AUTHOR'S NOTE: Why do I always write these before almost every chapter? Do I like blabbing to you guys THAT much about what's going through my head as I write? Do you guys care? Who knows, maybe I'm just an egotist. Anyway, some notes on this first story, which will cover the very beginning of the Lylat Wars. Here, you'll meet one or two original characters that might appear sometime in the future, along with my interpretation of Fay, whose views will fuel the 'faith vs. doubt, hope vs. cynicism' themes in this first story. As you might tell from the title, this story is sort of a tribute to HG Wells' War of The Worlds, specifically Fettdog's Musical Version of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds radio play (Google it, listen to it, love it). I thought it was appropriate, being the original alien invasion story, and kind of fitting, since the movie Independence Day was a rip-off of War of the Worlds and the Katina mission in Star Fox 64 was a rip-off of the movie Independence Day. So see this story as a nod to HG, and StarFox. Enjoy.
-The War of the Worlds-
Fay Donahue's eyes had been glaring into the mirror, her eyes locked on the stubborn red ribbon between her ears for so long that it was almost beginning to hurt. The bow never took this long to tie into her hair; if she hadn't worn one just like it everyday for as long as she could remember she would've just given up and gone without it. The last time she tried that though, more than a handful of people didn't even recognize her. As irritating as it was, Fay was much keener on just getting the damn thing to tie as opposed to dealing with the odd looks and endless questions of "Hey, Fay, what happened to your bow? I almost didn't see you there."
Once more, Fay gripped a lock of long, snow-white fur from the top of her head, holding it between her index and middle fingers like one would hold a kretek before smoking it. Delicately, she guided the lock of soft fur through the loop of ribbon pinched in her other hand. Shifting her fingers just slightly, Fay pinched the fur in between the ribbon, slowly taking one end of the ribbon and crossing it over the other. Tightening the cross as much as possible, hoping that the fur would stay gripped in the ribbon, Fay took one end of the ribbon and began to slip it under the loop, between the fur and the lock of hair. As she did, her other hand lifted ever so slightly, and the lock of fur slipped out of the loop. Fay's paw dropped to the vanity in front of her, banging the polished faux-wood with frustration. She wanted to curse, but didn't want one of her fellow students or (God forbid) one of the nuns that may have been in the hall to hear. The walls of her apartment were practically paper-thin.
Fay set the ribbon down on the vanity, leering at it coldly.
"Fine," Fay sighed, picking up the ribbon and holding it away from her body as if it were soaked in something nasty, "If you're going to be like that, I'm just going to have to let you go."
Without another word, Fay walked away from the vanity, out of her bedroom and into the small kitchen of her apartment, then opened the waste disintegrator sitting against the wall next to the conservator. Not missing a beat, she dropped the ribbon in and watched as it plummeted past the matter spectrometer field and into the blue arc of plasma, where the ribbon was vaporized with a quiet, sizzling pop.
"That'll teach you," Fay grumbled, returning to her room and walking over to her vanity, opening a drawer containing several beauty products, including a small box filled with dozens of red ribbons.
Fay plucked up a fresh ribbon out of the box, repeating the exercise again, step by step, finding the new ribbon to be much more cooperative, and forming it into her tasteful trademark red bow.
"You really need to invest in a barrette, or something," she said to herself in the mirror.
The white spaniel looked herself over to ensure that she was presentable; modest enough to walk around the seminary campus without drawing the criticism of the nuns, but cute enough to not be indistinguishable from them. She wore a casual taupish-beige colored dress that was somewhere between a sundress and a sheath dress (with the thin straps of a sheath, but not as form-fitting), over which she wore a short red vest with golden trim to cover her shoulders (which she had made out of a stylish jacket she'd found in a thrift store one day). Around her neck was a golden Lylatian pendant, a star with six thin wings stretching out from the center, which might've drawn criticism for bringing attention to her chest if it wasn't a religious charm. On her feet were a pair of brown 14-eye work boots, which gave a hint of toughness to her look that contrasted with the delicate cuteness of her other accessories. Fay gave a light push upwards on each of her furry, thick ears, then turned and left her room, returning to the kitchen.
