Author's notes: I have been writing stories for my own entertainment for a while for now, but this is the first time I am presenting one for other people to read. I hope you all enjoy it and please let me know what you think and how I can improve the story and my writing.
Chapter 1
It started at the quantum level.
At first just a quark here, and a quark there, changing their spin and color borrowing the needed energy from atoms and molecules on this side of the barrier so they could come crashing through. Soon the quarks were followed by larger particles, electrons and protons, then neutrons and finally whole atoms and molecules.
As each particle, however small came through it borrowed energy from atoms and molecules on this side of the barrier; Proceeding to shove them out of the way at phenomenal speeds and in the process snatching away their loosely held electrons and smashing into nucleus' ionizing, polarizing and outright tearing apart particles as they went. The chain reaction of energy that ensued caused particles to decay, react, combine and repel.
An opening began to force its way into existence on a small alley behind the large buildings of a city on fire. The night was already lit with burning buildings and the lights of emergency vehicles and even the occasional arc of electric white lighting as it struck the blue defense shield of the planet overhead, or occasionally more fire where it penetrated the shield and landed in the city. As the opening rapidly expanded to over three meters in diameter the combination of rapid expansion, particle decay from stolen energy and forced fission created what can only be classed as a small nuclear explosion as the quantum tunnel was finally completed.
Out of this tunnel and into the newly formed crater ran almost a dozen figures a number of which were clearly overburdened with large rucksacks, backpacks and even some carrying large crates together between them. Others were clearly covering their escape firing gouts of flame through the opening or forming an array of ice crystals and accelerating them toward the unseen enemy. The unknown enemy was clearly not without fight, however as a bolt of lightning came arcing out of the tunnel striking a man carrying one side of a crate. It struck him across the back and he screamed in pain, dropping the crate and falling to the ground.
"NO!" yelled another figure. Kneeling down by the man the light from the disaster around them shown on their face revealing a beautiful woman, with long brown hair with streaks of blond in it, a sharp nose and almond skin and deep red eyes which were now filled with rage. She turned back toward the tunnel entrance, drew in a deep breath and summoned a massive pointed block of ice and sent it through the opening at incredible speed. After a moment the tunnel entrance began to lose cohesion and with a loud crack and a gust of wind it collapsed. The group of people were alone.
As they stood there looking at each other and breathing heavily, trying to gather themselves together the building they were standing next to begin to creak and sway. The building had been ruined by the blast from the tunnel creation and with no other warning than that it came crashing down burying all of them in rubble.
...
In the middle of a forest another tunnel opened with much less force and in a much less stable manner. A heavily wounded man stumbled through the flashing and flaring tunnel with a red and white ball in his hands. He has many more on his belt and a backpack on his back but he was not a young man by far. His balding pate and wrinkled eyes show the years. He stumbled forward muttering to himself as the tunnel slammed shut starting a few more trees on fire.
"You just wouldn't listen. I'm sorry my dear but I had to. We have to. They can't be allowed you know. Someone has to do it and you just wouldn't listen." He kept muttering to himself as he held his wounds with one arm, some of which still had shards of ice in them and kept talking to the ball in his hand.
He leaned against a non-burning tree with his back and slowly slid down it. He gently pressed the red button and a beam shot out. A woman, of sorts materialized from the beam. Auburn hair fell down to her shoulders but floppy yellow and black striped ears did as well. Except for her face and neck she was covered in a pale yellow fur over most of her skin and she had a yellow tail with a kink in it that looked like someone had slammed it in a door to hard. She was wearing a loose red dress with a purposeful cut up one leg and a cloth belt tied around her waist and tall black boots. Her eyes were crystal blue and they began to pool up with tears as soon as she saw what was happening.
"You old fool!" She cried. "I told you not to do this. We needed to stay and get you healed! Are you even listening to me?" She shook his shoulder but he didn't move. She shook him again. He wouldn't move.
"Don't play with me old man. This isn't the time!" she shouted and shook him even harder, but he just flopped as she shook him.
"Don't play old man!" She shrieked through her sobbing tears as the man lifelessly fell over. She buried her face in his slowly cooling chest. "Don't go! Don't leave me here! What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to fix this?"
As streaks of red filled the sky as things began to fall from space and the world around her appeared to be ending, she could not bring herself to care, or even notice really. All she could do was sob into the chest of the man she loved and wonder why.
