Chariot 3: Conception

The crew watched the noticeable curvature of the planet decrease at the pace Chariot 3 rapidly approached the Earthian atmosphere. The contrast of the continent below and the water surrounding it diminished as the space disc moved closer towards the land.

Once Chariot 3 disappeared through the first clouds, Shoffer changed the flight course due west and kept following the planet`s contour at top speed.

After finally having flown over nearly half of the planet, Chariot 3 suddenly stopped in midair, disguised within the clouds.

The bright sun shined on East behind the Nibirian ship. A few rays of light transcended the clouds and reflected on the dark polished gray disc.

“Sissy, have we been followed?” Shoffer strove to project a calm tone in his voice. Unsuccessful, the amount of stress he carried on his shoulders was perceptibly clear, especially for Sissy.

The pheromones emanated by his tension were sensed by Chariot 3 and could almost be smelt by the others. At that moment, his suffocating silence once again took over the bridge.

The few rays of light behind them were momentarily extinguished as the ship became completely immersed into the clouds that surrounded her.

They would have felt the time stopping if not by the ongoing flow of clouds that were being blown by the breeze coming from the West.

Cai Yiu, Flumen and V-Nus had nothing much to fulfill their eyes other than observing the simplistic beauty of the cotton looking wall floating on the outside.

The answer for his question seemed to be taking forever. Hopeful for a negative reply, Shoffer closed his eyes and waited. He then took a deep breath and wet his lips just before biting them again.

“Affirmative” she finally answered.

Shoffer opened his eyes shocked with her unemotional reply. She was cold, colder than he would ever be, he hoped.

“Did she just say affirmative?” He asked himself, wishing that somehow he had heard it wrong.

“All, prepare to fight. Cai Yiu, deploy the spherical probes!”

“I do not see any enemy. In fact I cannot see anything at all…”

Flumen had his eyes immersed on the clouds, watching them slowly moving away pushed by the air current. The first rays of the revitalizing light shined one more time and he could then look down through the first fissures among the clouds.

His curious eyes were delighted, slowly browsing the surface of the land, far underneath. Flumen first saw a variety of plantations one next to the other, a long wall that lid to a big wooden gate and behind it, constructions that looked so small at the distance, “houses”, side by side, a couple of towers, “a temple perhaps”, people walking. “A…city!” is what he was looking at.

Flumen projected a contented smile. What his eyes saw was all anciently new for him.

From right to left, his eyes kept on scanning what was there to be seen. His expectations increased at the pace the remaining clouds cleared up and he turned his neck craving for more to be seen.

And more he saw.

As the very last cloud set apart from them, Flumen spotted what they were missing.

A blinding light reflected on his murky eyes. Flumen saw the annihilating light beam discharged by a Grey scouter coming on their encounter.

He wanted to react, but he could not. He lost his speech, his movement, his sight.

His faith was shuttered. So much was lost in just a fraction of seconds.

But not his life.

V-Nus was alert. He evaded the light beam at the exact moment before the impact.

The other six enemy scouters arrived right behind their leader standing in a well-trained formation.

The ultimate battle was about to start. The battle between the good and the evil.

Controlled by Shoffer and V-Nus, Chariot 3 suddenly accelerated, went higher in the sky and passed over the formation of Grey scouters.

With a quick gesture by both his hands, Cai Yiu released the spherical probes simultaneously.

The three brilliant spheres moved towards similar directions while the Grey pilots watched them approaching their crafts from above. The most skillful one accelerated on a straight line right after his superior went after Chariot 3.

The dodged probe then followed them at same speed and so did another four scouters behind.

Unfamiliar with the magnitude of the Nibirian technology, two of the scouters remained behind and with curiosity watched two of the spheres approaching them. By the time they realized the greatness of the threat that they were about to face, the spheres became as close to their craft as the crew onboard was close to each other.

Two of the spheres penetrated on each one of their targets through the roof and exited through their hulls. Fragments of the crafts were thrown in the air along with a portion of one of the seats and part of its pilot still attached to it.

