Interzeit: A Space Opera (29 page)

He flips on the external speakers, “Polystratus!” The mechanized voice booms.

The alien looks at him in confusion.

“Why do you interfere?” Nol continues, after his stunned silence he continues, “I know you, you gave me a gift.”

“You’re…” Polystratus begins, “You’re the survivor…Tomson Nol.”

“I fight to protect my home from the invaders Polystratus. I thought we were on the same side?”

“It’s more complicated then that Tomson. The cabinet has deceived everyone!”

In the heat of the moment, the insanity of it all, the relativity of his life, of spacetime, and the macro society, Nol hesitates. His memory runs again and again, something is owed, when something is given. Out of all the taboos broken, he wishes to retain this one, hold back this one thing. This vague concept, this small personal loyalty, of owing ones life wins for the minute. Nol
puts away his emmiter blades.

Septis joins Polystratus on the ground. They leave cautiously, Nol fights the urge to join him. The certainty in his voice was shaking, something about it, he couldn’t know. He wanted to, but he had too much momentum in the other direction. The die was cast, he could not reverse, only freeze and only for a moment, for that stupid single loyalty.

They withdrew to parts unknown, and Nol tries to get ahold of himself. He has little rest as the night sky soon lights up. Lights
,
red, blue and bright white flashing and grow. From the upper atmosphere descending, they have arrived.

The invaders, the saviors, the destroyers, the Martians
,
are landing.

“Hail Iza,” he mumbles to Clara.

She does so quickly, she appears.

“You let him go…” She says weakly,

“His mech is totaled, that’s all that matters.”

“You know that’s not fucking true Nol.”

“Enough!” He yells, “We don’t have time, how’s your positioning?”

A blue pin blinks in his vision, he sees her laying flat on the top deck of a half destroyed bridge.

“How are we going to play this?” He asks, “Have you made contact with any of the other EDF pilots
Iza
?
”

“No, but…there’s only about four of them remaining…I can’t imagine they’re too happy with…well…”

“We have no choice,” he sighs, “Stay hidden,”

“I can-“

“I know you can, but you need to choose the right moment. If we just attack blindly, they’ll annihilate us before they even land.”

He contemplates staring anxious at the twinkling sky, in the brightness, the other stars even the moon has vanished.

“I’ll rendezvous in five, stay put, we’ll move together.”

She nods.

Locating the remaining mech’s sieging the cabinet, he boosts quickly over to them. They do not shoot him on sight, but they posture as much. He opens comms with them all, and begins speaking without even waiting for any confirmation.

“This is Tomson Nol, Pilot of Earth.” They do not respond,

“We need to find a more defendable position, we cannot maintain the siege here.”

Still nothing, then finally,

“Why should we lis
ten to you traitor?” Callsign
EDF
-05 says.

There are rumbles of emotion within the others, rage building within Nol.

“We either unite now, or perish!
Those aren’t stars in that sky! They are ships, soldiers, and mechs, I saw them for myself!
Meet me at these
coordinates, or perish with the rest of the city. Th
e
choice is yours.”

He turns around, creeping slowly towards Iza’s position, not knowing under what microscope like observation their sensors may already have on the surface. The strong bridge creeks under the weigh of his mech, climbing slowly, parts crumble, and he struggles to keep his hold.

Finally he manages to join Iza’s side, laying down flat.

“Good to have company.”
She says

“Yea, can you patch me into the
Tacnet
?”
Nol
asks

She complies, “You know, you haven’t mentioned why they released you.”

He laughs guiltily, “I imagine I won’t be welcome back to the Moon anytime soon Iza, I’m sorry about that, we probably won’t see much of each other after this.”

“A shame” she says hollowly.

A preliminary barrage begins from the sky. Screaming bombs rain down onto the city, exploding into fiery plasma. The reverberation shakes everything, Nol hallucinates screaming. Familiar screaming.

The
now—
only three remaining EDF units rally under the Bridge, deciding to throw their lot in with Iza and Nol. They conceal themselves in the partially boiled away river.

Callsign
EDF
-09 asks, “What do we do?”

“We
wait out
the barrage,” Iza says wheezing, “They won’t kill their main assault forces from the sky, but if we act now…”

“Then we have no chance of survival.” Nol finishes.

Callsign
EDF
-05, “Or victory.”

“We may not have any chance of that, no matter what we do.”
EDF
-11 says
.

They all go quiet, nervously bearing through the atmospheric hell fire. A saturation point is attempted, scattering explosions and lasers throughout the whole city in equal measure. The fires alone run rampant, joining one another, creating unstable fire cyclones that tear through everything in their path. The fire storm is one of the rarest of weather conditions, a morose titan of death.

Large rockets and cannons fire back at the sky suddenly. The drums beat faster and faster, picking up the pace of the counter attack. Explosive masses rip open
,
raining down on them like asteroids. Both sides increase the intensity, munitions colliding in mid air. The drum rolls into a droning hum of constant destruction. The bombardment focuses in on the
planetary
artillery, and the two sides exchange deaths in a more concentrated way.

A cynical wave of relief washes over the assembled war mech pilots. A short respite is like a gift from the divine, an extra few minutes of life,
but
charity unearned perhaps.
Ripping, tearing and destroying, buildings become ruins, ruins become dust, dust blows away to some different fate. The death is palpable in the air, saturated and thick.