...
Commander Patrick Lewis' eyes snapped open with a forceful jolt. The acceleration pushed him back into the seat and the blackness was only broken by the soft lights of the instrument panel, which in his dazed state he couldn't yet focus on. Suddenly the blackness burst into a dense star field, distorted with explosions and moving ships of every shape and size dancing all around. As the commander's head began to clear what was happening started to come back to him and he looked over his shoulder in horror to see the TSS (Terran Star Ship) Warspite impacting the alien mother ship in its bow. The very place where it kept the reactors that powered the world-cracking electric white beam that was still firing at the Earth.
The Warspite, was the flagship of the human defense fleet, and through a very unfortunate set of events had been under Patrick's command for roughly the last twenty minutes. She was true to her namesake and had taken a huge beating but had never stopped firing her guns. Even now her rear primary and secondary batteries were still blazing away. But now she was giving her last and as the commander watched the damage finally took its toll and she started to break apart amidships, the engines still pushing with all their force splintering the ship and pushing its hard bow farther and farther into the enemy vessel. The electric white beam flickered and blinked and then went out.
Patrick cried.
He cried for the ship that had been his home for these last few years.
He cried for the friends that were still aboard her, one of whom lost their life putting him in this pod. And whose name he would never know.
He raged.
He slammed his fist on the transparency and screamed. His fury at the ever shrinking image of the two ships locked in their twisted embrace did nothing to disturb the silence of space.
Then the mother ship exploded sending the aft end of the Warspite spinning into space, one engine still running throwing the spin vector off wildly, obliterating a human destroyer as it went. Suddenly urgent collision warning alarms went off and Patrick jerked his head around just in time to for the pod to be slammed into by hurtling debris and sent it spinning. His head slammed against the side of the pod and he blacked out again.
The pod's autopilot began to recover from the spin and set the pod back on a survivable decent to the surface. By the time Patrick had once again opened his eyes his course had returned to a steady one. He checked his displays, noting a good water landing, before looking out at the space around the pod.
What remained of the white electric energy from the alien planet cracker was still arcing across the planet bouncing off the last of the Earth's defensive shield and playing through the planet's magnetic field. The defense shield was done for. He could see most of the places where the generators used to stand on the surface, nothing more than pillars of fire now. However they had served their purpose and that was enough, they could be rebuilt.
Patrick looked around and saw a number of other pods falling through the atmosphere around him. They had lost a great deal today, but not everything. There were survivors and they could rebuild, hopefully before the enemy returned in force.
As the barrier to the mesosphere was crossed red heat began to build and blocked Patrick's view of the planet below. The red was mixed with the electric white of the arcing energy and the dying blue of the defense shield as he fell; the buffeting started to make his teeth rattle. With little else to do the pain of his injuries finally began to come back. Head, abdomen, leg, lightheadedness from blood loss and a possible concussion... he was a bit of a mess. He laid his head back against the seat for a moment and just tried to breath. It hurt.
Somewhere about the top of the troposphere the heat began to die down and visibility began to increase again. Just about that moment the sun crested the horizon of the Earth in a beautiful display of light that is one of those things that reminds so many people why they go out into space in the first place. Dimming his windows a bit so that he could see the instruments Patrick started to concentrate on the landing. The atmosphere was slowing the craft down well enough for landing. Only he suddenly noticed that he was no longer on track for the water landing the computer originally plotted. For some reason the destination was now a large mountainous region he didn't recognize. That was going to be a problem, he realized, because he was going way too fast for a high altitude ground landing.
Just as Patrick was considering what to do about this the retro-rockets kicked in with the last remaining fuel. When they sputtered dry the pod began tipping for maximum aero-braking, but the realization was coming fast to the commander that even this was not going to be enough to slow down so the emergency parachutes could be deployed without destroying them. Taking manual control he began to force the pod around to bring it parallel with the mountain cliffs.
The pod aft end impacted with a mountain top first nearly flipping it over and snapping his neck forward against the seat restraints. Banking hard the last few degrees to pull into the valley the craft dropped quickly down into the trees and nosed up. As trees began breaking the commander desperately gripped the controls of the pod just trying to keep from biting down on his tongue. Finally the nose wouldn't stay up any more and the whole pod dropped to the ground scraping along decapitating trees at an incredible speed. With a sudden screaming of metal and a gut wrenching lurch the pod hit a large rock and was thrown into the air and for the third time that day he blacked out.