The apartment was quiet as she opened one of the depositories on the wall and pulled out a frying pan, setting it down on the arc stove. Her roommate, a rather quiet feline named Katie Harkness that was far more conservative and shy than Fay, had come to Saint Lassie's Seminary and Lylatian Mission with some of her friends, and was often absent from their apartment, hanging out with the girls that she'd come to school with. Fay didn't really mind, it just meant that she didn't have to share the kitchen or the bathroom with anyone.
Fay made a quick detour over to the sitting area with the small holovision flat screen, turning it and the speaker system she'd brought from home on, then turning off the flat screen so she could just listen to something while she cooked her breakfast.
"…Venomian officials have dismissed the comments of General Pepper, describing the General's claims of the Venomian military build-up as an 'extreme exaggeration,'" the voice of the LNN news anchor reported as Fay opened the conservator, retrieving a bar of butter and a pair of eggs from inside before closing it back up again. Fay tuned out the voice slightly, disinterested, as she drew a knife from the rack, sliced off a thick square of butter, placed it in the center of the frying pan, and activated the arc stove. The round panel beneath the frying pan began to glow a bright blue, the faintest hum of electricity able to be heard as the appliance powered up. Fay put the rest of the butter back in the conservator, then wiped off the knife and put it away. She opened a drawer in the counter and extracted a spatula of black plastic as the frying pan heated up and the square of butter began to melt.
Fay began to guide the butter around the interior of the pan with the edge of the spatula, barely listening as the anchor droned on.
"In more local news, several planetary communications satellites in orbit have malfunctioned in the past few days, leading to a disruption of communications across Macbeth and minor disruptions of Macbeth's interstellar communications abilities. The great majority of these satellites were devoted to military communications, making the latest logistics and movements of Macbeth Civil Protection extremely difficult," the newsman reported as Fay worked the butter around the pan, coating the entire inner surface with a thin layer, "Some official sources have claimed that several satellites show evidence of advanced sabotage. Civil Protection officials have yet to comment on this issue."
Fay was beginning to get bored, and considered changing the channel as she cracked each of the eggs on the rim of the pan, opening the shells and pouring the eggs onto the steel, where the fluid quickly turned from murky clear to white, bubbles forming on the surface around the circular yellow yolk.
"And now your local weather:" said the newsman, whose voice was replaced by the somewhat more rich and cheery voice of the meteorologist, "It's going to be a cool, comfortable Saturday morning in Wayland, temperatures will average around 22 degrees Celsius, except for a four-degree drop in temperature that should occur between four and six o'clock this evening. We've got clear skies all day, with comfortably low humidity and just the occasional gust of wind. It's going to be a beautiful, quiet day today, so get out there and enjoy it. In the upcoming nights, you may want to check the skies, since the orbits of Venom and Macbeth are aligning at their closest point this year, which is going to cause an impressive planetary eclipse with the moon on Wednesday night. And now back to Francis in the LNN newsroom. Francis?"
"Change channel," Fay commanded.
"What channel, please?" the flat screen inquired.
"Music channel four," Fay answered.
"Affirmative," the screen replied.
The words of LNN anchor Francis Masuka were replaced by a soulful, slow mix of blues and jazz, incorporating an Aquas conch horn into the instrumentation for a distinctive bass twang. As Fay scooped up one of the fried eggs with the spatula, flipping it over to cook the other side, she heard the chirping of an old electric organ, and smiled. Her father's church in Dyson, a small town halfway around Macbeth from Wayland, had an electric organ that was always played after his sermons. When Fay graduated from St. Lassie's and began preaching at her own church, she wanted to have an electric organ just like it.
Where she'd find one was a different matter, it was an ancient instrument that was hardly ever made anymore.
She flipped the other egg over and watched both of them fry in the pan, sizzling and popping in the layer of butter. Fay lifted a paw and scratched behind one of her long, somewhat shaggy ears. Working her nails between the curls of white fur, she was careful not to mess up her bow, remembering what a pain it was to get right.