The two scouters accelerated, using the remaining power they had been left with, on an attempt to perform a frenetic escape, leaving behind nothing but a trace of smoke and a falling wave of debris.

While the Greys spoke with each other with an eerie and frenetic tone, the refrigerating system turned itself on, extinguishing the fire that started. Coughing, one of the pilots at the front agitated his burnt hand in an attempt to get rid of the pain and dissipate the remaining smoke from the cockpit.

The inexorable spheres that continued to fly behind the two scouters carried on another attack.

The Greys unsuccessfully tried their best to lead the probes astray. Far from being fast enough, the spheres reached the crafts close enough to fly side by side with each of their opponents, and in synchrony, they both attacked at the same time.

They hit the wing of the scouters and bounced back in the air, deflected by the high speed.

They clashed again and again, re-bouncing at each time.

Despite the vibration and loss of stability, both the enemy scouters executed a radical turn, each on a different direction in an ultimate quest for survival.

One scouter ascended with its bow pointing the sky and the other descended towards the land, using the gravity on its favor.

The enemy crafts were fast but so were the spherical probes that rapidly reached, unleashing an immediate offensive.

The sphere bounced back from its impact, and then moved slowly on a particularly assertive way. The crew on the scouter rising into the skies watched the sphere achieve an incandescent red and then as if they stopped in time, they watched the sphere slowly penetrating into their cockpit, inch by inch.

There was nothing else that could be done. The probe conducted its final strike. The incandescent ball of metal entered the cockpit of the Grey craft, melting its surface without any resistance.

The Grey on the middle seat felt the increasing heat against his back.

He yelled “Ahhhh” as Chariot 3`s landing gear penetrated his back and moved forward through his chest.

After dooming the other occupants with similar destiny, the sphere went out through the front of the craft and followed its way to defend Chariot 3.

Disorientated, the craft started to spin and decelerated. Defeated, it sublimely stopped in the air for a short instant and then, in a wave of fragments, it dove from the skies.

Thousands of feet below, the citizens of the city under the aerial battle field watched the falling debris, clueless of what was happening.

On the descending scouter, meters below, its pilot kept on flying it towards the ground, hoping for a better fate than the allies falling behind.

Asked by the pilot, the two Greys that were positioned at the back seat of the stingray shaped craft confirmed that the mysterious enemy weapon was still on their tale. “Shoot it down!” he ordered.

The hatches on the sides of the craft slid to the rear side of the wings. The two canons extended out of it, and at once, they discharged against the spherical device.

The two well-aimed streams of light hit their target steadily for a couple of seconds.

Once the canons switched off, the Greys looked at the sphere with a sad disappointment.

Completely unaffected, the sphere achieved a dark purple color, mimicking the color of its enemy`s beam until it reached the same level of brightness, and at that moment discharged a beam of identical likeness against the defenseless craft.

The light stream crossed the craft all the way from stern to bow, pulverizing everything on its way.

Spared, the fortunate pilot who sneaked into the side, felt the immediate nausea caused by the disgusting smell of the burnt flesh of his co-pilot, still singeing next to him.

Once he managed to get back to what was left of his seat, he placed his left hand on the fried panel to sadly discover that it was no longer of any use.

He punched the panel with anger and raised his eyes to the sudden image of a plantation growing on the Earthian ground in front of him. The scrambling of his incomprehensible words was followed by the inevitable impact.

His instant death followed the loud explosion heard by all the citizens in the surroundings of the city of Nuremberg who watched the dark smoke stain their skies with curiosity.

In the meantime, Shoffer and V-Nus did the possible and the impossible to deviate from the continuous wave of beams coming from the five remaining crafts that were still after them, in a series of synchronized moves, as if they were all being flown by one unique pilot.

“Sir, we have been engaged by all the five enemy crafts. I am afraid I am unable to calculate an evasive action.” Chariot 3`s top of the edge technology was overcome by the quantity.