...
Hefting the backpack higher on her shoulders the woman in the red dress tightened the straps a bit more. Then she fiddled with the belt with the red and white balls and shuffled her boots in front of the large pile of stones she had set up.
"I'm sorry old man. This is the best I could do for you. You deserved better. You deserved better than I could give you. Of all the tamers out there you were a pretty good one. Oh you had your moments old man, make no mistake!" She said shaking her dirty hands at the stones with a small smile and tears in her eyes.
"But you are mine and I love you… I'll protect the rest as best as I can. I don't know what this place holds. And I know you wanted to go on with the mission so I guess I'll try that too." She sighed deeply.
"This is all a lot to put on someone's shoulders all of a sudden. You should really be here. I miss you already. But I have to go now. I'm not sure where, but I have to start finding people and figuring things out. Maybe if I get a chance I'll come back someday." She wiped the tears from her eyes only managing to make smears of dirt across her face and turned away into the forest, her sturdy boots gripping the terrain with a firmness she did not feel.
...
He tried to open his eyes but it felt like his eye lids were glued shut. Something hard and a little sticky was making it hard to open his left eye and almost impossible to open his right. His head felt like he had an ice pick though his brain. He tried to move but didn't get far. Something was holding him in place. He was starting to get annoyed… a lot. Patrick started to swipe and rub at his eyes with his fingers, well one set of fingers anyway. Finally his eyelids creaked open and he started to slowly look around, his pupils struggling to focus correctly.
Where ever he was, the sun was still up. The window transparencies had left their shattered remains all around what was left of the escape pod. However the dull edges of the broken material meant that he had very few lacerations. I have got to remember to look up who invented this material and give them an award, buy them a beer… something, when I get back to civilization, Patrick thought to himself. He looked down at his chest and saw the four pronged seat belt holding him to the seat that while still in the cockpit had managed to break free of the pod in the crash. He tried to move his right arm to unbuckle himself but it did not respond. He glared at it as if that would somehow convince it to move.
After a few moments he lost the glaring contest with his immobile right arm and used his left to twist the buckle and free himself. Struggling to get up and out of the pod, he fell down many times as the chair itself was unstable beneath him, his own legs were exhausted and wounded and the pod was torn apart by the less than graceful impact. He returned to glaring at his right arm for a moment before taking a running start at a buried portion of the pod. His shoulder made a loud pop and he roared in pain. However his right arm began to respond once more, though a bit slowly. Patrick massaged his right shoulder and took at seat with his back against the pod to rest for a bit after what felt like a monumental effort of just getting free of the wreckage.
He noted with some humor that most of the trees around him had a way of melodramatically leaning on their sides. For some reason this was most hilarious to Patrick at right that moment. He wasn't sure if this was a sign of his injuries or because it was just damn funny but he figured it couldn't hurt to have a good laugh after all he had been through so he let himself go on about the trees for a while.
After he had rested for a bit and had a good laugh at the expense of the local fauna the commander decided it was time to start seeing what supplies had survived the crash. With no small amount of effort and pain he heaved himself off the ground and began his search. It proved fairly profitable as such searches go. He was not without food and water, warm clothes, extra rounds for his sidearm, something with which to make a lean-to against the wreckage and various other odds and ends. He did manage to find the emergency rescue locator beacon, destroyed of course. He brought the pieces of that along just in case he might be able to perform some electronic magic on it at some point.
After a few failed attempts at making the lean-to work, Patrick finally got his temporary shelter to be strong enough to withstand the local winds. As he looked around he could see that he was still fairly high up on the mountain, not too far from the upper tree line. It was going to be a cold night for sure. He limped around on his bad leg and put his meager supplies in his 'tent' and began making a fire as the sun slowly began to set. Well attempting to make a fire anyway, he said to himself. All of the trees around were fairly young and most of the wood he had gathered was too green to burn easily. The kindling he could find was damp and the box of matches he was supposed to have in his kit was nowhere to be seen. So here I am rubbing a stick between my hands in the hopes of getting a small spark so I can get something going before I die of frostbite. Patrick sighed.
