— Chase? Chase! FUCK, WAKE UP CHASE! — Gora shook Chase hard. He didn’t budge, only slumped off the horn.
— What is happening? Is he okay? — Lalene leaned forward from the back seat.
— Stay back, ma’am. — Gora extended a hand towards her. And gave up on shaking Chase. She popped open the panel at the back of his neck and flipped the manual override, nothing. — Shit. He’s completely off… — she tried turning the car on again, but the car didn’t respond. — … This is bad, bad, bad…
— Talk to us, dammit! What the hell is happening? — the man behind her seat pushed and shook it up.
— … Fine! We are cooked, is what happened. An EMP must have disabled all electronics in the whole state area. — Gora bursted out and unlatched her seatbelt.
— An EMP? What-
— Doesn’t matter. We need to leave the city, now! Because-
Suddenly a damp and dry crack roared from all directions, deafening fading and echoing in between the buildings like a roaring thunder as nearly every window shattered and cracked, as a faint orange light glowed from beyond the clouds. Both the man and Lalene covered the children as the windows cracked and the car got rained on by glass.
— Everyone okay? — Gora checked on them. — I’m glad I never got any implants.
— My left eye’s gone! I can’t see! — the man groaned, clutching his face.
— We can get you a doctor and find a new eye at the camp. I need someone to help me ditch Chase. We can’t afford to wait for him to reboot, that is, if he’s still with us. — Gora left the car and opened the back door. — Grab what you need, we move now.
Gora hurried Lalene and the man off the van, looking around over the front and behind the vehicle. She grunted and pressed her helmet controls trying to restart it, finally giving up and throwing it away. She wiped her face with a sleeve, forcing herself to focus. With a grunt, she pulled down her combat skin, letting her ears and feathers puff free in the cold air.
— Can you shoot? — she walked to the man holding the little girl.
— Uh, I’m a linguistics major. — excused the man covering his malfunctioning synth eye.
— I did hunting lessons with my ex-husband. — Lalene stepped forward.
— Good enough. Standard issue rifle. — Gora pushed the rifle to her. — stay behind me.
— … Lift, pull, hold, slide, switch. — Lalene scanned the weapon with her hands and muttered as she readied it.
[SOUND OF DISTANT GUNFIRE, FAINT SIRENS. WIND HOWLS THROUGH BROKEN STREET]
The city was a different kind of quiet now. A dead quiet, broken by things that didn’t sound like sirens or people. The kind of quiet that felt heavy, like a blanket smothering the world. The only light came from above, that ugly orange glow behind the clouds, and from the distant fires reflecting off the bottom of the smoke layer. Street signs were dark. Building lights were out. The world had been unplugged.
Gora led, her head on a swivel, ears twitching at every distant crack and thud. She wasn't looking for street names anymore. She was looking for shapes, for movement, for the silhouette of a landmark tower against the hell-glow.
— We need to find a metro entrance. Get underground. — Gora’s voice was low, cutting through the silence she herself had imposed. — It’s a straight shot. Less eyes on us.
[SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS ON GLASS AND DEBRIS. KALENE WHIMPERS SOFTLY]
— Shhh, baby, it’s okay. — Lalene’s whisper was strained, her grip tight on the rifle, her other hand pulling Kalene closer. Favo followed, his piece of scrap metal held like a talisman.
A few blocks over, the silence broke. Not with random noise, but with the organized, terrifying sound of a real fight. The staccato pop of rifles, the heavier thump of something else. And a sound they hadn’t heard before, a high-pitched, shrieking whine of energy weapons. Gora held up a fist. They froze in the shadow of a collapsed bus shelter.
— Wait here. — she hissed, and darted to the corner of a building, peeking around.
[SOUND OF INTENSE FIREFIGHT GROWS LOUDER]
Lalene risked a look. Down the wide avenue, an army squad was pinned behind the smoldering wreck of a… thing. A hemispherical craft, maybe ten patas across, lay crumpled against a fountain. It was scarred and smoking, but a hatch was open, and from it, the invaders poured out.
They were a nightmare of standardized design. All clad in the same sleek, dark armor and battleskin, marked with unfamiliar, sharp-angled symbols that glowed faintly in the gloom. But the bodies underneath were all wrong.
Most of them, maybe half, were bipedal, humanoid. Their movements under the armor were jarringly familiar, but their precision was alien, coordinated. They moved like parts of a single machine.
Among them, things that stood on two thick legs but ran on four limbs, their armored backs bristling with tentacles that uncurled to fire weapons or drag wounded comrades back with brutal efficiency. A heavier one, a brute nearly bursting out of its standardized plating, hefted a cannon that thumped with a deeper, more resonant shriek. Its bolt hit an army barricade, and a section of it didn’t just shatter. It boiled away in a cloud of vapor and molten stone, the shrapnel sizzling through the air.
The air itself was being torn apart by their weapons. Every shot was a rising, piercing SCREECH, like a steam-kettle pushed to its breaking point. That ended in a wet, fizzling CRACK as it vaporized flesh, metal, and concrete. The smell was ozone, cooked meat, and hot stone.
— They’re… people? — Lalene whispered, horrified, her eyes fixed on the humanoid forms.
— Don’t know. Don’t care. They’re shooting. — Gora muttered, pulling back. — We go around. Now.
But before they could move, a new sound emerged. A chittering, skittering wave of noise from the side streets. A flood of the smaller, multi-legged fauna poured into the intersection. They didn’t care about sides. They swarmed over the army position. They clambered over the downed saucer. The neat lines of the firefight dissolved into a melee of screams, alien shrieks, and the wet sounds of close-quarters death.
One of the armored humanoids turned its weapon on the swarm, the screech of its bolt drowning out the fauna's clicks. It burned through three of the creatures before a larger beast, a hulking thing with exposed, glistening muscle fused to rust-colored metal plates, barreled into it, crushing the invader against the saucer's hull.
— They’re fighting each other? — Favo breathed, his eyes wide.
— They don’t care, — Gora said, her voice grim with understanding. She’d seen it. In the chaos, she saw one of the invaders. Its helmet was cracked, and the face underneath, the face was hoku.
Their eyes focused on the heat of the firefight a moment earlier, suddenly turning to her. Their rectangular pupils sharpened, as if having a split second of conscience before turning back to its energy rifle, reloading it quickly.
— They just don’t care. Move! Back this way!
She shoved them back, toward a set of stairs leading down into darkness, a metro entrance. As they stumbled down the first few steps, Gora’s eyes locked on a body sprawled near the curb. An army regular. A grenade belt, still full, was strapped to their chest.
— Shit. — she spat. — Get down there! Don’t stop!
— Where are you going?! — Lalene cried.
But Gora was already moving, low and fast, back out into the open. She sprinted, a crouched shadow, toward the corpse as the chaos of the three-way battle raged fifty patas away. She grabbed the belt, yanking it free. A clawed limb smashed down where her hand had been a second before. She didn’t look back. She just ran, hurling herself down the metro stairs as a red energy bolt seared the wall above her head.
She landed hard at the bottom, breathing in ragged gasps. The grenade belt clattered on the tile floor beside her.
In the dim light filtering from the street, five pairs of eyes stared back at her.
— Let’s go, — Gora panted, scooping up the belt. — And don’t touch the rails.