After a few minutes, Fay opened up a depository and took out a white ceramic plate, opening a drawer and withdrawing a fork, then scooped up each of the fried eggs in the pan and deposited them down on the plate. She took the plate into the sitting area and delicately reclined into a soft armchair, shifting until her wispy, feather-duster tail found a comfortable position under her body weight.
Fay bowed her head and shut her eyes as the electric organ, along with the rest of the jazz medley, went into a mini crescendo, then murmured quietly, "Bless this food, oh God Lyla, Mother of the planets and the stars in the sky, giver of life and knowledge. May I serve Your will on this gracious day. Armen."
She opened her eyes and picked up the fork, slicing the fried eggs and putting them into her mouth, their gratifying softness and warmth working their way over her tongue and then down her throat. A few minutes later Fay had finished her eggs, and she got up, depositing the plate and fork into the sink, putting the frying pan in there as well and running the faucet until it was nearly full with water. Pausing for a moment, Fay decided to clean up the rest of it when she got back. She had all day, after all.
She went back to the flat screen and sound system, turning it off before she made her way to the door of her apartment, pressing the button on the doorframe with the pad of her index finger. The door slid aside with a quiet hiss, and Fay traveled out into the nondescript hallway with its white plaster walls and pale green carpets. She checked her Wrist-Mounted Data Assistant, checking to see when the café across the street from her dorm hall opened, a pleasant smile working its way across her muzzle when the WMDA displayed the hours and she realized that it opened an hour ago. Minimizing the hologram with a press of a button, Fay began to walk down the hall, her heavy boots making a dull, quiet thumping sound as they stepped over the carpet. Turning a corner, she approached one of the nuns, a yellow avian in the traditional light blue and dark black hooded robes.
"Good morning, Sister Lilania," Fay said curtly.
Sister Lilania merely offered the slightest of nods, continuing on her way. Sister Lilania, like many of the other nuns that worked in the dormitories and the mission of St. Lassie's, quietly disapproved of females like Fay being allowed to learn to become a priest. But, then again, Fay was pretty sure nuns like Sister Lilania disapproved of a lot of things that the Lylatian Church did nowadays. More than likely, they'd probably prefer to go back more than 200 years, when the Church was a hierarchical institution run and governed by male clergy rather than the Lylatian Tome, an organization that had an influence over the government and lynched people it didn't like.
So, Fay didn't really pay the nuns much mind, aside from a polite and respectful greeting now and then. She made her way to the turbo lift and pressed the call button, the doors chiming and opening after barely a moments pause. Fay rode the turbo lift down, stopping once at another floor to pick up a group of three male canines, two chubby shar pei and one stick-thin Labrador retriever, dressed in the uniform black ties and dark blue blazers of the St. Lassie's seminary. As the doors slid shut and the turbo lift descended, the Labrador glanced over at Fay, to which she responded with a polite but dismissive smile.
He wasn't cute, and even if he was, Fay wasn't interested.
She'd never really done that well with boys, and being a preacher's daughter studying to be a preacher didn't help her improve much in that area, so she decided to start worrying about boys at a later stage of her life. She was only twenty, after all; she had plenty of time.
The turbo lift reached the lobby floor, opening up to a large, open room with doorways leading to the pneumatic mail delivery room and laundry rooms on one side, and the security desk and main doors to the building on the other. Fay headed towards the security desk, her boots thumping on the tile floors as she began to travel through the electric turnstile.
"Hey, Fay!" a male lynx about her age in a green security officer's uniform greeted.
"Hey, Terrance," Fay smiled, stopping and rolling her eyes.
Terrance was Fay's favorite security guard, warm and friendly and actually nice to talk to. He was the only one that didn't annoy her when he greeted her with the "Hey, Fay!" line that everyone had used for her entire life. Fay wanted to tell herself that this was because Terrance was just a nice guy, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he was very nice to look at.
But if Fay told herself that, she'd be lying.
"What 'cha up to?" Terrance inquired, leaning against the desk.
"Just going across the street," Fay shrugged, "Maybe get some brew, mingle a little. Nothing major."
Terrance nodded, the tufts of black hair on the tips of his ears quivering. Fay looked over Terrance's face and exposed, fit arms, examining the brownish gold fur and the series of brown spots on his arms. She caught herself and stopped.