"You um… you seem to be having a problem there."
Patrick pulled his sidearm and froze, his eyes having a hard time seeing into the trees in the twilight. Slowly our auburn haired, blued eyed, yellowed furred woman peeked out from behind a tree off to his right and put her hands up at shoulder level. He shifted his aim in her direction and she slowly came out from behind the tree and taking a few tentative steps closer.
"So yeah you look like you're kinda having an issue with your fire there." She said pointing with just her hand at Patrick's awkward attempt at fire making and raising her eyebrows. Patrick's eyes narrowed as he looked her up and down. I think my head injuries might be catching up with me, Patrick thought to himself.
"The fire was coming to see things my way. I just needed to explain a few more things to it." Patrick said still keeping the firearm level.
"Really? The fire seems unconvinced to me. Do you mind if I try arguing with it for a bit?" The woman smirked a bit at the discussion.
"Go ahead. I'm not sure how much luck you'll have. I was pretty convincing." Patrick backed away from the almost-fire and sat with his back against some wreckage, his gun still pointed at the woman.
She lowered her hands and crouched down in front of the fire with her back to the man, gathered a small pile of kindling, looked over her shoulder at Patrick quickly to make sure he was still there, and then let a small jolt of electricity leap from her hands to the small pile in front of her until it started to smoke and smolder. When little red tongues of flame began to show she slowly fed larger and larger pieces of wood into the fire until she had a proper campfire going. She then stood up and waved her hand proudly to the fire and giving a toothy grin.
Patrick, meanwhile had been eyeing the crooked yellow tail as it swayed back and forth. They did warn us about hallucinations from head injuries but this is a bit over the top. Does this reflect something about me that I would imagine such things? And yet I can't stop watching that kinky tail…
His eyes jerked up as she stood up and presented her crackling fire. He looked from the fire to the proud look on her face and sighed. He did not smile back. Patrick holstered the gun as a wave of exhaustion washed over him.
"What's your name?" He asked.
She looked a little surprised at the sudden question. "My name? Oh it's Paige."
"Do you have a last name Paige?"
"Um…" She suddenly looked very uncertain "Well… not that I know of anyway." She looked away in an embarrassment and shame showing on her face.
"Is that so…" Patrick gave her a hard look and Paige would not meet his eyes.
"Hmmm. Ok we'll table that one for now Paige. Rather, on to the really pressing question as far as I'm concerned. Are you or are you not, a figment of my imagination?" Patrick asked.
Paige stood there and blinked, totally blindsided by the question. "Huh?!" Was all she could muster.
"I thought the question was pretty self-explanatory. Are you real or am I making you up because of the number of times I bumped my head on the way down from space?" The commander repeated.
She looked at him for a moment and her eyes softened as the scene before her finally registered, the devastation of the forest, the wreckage of the pod and the battered man that came from it.
"You really are a mess aren't you Mr…?" She said as she knelt down and put her hand on his forehead and looked at his slowly focusing green eyes.
"Commander Patrick Lewis of the Terran Defense Forces. Commander, NOT mister, thank you very much. You may call me Commander, or Patrick if we are being informal." He said with what he hoped was dignity.
"Alright Patrick, do you have any medical supplies and water around here? Maybe something to boil the water in?" Paige said in what she hoped was a firm but gentle tone.
"Everything I could salvage is in the 'tent'." He said using air quotes around tent. "I don't think we should be boiling the water though. We will probably need to conserve that as we don't have much of it."
She shed her backpack and laid it by the 'tent' and began to rummage through the supplies. Great, from one wounded man to another, she thought to herself. I hope this one doesn't die on me. "Yeah you're right there isn't nearly as much water as I'd like here." She called back out. After opening a few of the various bags Paige found the one that had the medical supplies. She grabbed a canteen of water and went back out to where the commander was putting another piece of wood on the fire.
She set the items down and swept her red dress under her knees as she knelt down next to the commander. "Ok Patrick, let's start with this mess on your head." Paige said using the canteen to wet a cloth and begging to scrub away the dried blood to find the wounds as gently as she could.
Paige's close proximity made the commander a little uncomfortable at first but as she worked he looked closely at her face and saw the dirt on her cheeks had clear tracks where the tears and run down them cleaning a path to her chin. This gave Patrick pause as he considered what could have been the source of the tears.
