B00BKLL1XI EBOK (9 page)

His sword cut the would be assassin in half and before the its severed torso fell to the ground, he had already turned to the rest of the alien bugs, holding his blade in at the ready. Blue-green blood dripped from the tip of his katana.

The enraged Rexx screeched and went on the attack. At that instant, the ground forces of the Nation standing behind Ace erupted with laser and energy pulse fire. The swift, nimble OctoBots jumped around the Rexx battalion, slicing through the aliens with their red lasers. The powerful walkers known as Siege Machines sent out huge pulses which threw dozens of insectoids in the air with every hit. Meanwhile, the race car-fast rovers zipped around delivering red-hot energy pulses that pulverized the Rexx. In the midst of the writhing, agitated aliens, Ace warped in and out of view, slicing through every bug in his way. He moved so fast, he was almost invisible to the invaders who fought to protect the huge skeleton behind them.

To clear out a path for himself, Ace warped back into view in front of an entire corridor of Rexx blocking access to the cube that contained 0673UD. He ignited his sword’s aura and with a slash unleashed a red, spiraling shockwave of raw energy that shredded the alien insects, vaporizing parts of their bodies.

From space, a destroyer fired its main cannon into a Rexx squad, vaporizing the aliens and leaving a small, shallow crater in the ground. On the right flank of the alien battalion, Dot was making short work of a squad in her way with her machine gun. She moved almost as fast as Ace, and warping in and out of focus, she kept the Rexx confused and disoriented. A fraction of a second after they would lose track of her, she would reappear and unleash a stream of conical bullets that tore the Rexx around her to shreds. When she finally ran out of ammo, she switched to her own sword, wielding it every bit as deftly as Ace. Dozens of other cyborgs laid down cover fire for their commanders from higher ground.

Just as the Rexx were on their last legs, the huge blue cube they were defending began to quake. 0673UD’s eyes lit up with a green glow and with one motion, he shattered the cube, sending its bits and pieces flying for hundreds of yards. A few of the pieces were launched towards Ace, who vaporized them in midair with a sweeping energy wave.

0673UD roared and stepped towards the cyborgs and their machines, crushing a Rexx that didn’t get out of the way quickly enough with his huge feet. He made his way through the battlefield towards Ace and stopped. The Nation’s ground machines seized fire and moved back, receiving an order from the cyborgs. They were of little use against 0673UD. The Rexx were no longer a threat as they lay dead and dying.

The alien skeleton locked eyes with Ace. He spoke in a loud, booming voice that had an inhuman coarseness to it, as if vocal cords somewhere within him turned to rusty hinges eons ago.

“Ace,” confirmed 0673UD.

“That would be me,” replied Ace.

The green glow of 0673UD’s eyes intensified as he flexed his absurdly long claws. His legs dug into the ground and he titled forward, arms out and parted like a giant mutated sumo wrestler raised from the grave. The cyborg in front of him firmly squeezed the handle of his sword. They stared each other down, waiting to see who would be the first to strike.

With surprising speed, 0673UD lunged forward. His claws smashed through the rocks where Ace used to stand a few fractions of a second ago. Ace warped back into focus just a few yards away.

“That’s it?” Ace scoffed.

In reply, 0673UD tried to smash Ace again and again, but every time his claw carved deep into the rocks, Ace was long gone. When the alien skeleton brought his claws down for the sixth time, Ace jumped up to the level of 0673UD’s chest and let out a fierce shockwave which rocked the monster’s body, forcing him to take a step back.

Ace landed with disappointment written all over his face. 0673UD’s bulky frame was far too sturdy to fall back from just one shockwave. The monster quickly regained his balance and breathed out a green fireball at the cyborg. As Ace cut through the fireball with his energy wave, a powerful blast sent him flying backwards. He had to use his sword as a brake, digging it deep into the ground to slide to a stop a few dozen yards away.

0673UD set his claw ablaze and swiped at Ace’s side. As his sharp, bony appendage traveled towards Ace, the cyborg’s sword pulsed and the red aura around its edges intensified tenfold. Ace closed his eyes and threw out his hand.

