Galaxy of Heroes

Capt. Casey exited the apartment into an empty hallway. Spade was right behind her.

“Go, go, go!” Spade shouted.

She sprinted down the corridor.

Chank burst into the hallway behind them as Capt. Casey and Spade sprinted as hard as they could, sliding to a stop at a door at the end of the hallway.

Capt. Casey opened the door to a stairwell.

“Go up!” Spade said.

They both sprinted up to the next level. Spade flung open the stairwell door.

“Where are we going?” Capt. Casey yelled.

“Follow me!” Spade said. “Stay close!”

Spade sprinted down a corridor. He checked the numbers on the doors that lined both sides of the hallway.

“Here!” he said.

He kicked open a door and pulled Capt. Casey into a dark room.

They heard Sgt. Chank’s huge frame rumble down the hallway past the door.

“Hopefully, he’ll keep going,” Spade whispered.

Capt. Casey flipped on the lights. They were in a cramped storage room. Metal and plastic containers were lined up against the walls. Wires and blinking boxes that were part of a communications node were stacked against one wall. Lockers were lined side by side on the opposite wall.

“Look for a metal container,” Spade said. “Zeth left it in here somewhere.”

“What kind?” Capt. Casey asked. “There are hundreds of containers in here.”

“A metal trunk with Craaldan writing on it,” Spade said. “They took it from my ship.”

“This container?” Capt. Casey asked, pointing out a metal container pushed into a corner. The polished box was about ten feet long. Craaldan script was written across its sides.

“That’s it!” Spade said. “Give me your multi-tool.”

Capt. Casey handed the tool to him. He pried on a latch.

Outside in the corridor, doors crashed open one by one down the hall.

“He’s checking each room,” Capt. Casey said. “He’s getting closer, Jace.”

“I can’t get this damned thing open,” he said.

Capt. Casey examined the narrow room. “There’s no way out of here. If he opens that door, we’re trapped.”

She tried to open some of the lockers. “Maybe there are weapons in here.” She shook the lockers without luck. They were locked shut.

“Got it!” Spade said. He opened the container.

Inside was the mechanized body armor of a Craaldan infantry soldier. Capt. Spade found his M-2 handgun and twirled it on his finger, before sliding it into a pocket on his flight suit. He lifted the sections of the body armor from the container and scrambled to put them on.

The door to the storage room burst open. Chank stepped inside the room with his pistol held at the ready.

Spade stood up and faced him, now fully encased in Craaldan mech armor. A look of surprise crossed Chank’s face on seeing a figure in the black and yellow mechanized armor of a Craaldan warrior and holding a CX-649 weapon system. Chank hesitated. But when he saw Capt. Casey standing behind the armored figure, he instinctively ascertained the situation.

Chank was unarmored, wearing only a breastplate and armed only with a Craaldan pistol. He fired off a shot that bounced off Spade’s armored chest. Then he turned and darted out the door.

The ricochet exploded in a shower of sparks and metal on the servers along the wall.

Spade stepped out into the corridor after Chank, only to catch a slug squarely in the chest. The slug staggered Spade backward, but the armor was not penetrated.

Spade recovered his balance and pulled the trigger of his CX-649 assault rifle, which spewed a volcanic stream of molten metal that ripped the hallway to shreds—stripping away the walls and exposing the infrastructure of the building in a deafening explosion of metal and fire.

Spade ran forward through the burning corridor searching for Chank. He caught a glimpse of the tall alien dashing up the stairwell at the far end of the hallway.

Spade sprinted after him up the stairwell, running up several flights until he came to a door. He kicked it open and emerged onto the roof of the building.

Spade stood on a circular landing pad atop the tallest building on the planet. The sky above was a beautiful pink, smudged in sections where smoke blew across the atmosphere. The oblong Gallos moon glowed faintly high above the purple sea that stretched westward to the horizon. Plumes of billowing smoke were still rising vertically until abruptly streaking eastward in the invisible jet stream.

Spade scanned left and right as he stepped to the center of the landing pad atop this towering skyscraper. Down below the landing pad on the otherwise flat roof were several rows of angled skylights and glass domes. Spade used the armor’s computer and sensors to scan the crannies and corners, seeking a heat signature or signs of motion. But Chank was nowhere to be seen.