"Here don't forget the anti-bacterial cream." Said Patrick as Paige was beginning to bandage his head. "That should keep anything from getting infected." He handed her the tube.
As she began to dab on the cream she looked at him and gave him a serious look.
"So I hope by now you've realized I'm not a figment of your imagination." She said.
"Figments of my imagination don't hurt this much." Patrick quipped back.
"Wimp." She said as she again started bandaging his head. "So… I'm guessing you said that because you've never seen a girl like me before. Am I right?" Paige said trying to keep an even tone and a straight face.
This girl should never play poker, Patrick thought to himself. "Paige, I have been fighting an alien race with an incredibly high polymorphism of their genetic structure for years now, so to be blunt, I've seen a lot of shit. But I have still never seen anything like you."
"I'm… not really sure what that means but ok. Also you need to take off your suit so I can get to your leg and gut wounds." She said.
The commander began to struggle out of his anti-decompression suit, which was just what it sounded like. It was a suit designed for the unfortunate case that you should be sucked out of a space ship in the hopes that you might actually have a chance of surviving the trip.
"So… how do you know I'm not one of these aliens then." She asked as she tried to wrap the bandage around his thigh, failing to keep her hands from shaking.
"It was a hunch mostly, but I didn't have proof until a few minutes... ago." Patrick said as he winced as she pulled the bandage on his thigh tight.
She looked up at him with a questioning gaze and paused with her ministrations. "Proof?"
"Yes proof." He said as he looked deep into those crystal blue eyes. "You've been crying. I don't know what about, but that is something those aliens don't know how to do. They don't even comprehend it much less know how to program something how to do it. Crying like what you've been doing is a very human thing."
"A human thing…" Paige said as her eyes went wide at being referred to as human for the very first time in her life. As she looked at the compassion in the commander's eyes the realization began to creep over her that this new world may have possibilities for all of her kind that she had never even begun to dream about before, and the thought almost blew her mind.
...
The emergency personal were still digging through the rubble of the building when the EMTs drove up in their tank like ambulance. They stopped so there was clear access to the back and got out. The darkness was punctuated by the flashing red and blue lights as they got out their gurneys and bags full of quick use supplies and started to walk toward the piles of rubble and the fervently working diggers. The man and woman did not alter their bored looks as their eyes scanned over the seven bodies already covered and not moving.
As they approached the rubble the woman tripped and fell with a grace that she had a reputation for.
"Sonofa…" she said as she went down hard.
"And there she goes again." Said the man. "It's a good thing you ain't this clumsy when you're working on the patients Jamie. Cause we'd end up with a lot more dead'uns."
"Shut your hole Dennis!" said Jamie as she laid her hand on the offending item that caused the tumble. As she held her hand up to view the small red and white ball all she could say was, "What the fuck is this thing?!"
"Who gives a shit Jamie? I'm gonna go find out if they actually have any WARM bodies around here or if we can get goin already. You just go ahead and lie there for a while. I know what they say about you back at the barn." Dennis started to snicker as he walks away.
"Get bent!" Jamie said as she pocketed the ball and got up to follow Dennis.
Running up beside Dennis, Jamie looked on as the diggers shouted excitedly to each other and started lifting out of the rubble.
"Looks like they actually got somethin." Dennis said.
A few minutes later Dennis and Jamie had two barely breathing bodies, both women on gurneys and wheeling them back to the ambulance. As they put them both in the back and Jamie began her work, Dennis was already climbing in the front. They drove away over rubble strewn streets of a hard hit city as fast as they could knowing full well that the two in the back were going to be lucky to get any help no matter what speed they drove. The whole city needed help today.
...
Cora first noticed the noise. It was echoing off the ceilings and walls of whatever room she was in and it was damned annoying. The next thing she noticed was that 'The Bond' was missing, her tamer was dead. THAT snapped her eyes open with a jolt. The bright lights from the high ceiling bombarded her making her squint her red eyes against it. She did not cry but a feeling of sadness overwhelmed her for a few moments. She said a few words for the soul of the lost quietly to herself, but in the tradition of the yukiohna, she did not mourn long. After all, she was in a new and potentially hostile world and that made survival and information a priority.