0673UD’s claw smashed into Ace with the force of a freight train at full speed, generating a powerful gust of wind. A wave of dust and rocks hit the side of the valley. As the cloud faded away and 0673UD could make out what happened, Ace opened his eyes. His entire sockets were glowing bright red. A red aura shone around his body, shifting like the corona of a star. Ace was at full power. His arm withstood the full brunt of 0673UD’s swipe, holding back the living skeleton’s claws though the impact shoved him almost twenty feet sideways and left a deep groove in the ground.

He warped out of view and returned into focus a second later. With a flick of his blade, he sent out a powerful wave of energy that vaporized 0673UD’s leg, knocking the giant, living skeleton off balance. As 0673UD fell forward, Ace sent out another wave that pushed him back. The monster smashed into the rocks behind him, eyeing Ace with surprise and rage.

Ace held out his sword, pointing it at 0673UD. He jumped, warping out of focus, reappearing in front of the alien monster, his sword held high above his head, ready to swing down on the giant living skeleton like the axe of an executioner on the neck of the condemned. The monster raised his giant claws to defend himself but it was too late.

A blinding red light shot out of the valley as with an unholy roar of sheer terror, 0673UD shattered and exploded, sending out bursts of red smoke as the torn bits of his body were pushed away from the hypocenter of the blast. As 0673UD was torn apart, a transparent shockwave radiated outwards, cracking the huge rocks that lined the valley and setting the shields of the Nation’s ground forces ablaze. Dot, covered by a personal bubble shield generated by her blade, instinctively ducked. As the explosion faded, an eerie silence fell on the valley littered with alien corpses and scarred by Ace’s attack.

From the safety of their Low Earth Orbit, Steve and Christine surveyed the damage. As they looked at the innumerable shards of what used to be one of the biggest alien armadas they could imagine and the alien bodies that littered a valley in what used to be Nepal, they couldn’t help but feel a sense of accomplishment.

Tens of thousands of light years away, another spectator seemed impressed by Ace’s technique. Watching 0673UD’s final moments on a large holographic cube, the Grim Reaper chuckled coldly as the alien skeleton was turned into burning shrapnel.

“Not bad,” he said. “Not bad at all.”

The giant monster was a menacing brute, no question. But just not powerful enough to be used against its creators, the Reaper thought. Oh well. No big deal.

The view in his cube changed to a crystal clear shot of the Earth with exaggerated destroyers showing the approximate position of the Shadow Nation’s craft. The fleet formed a seemingly impenetrable wall. It was going to take a lot more than just a few million Rexx to get through the Nation’s defenses. But that wasn’t the job that Rexx were designed to do, nor were they designed to actually destroy they Earth. No, the Rexx had a very different role to play...

In Nepal, Ace was slowly walking towards the robots and Dot after a quick stop to pull his sheath out of a dead Rexx and wipe it off. He looked around the valley and realized that it lead straight to Mount Everest. Suddenly a holographic screen with Steve’s face appeared just a few millimeters from his. Ace reflexively jumped back, hissing and growling.

“For the sake of Cthulhu’s dirty jock strap, watch where you’re pointing that thing!” he cursed.

“Sorry commander,” apologized Steve. “But we have incoming. We’re not sure what it is but it’s huge according to one of the deep space probes behind the moon. I’m assuming that’s not good.”

Ace raised his brow.

“I think that’s a pretty safe assumption,” he said. “Can you show me what it looks like?”

Steve clicked a few keys and the image of a giant, menacing object came into view on a new video module. It was rough and jagged, made of something dark, endowed with a seemingly chaotic assortment of spikes, spheres, domes, and other fluid shapes on its top half. An impressive swarm of smaller, sleek objects wrapped it in a protective cocoon. Because of the sheer distance between the probe and the incoming objects, the image was blurry and faint. But they were clearly heading for Earth.

“Ok, ok, stand down,” chuckled Ace. “We’ll be fine.”

“What was that about Cthulhu’s jock strap?” asked Dot, walking up behind Ace. She looked at the screen with the faint, blurry objects advancing towards Earth. “Hey! They’re here already?”