Terrance smiled, and Fay wondered whether or not he'd noticed her checking him out.
"If you're going to be out for a while, better be careful," Terrance said coolly, "Looks like there's a pretty nasty storm about to hit."
Fay's brow furrowed in confusion, and she paused for a second.
"The news said it was supposed to be a great day," Fay mentioned, "Clear skies and twenty-two degrees."
"You can trust the weatherman," Terrance shrugged, "I'll trust my eyes. The sky looks like it's about to rain down all sorts of hell."
"Really?" Fay asked, somewhat confused.
"It's pretty weird. Just came out of nowhere. Five minutes ago it was clear skies, then like that," Terrance continued, snapping his fingers for emphasis, "It started looking like something nasty was about to come down. Just don't get soaked, okay Fay?"
Fay smiled at the rhyme, again finding it more endearing than irritating.
"Okay, Terrance," Fay nodded, feeling her ears pat against her shoulders, "I'll be careful. See you around."
Terrance winked at her and pressed the button to open the door. Fay turned around quickly so that he wouldn't see her blush, heading through the now open transparisteel door.
She walked out onto a concrete staircase, leading down from her dormitory hall to the street, where two lanes of hover car traffic flowed. Fay looked out at the decent view of Wayland, the capitol of Macbeth, offered by her position. The buildings of Macbeth were such a contrast from the clean, white, round and soft-looking buildings that she'd seen in pictures of Corneria City. Macbeth hadn't nearly the same environmental respects of Corneria, which were reflected in its hulking, obscenely high buildings that dominated the skies. More than a few of the largest skyscrapers in the distance were foundry buildings, monumental factories planted in the middle of the city that towered into the sky and belched smoke and steam from the dozens of smoke stacks sticking out from their sides and atop their roofs. Several buildings were equipped with mammoth holographic displays that projected huge advertisements on the building and into the air itself, visible from kilometers away. In between the hulking high-rises and glittering spires of Wayland were lanes of air traffic, adding both relief to the inadequate streets and more neurosis to the skyline.
To the west, just barely visible, was the constant, perpetual traffic of giant hovercraft freighters that ferried manufactured goods and natural resources from the factories, refineries and mines in the Macbeth countryside, only to have them loaded on space freighters that took off and sailed into orbit for parts unknown. Massive and dominating, even for the skyline of Wayland, perched upon the old Valiant building like a giant monitoring the city, was the 200-meter high Statue of Freedom, a huge composite-metal depiction of a triumphant feline male, holding out his paw in offering. The statue was made to commemorate Macbeth's independence from the Cornerian Empire, a hard-fought prize of the Lylat Civil War that raged centuries in the past.
Despite Wayland's dark, sometimes foreboding and chaotic ambiance, Fay somewhat admired it, especially the idea of trying to revitalize Lylatian values in such a place as this, which obviously could use it. She examined the sky to find that Terrance was indeed right, the heavens dominated by thick, brownish-grey clouds that looked somehow different from any Fay had ever seen before. There was a way that they slowly boiled and swirled through the air, comprehensively blanketing the entire sky without a single clear spot in sight. In the dullness of the clouds, Fay thought she saw the white flare of lighting, but she heard no thunder, nor did she feel the vaguest hint of raindrops falling to the ground.
Trying to shrug off the faint unease that she felt in her gut but didn't know why, Fay continued down the stairs, making her way to the street and looking both ways before hurrying across. She reached the other side just a few ticks before a low riding hovercraft that probably wouldn't have stopped for her zoomed up the road. Fay strode through the light glass doors of the trendy coffeehouse in front of her, an above-mediocre local chain called Cassie's. Inside, several patrons of almost every species lounged in the booths or at the bar of the warm interior, while a pair of grey, antiquated looking droids worked the espresso machines, oven and dehydrator unit. The only living being behind the counter was an average-looking female collie with a nose ring, who stared up at one of the hologram feeds projected up on the wall in a distracted manner. Fay walked up to the counter, getting the collie's attention, who gave her an icy look before asking what she wanted.