They brace themselves locked in their separate mechs, no one has the energy to talk. Nol feels Clara’s presence, melting away, they are closer and closer to one thing as the battle drags on. Her precise and digital calculatory processes run just under his conscious thought. It stirs his thoughts tidally, their force becoming stronger, reproducing itself with its own efficiency.

Attacking and answering his own thoughts, viewing the ships descend, she already calculates their distance, arrival time, size, and approximate mass seconds after such questions are asked. The information clubs him with its potency, a powerful merging occurring with each wave.

He thinks on the others, the three below them. They were together
,
something else entirely, something taken for something given. What fantasy of the real were they trapped in also? How would their training and engineering have affected what they are experiencing? Do they also have names for things that should have no name? Who was their Clara? Nol was paranoid that he was uniquely alone, and insane in this way.

The answer was to
o
distracting to consider in the flashing storm of
leviathan
ships.

Izanami receives a series of signals from Protectorate command. Plaskin relays the newest tactical updates of the invasion. The Lunar fleet, bolstered by two thousand TST drone
ships, was
in process of deploying off world to Earth. She learns to
o
of the fateful incident at the orbital gates. Of the Martian break through, Iza expects herself to feel saddened by the news of Lei. Instead the shock angers her, surging
through her, her patience growing
short
er and shorter
.

She shares the news to the others, such anger spreads to Nol as well. Suddenly the strikes from the sky subside. The ships
glowing brightly in the night,
the sudden
interruption
is far from surrender.

“Here we go,” Someone says ominously.

Large drop ships rocket down from the sky. Earth defense
s
clatter to intercept them. Guns firing, planes flying, but the landers plummet quickly through the array, most slipping through the barrage.

Smashing the ground, the crafts beg
in springing open, pouring forth
with soldiers, drone mechs, and UAVs.

“Iza, give me some cover fire, everyone else, move down the river, and come up from the shore line.”

He says it with cold indifference, no one immediately responds
,
stuck glued into the backdrop by inertia.

Moloch leaps from
cover, boosting headlong into the landing zone. His emitter blades spark up, and get to work, eating through the enemy. His sudden attack spurs the rest into automatic action.

Izanami targets the assembling squads reacting to the attack. A division of soldiers rallies, she rips a incineratory fissure through them, sending them scattering. The ground troops dive for cover, behind landing crafts, into craters, and any obstructive ruin they can find.

Nol glides through them, lighting up the drop ships with the emitters blasting fury. The grey war mechs assembling strike him with an uneasy nostalgia, a deadly nostalgia. He and Clara move relentless, weaving tightly through a increasing hail of counter fire as they all slowly assemble towards crushing him.

Suddenly the
three
EDF
mechs
strike on the flank, covered behind a small beachhead rid
ge, they blast open the unsuspecting war mechs. Their focus broken, Nol pulls them in close, reigning havoc with the emitter blades. Drifting and destroying, he hacks open and disables them by the dozens.

The first wave breaks rank, scattering apart from one another. They are vulnerable, at least in their particular sector of invasion. The pilots capitalize, running in, and slaying the routing soldiers.

More d
rop ships continue to fall, assembling
,
and
the frenetic tide eventually overwhelms them. The Martian troops begin digging into nearby ruins, giving support fire for the continual tide. In the chaos, Clara brings a special item to his attention.

A drop ship two
kilometers to the north lands
with special cargo. Images of the red war mech flash through Nol’s vision. T
he
Deimos
, Clara
tracks its movement through the battle field, while Nol focuses on their immediate survival. Rolling, firing and slashing
,
the fire and force starts peeling off the coloring
in the mech’s hull, revealing
rough gray metal underneath.

Deimos dashes unescorted directly into them, by
-
passing Nol, he strikes at the river, hurtling towards their defenses with suicidal abandon.

“You’ve got company at the river guys.”
Nol
warns

“Yeah, no shit!” one yells.

Deimos leaps over the ridge with its one bladed arm. The green blade flies along with precision and speed.
EDF
-11 and
EDF
-05 are tore to pieces with a quick flurry, their rifles still firing as they explode in high density shrapnel. The remaining EDF mech drops its rifle, lighting its emitter blade.

They clash locking blades.
EDF
-09 tries sweeping its legs, pulling the two mechs close together, tangling with each other, Deimos with only one arm, push
es
its weight with skillful leverage against his opponents guard.

Nol breaks away from the drop zone, to assist, pulling the whole tide of the battle with him. Squads of grey drone mechs trailing behind, firing wildly at his exposed back.

Izanami does her best to provide cover, but several focused attacks and launched against her position, forces her to fight back, or be destroyed.

Forcing his opponent to the ground, Deimos bends
EDF
-09 backwards. The EDF pilot spins out in a panic, jetting to escape from under
Deimos
.

Tracking them perfectly, Kales leaps, diving arm forward, skewering the Mech mid-pivot. The bottom half of the mech crumbles away, pulling the entire thing into two pieces.

Kales blasts
the pieces away, the core of the mech sparking into a fierce blaze.
Nol
leaps in after
him,
Kales’s face appears in his field of view unprompted. It is there and not, pieces
are
missing, transp
arent artifacts removing an eye
and parts of his jaw from view.