James Somers - The rise of Lucin

Lucin turned from his push toward the valley. "Destroy those fighters!!"

Many of Lucin's troops began to turn on the fighters with larger weapons they had slung across their backs. Sights sprang from the tops of the weapons and the soldiers began to track the fighters individually, painting them with infrared lasers to guide the rockets they were going to fire. They let loose the salvo and the rockets climbed skyward toward the three targets coming in for another pass.

Tiet and his group of aerial fighters lined up again on the advancing soldiers and began to fire their pulse lasers into the crowds. Alarm calls began to sound in their cockpits as they spotted clusters of vapor trails rising up away from the enemy forces. Tiet broke left trying to evade the rockets but there were just too many. His display was giving him a description of the weapons that were locked onto their ships. They were laser guided, normally not a problem, but there were at least one hundred of the weapons flying skyward toward them from different directions. Every direction that he turned the fighter found him facing multiple rockets. Tiet fired again, into the rockets, taking out some of them, but not enough.

He turned as a rocket struck his ship. He heard the shouts of Wynn and Grod coming through the speaker-they were being driven from the sky as well. As Tiet tried to regain control of his fighter, he heard Wynn's voice saying, "Eject men!"

It was the only thing to do. Tiet's aerial fighter began to spin out of control toward the valley floor. He slammed a fist on the flight chair's ejection switch. The canopy immediately slid back into the body of the small ship and a charge launched him and his flight module away from the doomed fighter. The flight module was a small wedge of the flight chair that contained an antigravity pod inside allowing the pilot to make a controlled descent to the ground.

Tiet descended toward the valley floor nearer to the battle already raging between the rebel forces and the Agonotti. He could not see his son among all of the turmoil on the battlefield. Then something caught his eye as he drifted closer, still thirty feet from touching down. He could see one of the fighters slamming into the midst of Lucin's soldiers as they descended into the valley. It wiped out quite a few, but they did not halt their advance. Then he noticed Grod already on the ground removing his flight module and heading into the fray. He could not see Wynn, but hoped that he had survived.

Someone jumped at him, it was an Agonotti. Tiet reacted quickly, bursting away from the flight module as the Agonotti sliced into it with a broadsword composed of his own molecules. He dropped the remaining distance to the valley floor and pulled his blade, igniting it as he touched down. The wind was blowing furiously through the valley and lightning was flashing all around. He wondered if a vortex might form and tear them all away from the ground, hurling them into oblivion.

The symbytes were beginning to press the rebel soldiers. Tiet could see one at the forefront of the fray; it had to be Lucin himself. He stood out from the others as the leader. Lucin was enveloped in a black as midnight skin of morphing exoskeleton. He was tearing furiously into the rebel ranks, pushing his advance further into the valley.

Tiet allowed the fury welling inside him to sweep him away, he was charging toward the mastermind of all of this death and destruction. He could not think of himself as merely a man taking up combat with a Mithri. He had to trust that Elithias was going to fight the battle for him. He would be an instrument in the hand of Elithias. The madness of this war had to end and he intended to end it now.

KALE was backed into an alcove of one of the larger rebel freighters. Its landing gear had been torn away and it lay on its side. Kale had Juli tucked away just inside of the vessel while he, Jael, Merab and other rebels taking cover there fought off the onslaught as best they could. Many rebels had died already and the symbyte troops had bolstered the power of the Agonotti. There were thousands against the dwindling ranks of the rebels. Kale had spotted three aerial fighters strafing the advancing human legions, but they had been blown out of the sky. He felt as though his father was still living and that the king was somewhere on the battlefield, but he couldn't see him.

Most of the rebel ships were crippled beyond the ability to fly. They were their only defense against the advancing enemy forces now emboldened by laser weapons that the human army was wielding along side of the Agonotti. The lightning producing storm clouds hovering ominously above the valley had turned the scene into a grisly horror show and for the first time since coming to the planet, Kale lost hope of winning the war.

Then he remembered the words Aija the prophet had left him with, "the arm of the flesh will fail, but when hope seems gone, pray."

Kale stopped firing his pulse rifle. He looked at the battle raging all around them in the valley. The rebels were nearly surrounded by the enemy forces and it would only be a matter of time before Lucin's army and the Agonotti moved in and completely annihilated them. Kale's father was nowhere to be seen. From where Kale was, at the freighter with Jael, Merab and Juli, he couldn't see any of their team members. He couldn't think of any better example of the arm of the flesh failing than this situation-they were all on the verge of being killed and hope certainly appeared to be gone. When that happened, Aija had said to pray and from all that Kale could perceive, there wasn't anything else left to do.

Kale dropped his pulse rifle on the ground and fell to his knees next to it. Jael and Merab were watching, bewildered by the young prince's actions.

"Kale, what are you doing?!" cried out Merab.

Kale didn't answer. He was concentrating on forgetting the slaughter around him in order to pray unto Elithias. He said, "Elithias in Mithrium. We are but men and we haven't the strength to defeat this enemy. We know that you can do all things and your Logostus promises that the battle will be yours today. These Mithrial sons are mere insects compared to your glorious power and I beg you to reveal yourself. I pray only that your will would be done and your name glorified above your enemies this day."

Kale remained on his knees in prayer as laser fire blazed all around him. The enemy continued their press, but something else was beginning to happen.

LUCIN continued his charge across the Valley of Sayir. The rebels were mostly contained around the area where they had landed their transport ships. Many of the vessels had sustained irreparable damage and some were on fire. The landing zone had become a loosely formed fortress from which the rebels were able to fire from cover. Lucin was sending his troops along with the Agonotti to surround the area so they could press towards it from every side. It would only be a matter of time before all of the rebels were killed. There were still groups of rebels intermingled among his forces on the open battlefield, but they had even less chance of survival.

The storm was all wind and lightning and Lucin was finding himself more drawn to the happenings in the sky. His senses were tingling with a feeling of familiarity that he could not quite place. Lucin scanned the other side of the valley as it began to ascend up the mountain. He saw the ship that the Barudii had used to escape to this planet from Kosiva. From his time spent within the Barudii prince, Kale Soone, he remembered that the ship had transgate technology on board. Lucin decided that it would be a valuable asset for his conquest of Demigoth once this campaign was complete.

The ship was far enough away to have been spared a part in the actual fighting. He noticed that it appeared to be crippled and the ship was presently listing to one side. It didn't look flight-worthy, but he could still have the transgate components stripped out of it. Just beyond the Barudii's crippled ship, in his line of sight, he noticed something else. It was a man standing some distance beyond the ship on a ridge that intersected the base of the mountain and trailed all the way across this face of Mt. Sayir.