Scanning over the menu and feeling indecisive, Fay answered, "Surprise me."
The collie gave Fay a look, as if she was trying to stifle a laugh.
"You sure you wanna put yourself through that?" the she asked Fay in a nasal, sarcastic tone.
Fay took another look at the girl's nose ring.
"Uh…" Fay stuttered, "On second thought, just maybe some coffee? Lots of cream, lots of sugar."
The collie nodded and went to work, and Fay looked down the bar, finding an empty stool and taking a seat.
She looked over at one of the holograms on the wall, seeing a news feed from the Central Broadcasting Authority, another Lylat news outlet. On the hologram, a greyhound field reporter was standing on an observation deck to one of Wayland's skyscrapers, with the dark, ominous skies over Wayland dominating the shot. In the corner of the hologram, the outstretched hand of the Statue of Freedom was visible.
"The storm is highly unusual, not simply because of its completely unforeseen nature," the reporter said, barely audible with the low volume that the café's sound system had been set to.
"The clouds appear to be blocking most electronic signals, more like a solar flare or magnetic interference than a common storm," the reporter continued, "As of right now, nearly all satellite communications from, or to Wayland are blocked. We have no way to tell just how much area this storm will cover, since any attempts by the CBA shuttle to relay it's observation to us would be jammed. Currently, however, we are waiting for the CBA news shuttle to return, having sent it into orbit to possibly observe the scale of this storm. We have yet to hear back from it, as well. Several reserve units of Macbeth Civil Protection stationed in Wayland have been deployed, to assist in policing and rescue needs that might arise during this time."
Fay's mouth was slightly open in nervous confusion, and when she looked around the café, she noticed that everyone else was watching the hologram. She looked down at the counter, seeing a small cup of coffee in front of her, and couldn't recall when the collie had brought it to her.
As the reporter continued to speak, Fay's attention was grabbed by a streaking yellow flash through the sky behind the reporter, like a falling star.
The reporter reacted with surprise and shock, gesturing out of the holocam's angle. Quickly, the holocam shifted in the direction that the falling star had shot to the ground, only succeeding in catching the briefest moment as the fiery projectile landed somewhere in the city with an eerily green flash of light. At the exact same time, Fay heard a distant, rumbling boom, and she realized with astonishment that the sound was not coming from the holoprojector's speaker system, but from outside. Whatever had just crashed into the ground, it had crashed in the same part of the city that Fay was in.
As she looked back to the hologram, the unease that she had felt before returning even stronger, she noticed the greyhound's words coming out garbled and interspersed with hisses of static. Behind the reporter, the sky began to pulsate with flashes of light, and with a sudden, bass humming sound that died as abruptly as it had started, the hologram flickered off along with all of the café's lights.
Several of the café patrons let out surprised screams as the lights died, Fay herself letting out a small gasp. Behind her she heard a loud, squeaking crash, and she whipped around, off of her barstool and looking across the café, out through the plate glass windows, and saw three skycars in the street, all three having suddenly dropped from their antigravity levitation onto the hard surface of the pavement. The drivers inside were either wearing looks of confusion or throwing fits of panic and rage.
From outside, Fay could hear faint screams and dozens of loud crashes, one after another after another, just like the sounds from a moment ago, but somehow even more horrible. Fay sprinted towards the door to see what was going on; reaching it before just under a dozen other patrons trying to leave did, throwing the door open and venturing outside. As she stepped out onto the sidewalk, she heard yet another loud crash, this one very close to her, and looked down the street in the direction of the sound.
A battered and twisted skycar lay amongst the rubble of a caved-in wall that it had plowed into, wisps of dust swirling through the air as people inside the building screamed and tried to escape, the people around fleeing from the crash site. Letting out a bewildered gasp, Fay looked up and down the street to find it strewn with wrecked, upturned and warped skycars, some lying in craters in the street, others just barely sticking out of the walls of the buildings that they'd crashed into as they plummeted from the airlanes hundreds of feet above. Staring at the skyscrapers of Wayland, Fay beheld every building in sight as dark and still. The holographic ads had vanished; even the foundry buildings had ceased belching smoke into the air. Fay looked at the Data Assistant on her wrist, finding it as dead as every other electronic device.
