Anthony DeCosmo - Empire

A well-placed shot should rupture that line.

The Firecat noticed her and turned. She saw the pilot through the protective cover that resembled more a net than a windshield. She saw the look of surprise in its reptilian eyes, no doubt shocked at the audacity of the woman to assault the armored killer with a handgun.

I wonder how many people this bastard has cooked. She knew Hivvan Firecat drivers preferred to burn their enemies.

In a split-second that lasted much longer to her perception, she saw flammable vapors jet from the Firecat’s flamethrower nozzle…and then the front end of the miniature tank erupted in a splash of green energy as one of her bullets found the weak spot. The gun turret rolled off and clattered along the highway while a ball of smoke filled the cabin.

With the sooty mist stinging its yellow eyes, the pilot pushed open the side door and staggered away from the wounded vehicle. The light rain splattered on its white body armor while the fingers on its green hands struggled for a side arm.

BLAM. Another round from her gun finished the job.

The second Firecat moved to avenge its fallen brethren, giving the trapped humans no time to cheer. Kristy saw one, then two of her squad fall to energy blasts.

One of the better-equipped men of her group-an old world soldier by the look of his BDUs and his weapons-stepped into the open and lobbed a grenade from an M203 launcher mounted under the barrel of his M16. The resulting explosion tore up the passing lane of I-95 North but little else. Counter-fire from the ‘cat blasted away the man’s right arm, sending the M16 to the ground and filling the air with his cry.

A second later, that remaining Firecat exploded, forcing Kristy to dive for cover at the base of a tree, while metal, rubber, and pieces of alien pilot rained down.

When she pulled her head from her hands she saw their savior: a green Humvee with a TOW anti-tank missile mounted on top. Behind that vehicle marched a line of armored personnel carriers, trucks, and a dozen horse soldiers with Stonewall McAllister at the lead.

With the Firecats destroyed, the Hivvan infantry vacated the overpass and ran. The Humvee and APCs pursued.

Stonewall collected his officers under the cover of the Route 24 bridge to avoid the rain. His bugle boy-a freckle-faced teenager named Benny Duda-stood a pace behind the General.

“Do tell, I sent you forward on a scouting mission and have to pull your collective souls out of the fire. What, may I inquire, happened?”

The sound of motored military vehicles idling mixed with the falling rain to create a steady drum of background noise. After the loud battle, the atmosphere felt incredibly quiet.

Dustin answered, “Yeah, geez, we saw them heading toward Fayetteville along 24 and decided to surprise them. They must’ve seen us first and sent those damn Firecats around our flank. Shit, then we got the surprise.”

“Yes, indeed you did. Let us remember that due to your ‘surprise’ several of the troops under your care will not be seeing their wives, or husbands, or children again. I suggest that you endeavor to avoid similar surprises in the future.”

Dustin bowed his head and scratched the tuft of scar tissue where his right ear had once been.

“Yes, General.”

Stonewall McAllister let that sink in for a moment and then continued, “Nonetheless, our progress is ahead of schedule. We’ve barely started the second day of this excursion and our vanguard is nearly half the march to Dillon. Still, it is my understanding that the First Mechanized Division is making even greater progress on their trek to the coast. I shall endure much taunting should General Shepherd’s forces reach Conway before we reach Dillon.”

Kristy Kaufman asked, “Our strength is being depleted by all the units we’ve left behind to seal up this pocket. What happens when we get to Dillon?”

“My dear Ms. Kaufman, intelligence informs that Dillon is home to less than five hundred of our friends. It is significant in that it holds a supply depot and logistics base for our opponents, but it is not a well-defended target.”

Dustin asked, “Like, why wouldn’t they send out their troops from Columbia to protect it, if it’s that important?”

“First, that would be a long march and we know the Hivvans prefer the comfort of their walls and gun emplacements to the open road. Second, they won’t want to lower their troop strength in Columbia. Besides, they almost certainly do not realize the extent to which they are being trapped.”

“Hmm,” Kristy Kaufman grunted.

“You have something to add, Princess?”

Kaufman scowled but remained focused. “What if they realize what’s going on? What if they realize that Raleigh is lightly defended?”

“The only way they can threaten Raleigh again is with their retreating forces which are currently slipping into our jaws,” Stonewall answered. “If they reconstitute we’ll see that from the air. Regardless of what they do, if we cut off their supply lines they will not last long.”

“Then I guess we’d better get going,” Dustin said. “On to Dillon and all, right?”

“Yes, Mr. McBride. We must press on to Dillon. It is not so far away.”

The General gazed southward and fell silent. They waited several seconds until Kristy prodded, “Do you know this area?”

Stonewall shook himself out of the trance.

“What was that? Oh, yes, I do. Dillon, after all, used to be my home.”

As he gazed up at a perfectly black sky, Jon Brewer realized he had never truly known darkness before the invasion shut off mankind’s power plants and generators. The absolute absence of artificial light took him by surprise during those first months after the collapse. He found it unnerving; the pure blackness made him feel like an animal, naked in the wilderness not knowing from which direction the next horror would pounce.

Conversely, he had never really seen the stars in the sky before the end-of-the-world, either. The very concept of ‘light pollution’ sounded ridiculous to his ears, until he lived in a world without it. Those tiny flickers of light in a vast sea of black came to life in a way he never imagined. So many of them, and so bright; not specks but radiant spheres flashing, winking, and swirling in patterns his mind could not quite grasp.

Of course, he regarded those stars with as much suspicion as wonder, considering alien beings came from those heavens through a network of gateways to slaughter his race.

On this particular night, those mysterious and dangerous orbs hid behind a thick blanket of cloud cover.

As his armada of nine Eagle air ships paused one hundred miles northeast of Montreal on the northern bank of Lake Edouard, he felt his nerves jitter once again, perhaps because he felt surrounded by darkness.

While he did not feel alone this time-not with one hundred well-armed soldiers and a compliment of K9s under his command-he felt vulnerable.

The lake stretched nearly two miles north to south but little more than a quarter mile across at its widest point. Tall coniferous trees dominated the land around the lake, stretching off into the unseen distance; a vast void of nothingness dwarfing the small ring of light carved by the floodlights of parked ships occupying the only stretch of open ground for miles.

Two specialty Eagles parked at the water’s edge near a sagging rack of canoes once rented to summer vacationers now left rotting on the rocky dirt and rough grass comprising the shoreline. Instead of rectangular passenger modules, a large round gray tank occupied the space between nose cone and engine baffles. One big hose ran from each ship to the lake, sucking H2o into the purification filters onboard the customized craft. Several soldiers oversaw the extraction process aided by lights mounted above the landing struts.