As she scanned the room what she saw shocked her. She came from a violent and brutal world but even then she had never seen ruined bodies on this scale before. The room was large with orange metal circles that had cloth nets hanging from them suspended in the air at either end. Despite its size the room was completely packed with suffering people, none of whom were complete, even the ones who were attempting to give aid and care. Cora realized even she had just been leaned unceremoniously against a wall. The noises she had been blocking out began to penetrate and she cringed as the moans of pain, the screams, the cries for help or the pleading for someone to end it all echoed back and forth against the walls.
I have to get out of here. She said to herself, wide eyed at the scene. She had received basic some basic aid for her injuries at some point but one leg was just not responding very well. It was splinted and wrapped but stiff and in pain.l Cora began to pull herself standing arm over arm. Leaning on whatever she could find she began to make her way painfully to the closest door she could see. Halfway there she fell face down on the shiny wooden floor. Looking toward her feet she saw that she had slipped in someone's blood that hadn't been cleaned up yet. With a look of disgust on her face she slid away from the mess and started her procession back toward the door. Reaching it she hit the crash bar and flung herself out into the darkness gulping deep breaths of the tangy, ash filled air.
Outside revealed itself to only be slightly less hellish as the lights and sirens of emergency vehicles filled the thick, smoke filled air. The night was lit by a city on fire everywhere Cora looked.
The door opened a second time and a bandaged figure stepped out. "Cora? It's me Dawn."
"Dawn… Oh thank god." Cora said with a loud sigh. "What kind of a world have we come to?"
"A world in trouble by the looks of it." Said Dawn. Her arm had been tied up, clearly broken and her head and left eye heavily bandaged, though her pink hair still poked through.
"Are you still bonded?" Cora asked. Dawn shook her head. "Me either. I wonder if anyone else made it."
"I don't think so. I woke up on the way here and talked to the girl who was giving us first aid. She got a count of the dead bodies that were dug up. It wasn't enough to account for everyone but it was most. I'm guessing we are the only survivors."
"I don't suppose you got the girl to tell you where the rubble that has all of our buried stuff is?" Asked Cora hopelessly.
"Of course I did." Said Dawn holding up a little piece of paper and grinning big. "She wrote down the location for me. It doesn't make any sense to me but I'm willing to bet with a bit of work on our part we can ask around and figure out the location system they use here and get back to it."
"Well then there isn't much point in us hanging around this scary ass place anymore then is there?" said Cora with a wicked grin, and they both started to limp slowly away from the building arm in arm.
...
Paige and Patrick sat next to each other close to the fire, Paige now dressed in the emergency cold weather gear from the pod, a green pair of pants and a heavy jacket wrapped around a thick cotton shirt. Patrick, now nicely bandaged and feeling better with pain meds and antibiotics, was tinkering with the broken locator beacon and some various other broken electronics.
"Whatcha doooooin?" said Paige as she leaned over and looked at the work curiously.
Patrick smiled slightly. "I'm trying to fix the locator beacon so someone will come and pick us up, unless you want to stay here in the forest forever. In that case, I'm working on the locator beacon so someone can come and pick me up." Patrick said playfully.
Paige thought about this seriously for a few minutes while Patrick continued to work.
She gave him a hard look. "If I go with you, how will everyone react to me?"
He paused his work and looked seriously at the electronics. "I'm not going to lie to you Paige. We are a planet at war. If people think you are an agent of our enemy they will kill you. If people believe that you have power that can help us win this war, there will be groups who will try to steal that power from you, by any and every means they can and not ask any moral or ethical questions while they do it. BUT, not everyone will be that way."
"And what about you? What will you do when we get back to civilization?" She asked her voice hardening a bit.
His face became stern but he turned and looked her full in the face, staring into her eyes.
"Paige, the human race, our back is against the wall here. We need everything we can get just to survive. So those desperate people who will do anything, a part of me can understand them. I'm desperate too. I'm scared for my world and my people. But if we abandon who we are along the way, then we've lost the war just as surely as if we died. So here's the deal, you have my word that I will never take anything from you that you do not freely offer."
Paige didn't react for a moment; she just looked at him thinking about what he just said. She tilted her head slightly to the side, her auburn hair and her long yellow and black ear getting caught inside the collar of the heavy jacket as she did.
"Your word huh? It's been my experience that the word of a man isn't worth very much."