As crowds of people gathered on the sidewalk, just as confused and scared as she, Fay looked around and spotted a tall male ram with curling horns, wearing a navy blue and black Macbeth Civil Protection uniform, pads of body armor over his chest, legs and arms. Fay quickly moved through the crowd of shifting, babbling people, making her way to the ram in the uniform and tapping him on the shoulder.
The ram looked at her with golden brown eyes, his composure steady.
"What's happening?" Fay inquired, her voice shaking.
"I don't know," the ram admitted with a shake of his head, then, pointing to the clouds, "But it might have something to do with that."
Fay followed the ram's gesture, looking at the sky, watching as arcing bolts of lightning tore across the heavens, making little more than dull thumps of sound.
"There's no rain? No thunder?" Fay inquired, "What's that mean?"
"No power," the ram speculated, "For anything."
As the silent lightning split the sky, forbidding and terrible, Fay's heart thumped in her chest powerfully, her knees trembled with dread.
A great hissing noise sounded, and then another shooting star fell through the air, burning over the rooftops and towers before dropping out of sight. Less than a moment later, there was a flash of green light, and a loud boom in the distance that shook the ground. Several people in the crowd screamed, and even more began to break away, down the street or into one of the buildings in the hopes of finding someplace safe from whatever was happening.
"What are we supposed to do?" Fay whispered to the ram quietly, clutching her Lylatian pendant in her hand.
"I don't know," the ram answered, "I can't get in contact with anyone; my comlink doesn't work. Even if it did, I doubt anyone else's does."
Fay shivered once more and closed her eyes, murmuring, "Oh God Lyla, Mother of the planets and the stars in the sky, protect and watch over me; as the hound watches over its pack."
Fay opened her eyes, feeling slightly better, finding the ram staring at her.
"So," the ram inquired awkwardly, "I guess you go to St. Lassie's or something?"
"Studying to be a priest," Fay answered with a nod and a nervous smile, "Are you a ram of faith?"
"I'm, er…agnostic," the ram said, somewhat warmly.
"Nobody's perfect," Fay came back, smiling lightly.
The small hint of a laugh escaped from the ram's nostrils, and he smiled in return.
"I'm Lance. Lance Cody," the ram said, extending his hand.
"Sure you don't have it backwards?" Fay croaked meekly, surprised that she was able to joke at a time like this.
"I hear that a lot," Lance answered.
"Fay Donahue," Fay introduced, taking the ram's hand and shaking it.
"So, Lance," Fay shuddered, eyes to the ominous sky, "What do you do when you get that feeling that something bad is happening?"
"I do what I have to," Lance told her, "What do you do?"
"I pray," Fay responded with another trembling smile.
"Let's see what helps more," Lance said, without the hostile tone that would've made the remark insulting as opposed to skeptical.
As the ram looked past her, Fay turned around and followed Lance's gaze, past the thinning crowd of people, down the empty street. Fay noticed more than a few people climbing out of some of the crashed skycars, which gave her some slight relief even though more cars had unmoving, lifeless figures inside them than drivers attempting to get out. She finally saw what Lance was looking at: a limping, trembling black rabbit in a Macbeth Civil Protection soldier's uniform and body armor.
Lance began to shove his way through the crowd, and Fay followed close behind, sparing a look back at her dorm building to see people beginning to file out, but something told her to stay with Lance. She followed him through the crowd, down the street and around the wrecked skycars littering the road, avoiding the temptation to look into the cockpits of each for fear of what she might see. Fay came up to Lance, who was staring into the rabbit's terrified face, his hands on his shoulders as the rabbit-soldier stuttered and hyperventilated. As Fay looked over the rabbit, she noticed that one of his arms was streaked with blood, the rest of his body covered in either dust or sweat.
"Just calm down," Lance said calmly, looking at the name and rank bars on the rabbit's uniform, "Corporal Wade."
The rabbit's eyes locked onto Lance at the mention of his name, his jaw shivering.
