human victims and transport them to their wide-bodied slaver ships.
Central control gave orders in a spate of bug-speak. Navigation had been given back to the lightfighters; now they could maneuver through the streets and conduct their grisly guerrilla warfare and ship-to-ship combat that was the logical next step. Yul’s ship swept across the panic-stricken masses in the streets. His metal fingers tightened in dismay as white fire lashed out at the hull. The mantis ship rocked and shield levels dipped as Quenrix air guard defense fired back at the invading aliens. But this local resistance, too few in numbers, though valiant to the core, was shot down in smoldering heaps upon the teeming streets below.
“Change fire to light payloads,” Yul hissed. “Miss as many of the locals as you can, Cloye. We need to keep up the pretense we’re part of the fleet—otherwise that’ll be us smoking on the ground.”
She fired round after round from the rear cannons as close to the fleeing citizens as she dared.
Wholesale slavery. Yul cringed at the subjugation of a nation. While the spiked Orbs hovered far above the clouds like undersea mines, the Mentera lightfighters and slavers did their dirty work on the ground. Local resistance ships were tractored in or destroyed. Crews and pilots forced into slave holds. The great Mentera slave vessels at last made their way landward and Quenrixian citizens by the hundreds were herded into waiting raider craft. A gargantuan hulk, the shape of a massive blue zeppelin, descended in a central park adjoining a public square. It crushed old manicured trees and service buildings under its landing struts and infathomable weight. Mentera raiders in grey space suits spread out to capture the panicked civilians and cull any armed resistance. Several collectors, or aphid-shaped vessels, landed amidst the ruins, unleashing green stun fire. Scout-raiders. More grey-suited figures piled out and scuttled to snatch fleeing humans and bring them to the smaller vessels or directly to a slaver craft, whichever was closer.
Yul watched in helpless frustration. Unable to take direct action except to keep up with the pack, he lagged further and further behind the horde that swept through the streets. Cloye, working weapons grid, misfired and shot down locusts collecting victims.
Angry bug chatter rang out
