Emergence - Chris Harris (beach read .txt) 📗

to calm down but with no avail. Family, friends, children, all potentially doomed on Raan. Tapal was far away from the Sea of Oil, but there were many cities and towns lining the route. A rescue mission should be taking place, but there would be no point; people near the coast could see the flames, looming over them, breaking the barricades that kept the oil out, and tearing into the landscape. He would help, but he had his orders.

Xaos can not be allowed to escape.

“Ilisa, cover me!” Strom yelled into the com, as he veered towards The Dominion.

“Will do.” Ilisa said. “Olaf, do the same.”

“G-gotcha.” Olaf's usual jovial voice was cracked and unrecognisable.

As he neared The Dominion, Ilisa and Olaf laid down fire upon the Reapers surrounding it, staying just behind Strom in a triangular formation. Strom fired on The Dominion, punching small holes in the ship's hull. Concentrating his fire on one area, he felt a warm satisfaction when a few Xaosians were sucked out into the vacuum of space, but it was only a shallow distraction. His chest felt constricted and his forehead slick with sweat, and neither had anything to do with his strike on The Dominion.

The flagship's engines glowed orange, before it started to move. “Xaos is fleeing!” yelled one of the other pilots over the ship's com. As The Dominion sped up, Strom tried to follow, the Stinger's engines being pushed to the limit as he did so, before The Dominion activated it L-Drive and disappeared into the depths of space, leaving only Reapers behind.

“Let's ge' back to the ground.” Strom said to Ilisa and Olaf. “I imagine they could use all the help they can ge'.”

Strom turned the Stinger around and shot back down towards Tapal. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the flames from the Sea of Oil engulf the coast, presumably destroying coastal towns such as Grist and Jheak. He forced himself to look away. “Strom!” Olaf yelled, “We got Reapers on our tail!”

Something hit Strom's ship, and he knew Olaf was right. Going in to a barrel roll, he avoided more of the Reapers' attacks. As he rolled to the left, he cast his gaze back and saw the two Reapers, each firing from the chain-gun on their nosecone. The nail-like bullet in Strom's Stinger exploded, taking out one of his thrusters;only four left now. The screen blinked a brief warning before Strom slapped it, swiftly dismissing it. “Olaf, Ilisa, how are you faring?”

“One wing's been taken out!” Ilisa shouted quickly; panicked. “I've got it under control for now though.”

“They've split up now,” Olaf said, the slight waver in his voice suggested to Strom that he was trying to keep a level tone. “One's following Strom, and the other...I think we've lost it!” Strom could imagine Olaf's smile at that point.

“That's great, just one to worry about.”

“Olaf, the other Reaper's behind you!” Strom heard Ilisa yell, a sense of desperation pouring off of her voice.

“Damn!” came Olaf's reply. Strom veered the Stinger around as Olaf continued, “They taken out a thruster...two thrusters, they're right on me, I can't get around them!” Strom saw the Reaper carefully storming after Olaf; it was a good pilot. Strom locked the Reaper in his sights and fired on it, but the pilot did a barrel roll as they it on Olaf. One bullet took out another thruster, another the right wing.

The final pierced the cockpit, draining the air out of it, before it exploded, launching Olaf into space. Strom pushed the Stinger's four remaining thrusters to the maximum for what seemed like an age, his heart beating against his chest as if it, too, wanted to save Olaf faster than he could. His fists were clenched, but he didn't notice as his nails bit into his skin. It was mere seconds before he got to Olaf, but Strom knew that it had taken a lifetime as soon as he saw Olaf's body; the bullet had punched a hole through his chest. Throwing on his spacesuit, he got out of the cockpit and, with tears in his eyes, cradled his best friend. “Olaf!” he called, but no-one could hear.

Olaf smiled at Strom briefly, before his eyes closed forever.

Chapter 11: Tors

The bottom-most floor of the house was rather bland, Tors thought. There was nothing on the whitewashed walls that could be seen as decoration, only a sheet of mould above Pandora's screen; obviously caused by the damp in the air. Winds continued to buffet outside, illustrated by the few remaining signs and trees pointing the wind forward. The rain had subsided slightly, or at least, Tors thought it had; the pounding on the windows was not as loud as it was before.

“Rain's easing a bit now.” Tors turned to the others and gave them a half-hearted smile; their house was almost levelled now and they all knew that if the winds got any worse, the house would cease to exist. Acknowledging his smile, Pandora raised her eyebrows and gave a brief nod whilst comforting her hair; it felt her fear. Emola stood at the screen, trying to turn it on but to no avail. “It's not turning on, Emola.”