“Jace!” Capt. Casey said.

Spade turned to see her jogging across the landing pad toward him. Behind her, Chank burst out the stairwell door armed with a CX-649.

Spade pulled the trigger of his weapon and fired a burst over Capt. Casey’s head. Chank sidestepped the blast, which obliterated the stairwell doorway.

Chank lifted his weapon to his shoulder. A rocket launcher flipped open to the side of the assault rifle. Chank pulled the trigger and a rocket hissed off the launcher propelled by a stream of orange sparks.

The rocket hit Spade center mass and exploded.

Spade flipped through the air and landed on his back on the edge of the landing pad. He was dazed and unable to control his movement. The breastplate of his mechanized armor was ripped open, glowing orange from the heat of the blast. His helmet was cracked open at the faceplate.

Capt. Casey ran up to him. “Jace, are you alive?”

“I thought I told you,” he muttered from inside his cracked helmet.

“I know,” she said. “You’re not the dying type.”

Chank strode across the landing pad toward them. He popped a long bayonet from his gloved fist. The blade zipped out of the sheath on his forearm with a zing. He sliced it through the air from the end of his clenched fist as he strode across the landing pad.

Capt. Casey reached through Spade’s smoldering armor and dug around in his pocket.

Chank broke into a sprint, slashing with his bayonet as he closed in.

Capt. Casey found Spade’s M-2 and stood up. She held it with both hands and took aim. She fired off a shot.

Chank dodged the shot and barreled down toward her. She dropped to a knee and quickly popped off a quick succession of rounds.

Chank dodged the first two rounds as he came up on her. But she calmly readjusted and her third shot caught him square in the face. She stepped to the side as he barreled past. She kept firing, pumping shots into his head, neck and back as he staggered forward.

He fell onto his face with a thud.

Capt. Casey stepped forward, pumping rounds into him. She walked up cautiously and fired several more shots into his head.

Capt. Spade struggled out of his shattered body armor and got to his feet.

“Jeez, Mina,” Spade said. “You make it look easy.”

She looked up at him and wiped a bead of sweat from her furrowed brow. “It’s harder than it looks.”

Above them, sonic booms rumbled across the sky. High up in the atmosphere, several dozen fiery streaks ripped open the pink sky.

Brilliant fireballs raced over the city like a meteor shower, tearing across the sky with a tremendous roar. Capt. Casey and Capt. Spade watched as the fireballs popped and exploded. Black forms shot outward and then slowed with blasts from retro-rockets. The black forms descended onto the mountain ridge to the northeast of the city.

“Craaldan infantry drop,” Spade said. “A brigade, at least. They are taking up a position on the ridgeline.”

“I’ve seen this game before,” Capt. Casey said. “This is how it ends.”

A huge roar filled the sky behind them. A fiery mass streaked downward from space and exploded horizontally at the southern end of the city. The shockwave hit them squarely and knocked them off balance, shaking the Founders Building to its foundation.

A giant wall of fire leaped up and spread outward from the impact point. When the explosion of flame subsided, they could see a giant transport ship that had just crashed onto the surface of the planet on the coastal plain to the south of the city. The rugged craft was inside its own crater, half buried in the ground. Its immense nose cone opened and disgorged a battalion of black battle tanks.

Drones descended from space and crisscrossed the smoky pink sky in a moving net. Human vehicles were fleeing the spaceport, but the drones swarmed them, shooting them down in fiery streaks. Spacecraft continued to rocket upward from the spaceport in a desperate effort to escape, only to explode with quick bursts from the zooming drones. The human vehicles fell and crashed into the mountains with tremendous concussions.

Several large gunship drones took up positions off the coastline, hovering about 100 meters above the water. They began firing pulses at any movement on the water or on the beaches, pulverizing anything that moved.

“They’ve got us boxed in,” Spade said. “Battle tanks to the south and east. Drones overhead and over the water to the west. Infantry to the north.”

“Lt. Zeth said the Craaldan infantry wants bayonet practice,” Capt. Casey said.

“That’s their battle plan,” Spade said. “The infantry will attack from the north and then slice us and dice us, driving us toward the tanks.”