“As you can see,” replied Ace. “We should start cleaning up. Can’t leave alien cadavers rotting here. Who knows what bacteria could spill from their guts while they’re decaying.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” coughed Steve. “But should I take it that these ships are friendly?”

“Well Steve that all depends,” answered Dot.

“Depends on what?”

“On what our bosses think of how we did our jobs.”

[ chapter _ 008 ]

There was a new ship in orbit around Earth, although it was actually a small asteroid with glowing red engines, each of them ten times the size of a destroyer. It carried what looked like a city of sleek, sharp claw-like spires, suspended spheres, rounded towers, and various domes. The city warped into orbit with another massive fleet of destroyers, a small clutch of transport ships, and several massive orbital factories designed to repair damaged destroyers and rebuild lost fighters and bombers.

These factories were truly immense ships with hexagonal bays big enough for a destroyer to enter. Inside, a cavernous chamber capable of holding up to twenty destroyers at a time was home to an army of machines that cut away damaged or fused sections of wounded ships to replace them with new, fresh nanobots.

But as impressive as the factories were, the transport ships got far more attention from the press on Earth because they were massive replicas of the very first human craft designed for interstellar travel. The cylindrical design, the sleek engine covers, the huge dust shield, all preserved and faithfully duplicated in these craft which served as the backbone of the Nation’s interstellar shipping lanes. Like all of the Nation’s ships, they were armed to the teeth and could make short work of almost any attacker. Needless to say that space piracy wasn’t one of the problems the Nation worried about since few alien species out there were stupid enough to attack their transports and those who were rarely made the same mistake twice.

As the humans may have guessed, the space city came with such an imperial entourage because it carried VIPs, mainly four members of the Child High Council. Their quarters and offices abroad were in one of the ten claw-like towers built on the city’s edges. Connected to this tower by a long passageway was a simple dome made of dark, translucent materials, marked with a red alien rune at the top. Space planes from Earth buzzed all around this space city and its guards, the footage streamed to every television set on the planet below as anchors of global news shows and wire services told the Shadow Nation’s story to hundreds of millions of viewers watching at home, in offices and in the middle of the streets on huge screens mounted onto skyscrapers facing major highways, parks and public squares.

Work stopped. Traffic ground to a virtual halt. For the next few days the entire human species was frozen in front of the nearest TV or computer. Aliens were just a few thousand miles above them and an interstellar war came to their doorstep, which meant that everything else could wait. Intermixed with the news was high definition footage of the combat between the Rexx and the Nation, finally explaining the strange lights in the sky for the last few days and the odd, fuzzy pictures uploaded by amateur astronomers. Next came the images of Ace, Dot and other representatives of the Nation, official photos provided by the Child High Council and the High Command to acquaint the humans with the cyborgs’ major players.

The headshots of the commanders and government figures were set against blank backgrounds and watermarked with the Nation’s seal. None of the cyborgs smiled, their firm expressions and attentive eyes meant to communicate power and knowledge in stark contrast to the smiling and cozy pictures of Earth’s leaders used in official reports from the Council for many a century. The ages and resumes of High Councilors and top commanders seemed surreal. Most had close to a millennium of experience in their fields. Only a few were under 800 years of age.

News articles swept the internet like a tsunami, using the just declassified images of the Nation’s worlds, temples and outposts in included slideshows and photo spreads. The first impression of the cyborgs was exactly what the High Command hoped it would be. The Nation was portrayed as exotic, enigmatic, and powerful. Politicians welcomed the cyborgs as potential allies and trading partners since behind the scenes, the High Council already indicated that it was open to the idea of trade with the humans. The arrival of the Nation was proclaimed as the beginning of a new era and a very likely catalyst for a sudden resurgence in space travel and exploration now that the technology to casually hop from solar system to solar system might be within easy reach.

In the space city, the VIPs from the High Council prepared for the next step. First contact was successful. Trade negotiations were scheduled to begin soon and the Nation’s top companies were straining at their leashes to flood a brand new market with their wares. To both the humans and the cyborgs, this was a start of big things. Really big things.