“God dammit all!” Emola's scales flashed briefly to a darker blue and he kicked the base of the screen. Tors heard his one of his toes crack as it met the base and Emola winced and grimaced. “Power's out still.”

“Course it is,” Pandora muttered. The power had been out for about an hour now, shortly after the two higher levels were destroyed. “No-one to fix it.”

Emola looked round at her and fixed her with a scathing look. “Don't be sarcastic with me.”

“Why? It was obvious it wasn't going to work.” Pandora rose from her chair, hair bristling as if it was challenging Emola.

Emola sighed. “Yeah...”

Pandora sat back down, and her hair wrapped itself around her chest. “Why did I come here?”

“I don't know,” Tors said non-committally, “Something history based?”

“I could have gone anywhere else,” Tors did not know if she had heard him, or if she was even listened him. “But instead I find myself on a dying world, just to see a glimpse of Adjeti technology. And all it was was the wrecked engine of the world-burner! Nothing interesting! I expected satellites, weapons...”

She continued for a while more, but Tors had stopped listening by that point and he wondered over to the window. He watched the winds whip up everything on the ground and throw it into a whirlwind which powered through the streets, growing larger and larger as it went. Tors watched it in silence as took down a street-light and picked that up too, swinging it like a club at any victims it could find. But there was no-one outside. There never was anymore. People would rather starve than risk the wind and rain.

The twister of debris stopped abruptly and dropped to the ground with a clatter. The street-light landed on its base, before it teetered briefly and fell with a clang. The few remaining trees fell back to a resting position and the windows stopped rattling. Silence.

“The wind's stopped.” Tors observed. “Odd.”

Emola and Pandora approached the window and checked that Tors was right. “Huh.” Emola said, “All it needed was your moaning!”

Pandora reluctantly smiled at the jibe. “Shut up, you.”

Emola smiled back, and Tors could see a sparkle in his eyes and a brief paling in his scales as he looked at her. Emola dragged his eyes away and looked out of the window again, craning his neck so as to look at everything. Naarl's house was still ruined, but most of it was scattered through the street. Tors was not upset with the old man's demise; he had already gone through that anguish a thousand times as everyone he knew was slowly killed by the storms.

“Tors!”

Tors turned to Emola, who was tugging on his shirt and looked terrified. Pandora also looked over abruptly. “Over there,” Emola pointed over to where another house stood, mostly intact. Tors could see the outlines of the inhabitants moving inside. “What is that?”

Next to the house was swirling green whirlwind, similar to the one which had been carrying the debris. It moved closer until it reached the middle of the street. It was then when they realised that this was not a natural phenomenon; as they watched, the winds unfurled into a serpentine form comprised entirely of the green, always moving gas. Tors stepped away from the window, and so did the others. “The hell is that?” Emola seemed breathless; presumably out of fear, Tors dared not look away from the creature just to check Emola's scales. He knew that his own would be the darkest they had ever been.

The gas at one end of the entity shifted itself into an ovoid shape and Tors saw something bright red within it; an eye perhaps? The ovoid opened into four pieces and let out a scream that echoed around the street, bounding off of the walls. It was impossible to aptly describe what it sounded like, but Tors knew what it felt like; pure fear injected into his ears, complete with the pain.

“We're going to die, aren't we?” Emola's question remained unanswered as the creature's head closed up again.

The red light from inside the creature's head seemed to scan everything around it, before it faded again and the creature disappeared. Tors let out a sigh of relief and the tension in the room was shattered.

In their rush to comfort each other, neither Emola nor Pandora noticed that the winds began to pummel the street as soon as the creature disappeared.

Chapter 12: Strom

“Olaf?” Strom slapped his face but Olaf could not respond. Ilisa floated next to Strom now and was cradling her brother's head in her hands, stroking his hair with shaking hands. “No.” Strom breathed the word as he ran his scanner over Olaf's body once more; still no pulse.

“Help me get him to my ship,” Ilisa's voice seemed thicker than normal, all vitality drained from it. “I have a reviver pack there.”

In the anti-gravity of space, Olaf weighed nothing, but the logistics of moving a limp object in three dimensions was never simple. Eventually, they carefully placed Olaf in Ilisa's cockpit; for a moment he looked peaceful, like he was sleeping. Ilisa sealed the cockpit and removed her helmet, before heading to the back of the small craft, taking care not to lean on Olaf; difficult in the small space of the Stinger. Strom took