Patrick's jaw clenched at that statement and he looked down. "I'm sorry to hear that. Unfortunately my word is the only thing of value I have to give anymore."
She paused again and then finally gave a small smile. "Then I guess I have to accept it."
Patrick finally let out the breath he didn't realize he had been holding and smiled a little bit. He started going back to work on the locator beacon. Before too long he had cobbled together enough parts and pieces that he wasn't cursing at it anymore.
"I think it will probably work now, though I won't know until I can find a place to charge these batteries." He said as held them up.
"Here let me see them." Paige said.
As they dropped into her hands she wrapped her fingers around them and her hand began to spark and crackle with electric charge. Patrick's eyes went wide as he saw the arcing and lightning around her hand continue for a minute before calming down. She dropped the batteries back into his hand.
"There, they should be charged now." Paige said.
He looked from the batteries to Paige and back again a few times. She smiled and nodded encouragingly. He pushed them into the locator beacon and locked them in place. The beacon flared to life and Patrick looked over at Paige his eyes wide. She took his hand.
"Patrick, you seem like a nice enough guy, and I don't mind helping you out and stuff… but I really don't want to be someone's lab experiment." She said looking at him searching his eyes.
Patrick's heart thumped for a second.
"What you are wearing should cover your fur, but you are going to need to do something about that tail." He reached behind him and rummaged the bag full of winter clothes and pulled out a fur lined hat with ear covers that ended in a chin clasp. He put the hat on her head and pulled it all the way down, ear flaps and all. Then he tucked her long ears back up into the hat, her hair still spilling out under it.
"There, that looks pretty good on you I think. Guess you'll be wearing a lot of hats."
...
In the space around Earth, sporadic firing of the main guns continued from the surviving ships of the defense fleet as they found any enemies that escaped notice as the search and rescue teams finished their work. They had been out for hours now and all that was coming back at this point were cold bodies. The salvage teams were starting to work their way out into the debris field to begin the slow process of cleanup and recovery. Operable ships were beginning rest and recover shifts so their crews could get some sleep and were towing ships that could be repaired back to the yards. Tenders were coming alongside those same ships while in route to resupply and rearm them should they need to go back into action quickly, heaven forbid. Fighters, pickets, patrol boats and other small vessels were finding any berth that would hold them, or even making their way to the surface to refit and repair as required.
The S&R teams were going to their rest and would continue operations for the earthbound pods after some sleep. The Admiralty had not gotten out of the battle unscathed. The command station that was posted in defense of the shipyards in orbit of earth was also Terran Defense HQ, home of The Admiralty, and the strongest defensive location the human race still possessed. Its guns took part in the battle and it weathered the storm but it too would require a great deal of repair before it was back in full pfighting trim. As for the list of admirals inside of it, well it was a much shorter one now. The ones that remained were counting the day's cost.
All five admirals in the conference room showed signs of comprehending the implications of the data scattered about on the table in front of them, whether it was a head lolling back staring at the ceiling or staring down at the table between their hands, or pacing fiercely, or fists clenching and unclenching in anger, or just plain staring into nothingness. There is no doubt that all of these men and women displayed personal valor and courage in the battle. None of them were without injury and all of them had earned the right to survive that day. But the burden of leadership did not let them rest until they had counted the bodies, counted the ships, considered the future and decided what to do next.
The man clenching his fists slammed them on the conference table making the data pads skitter, one of them falling on the floor. All of the admirals look at him.
"We can't even defend Earth with what we have left!" He practically shouted.
The pacing woman stopped and put a hand on his shoulder. "George, we can at least be fairly certain that they don't have another fleet that size to throw at us. They are going to need time to rebuild as well."
"They still rebuild faster than we do Iona." Said the man staring at the ceiling without moving.
"We just take to many losses for each ship we kill. We need to make our ships count for more. Change our tactics." Said the woman staring into nothing.
"God how many times are we going to have this same conversation?!" said the man with his head in his hands.
"Honestly, I think Fai is right." Said Iona. "We have gone around and around and come to nothing. We are all wounded, exhausted and emotionally drained from all that we have lost today. In the short term all that needs to be done is being done. Let's get some rest and re-visit this with clearer heads."
With not even token resistance the admirals all got up and filed out of the room. Tomorrow was another day for humanity. That, at least, had been won.