"Soldier," Lance rumbled firmly, "What's happened?"
"It wiped us out," the rabbit sobbed, "We—we never saw it coming."
Fay's eyes went wide with confusion and dread. Lance remained cool.
"What did?" Lance interrogated.
"It crashed in--into a warehouse a few blocks away from our unit," the corporal stuttered, "W—we were just on patrol w—when the storm gathered. The last thing they told us was to be p—prep—prepared in case we lost power or n—needed to help with em—mergency services. Then it hit the ground a few blocks away from us... and then it just started killing everyone…"
Fay's blood ran cold, and she put a hand around her pendant.
"The meteor? Is that what crashed?" Lance demanded firmly.
"It wasn't a meteor," the corporal snarled, licking his lips as he continued to shake, "It was a container. A pod or a…missile or something."
"And this pod killed everyone?" Lance asked.
"What came out of it…" the corporal hissed.
Lance blinked and looked over at Fay, who found herself unable to speak.
"It rolled over most of us like we were bugs…" the corporal whimpered, "…tore through walls like they were sandcastles. Then it picked up Johnson… and it ripped him apart."
Lance's jaw dropped a bit.
"I j—just managed to get away…" Corporal Wade stammered, "…but it was headed this way."
Fay stared at Lance and waited for him to say something, her muscles clenched tight with fear.
"We've got to go," Lance stated, taking his hands off of the corporal.
"What is it?" Fay squeaked.
"I don't know, but if it's headed this way, that means we head in the opposite direction," Lance growled, walking back up the street.
"Wait!" the corporal sobbed, "Take me with you…"
Lance rolled his eyes.
"We've got to!" Fay protested, "He's hurt!"
"I didn't say no!" Lance barked.
The ram let out a grumble, then ordered to the corporal, "Don't fall behind."
The rabbit nodded, his ears twitching. Both Fay and Corporal Wade followed behind Lance as he made his way up the street, winding through the wrecked skycars, some piled two or three on top of each other.
As they passed by her dormitory and the crowd of people gathered outside it, Fay saw Terrance standing among the masses. Looking at Lance walking down the sidewalk, Fay quickly approached the lynx and touched his arm.
"Terrance," Fay huffed.
"Fay…" Terrance gulped.
"You've got to get out of here, it's not safe here," Fay breathed, others around her hearing and looking at her.
"What's going on?" Terrance asked.
Fay's head shook, only air coming out of her mouth.
"I…I don't know," Fay said, "It's just not safe here. You should come with us."
Terrance shook his head.
"My girlfriend goes to Wayland University," Terrance said, "I've gotta go see if she's alright."
Had she heard this barely twenty minutes earlier, Fay would've been disappointed.
"Then go get her," Fay instructed with a nod, "But be careful."
Terrance nodded and cocked a crooked smile. Fay began to walk off, then turned around and went back to Terrance.
"Don't go that way," Fay warned, pointing down the street where the corporal had come from.
"Okay, Fay," Terrance nodded softly.
Fay turned around and left him without a word, sprinting to catch back up with Lance and the corporal. She noticed more than a few people that had overheard her began to travel up the street in the same direction.
As Fay reached the two soldiers, Lance giving her a look, another falling star could be seen in the distance, shooting through the air before landing somewhere far across the city with a green flash and a faint rumbling impact. The corporal gave off a quiet sob at the sight of it.
"So, is there someplace we should be thinking about heading?" Fay inquired hesitantly, "I mean, other than away from…whatever?"
"Don't blow it out of proportion," Lance muttered softly.
"What?" Fay chirped.
Lance shot her a glare, putting a finger to his mouth and nodding his head in the direction of the corporal, who seemed lost in his own waking nightmare.
"We've just got what he says happened," Lance murmured quietly, "We don't know how much of it is the truth."
Fay's brow furrowed, and she glanced over at the corporal before looking back at Lance.
"You don't believe him?" Fay whispered.
"Do you?" Lance uttered, "It's called 'shell shock'. You see something so horrible, so unexpected that you just switch off and go on autopilot until your brain can deal with what's going on again. All you really remember is bits and pieces. I'm pretty sure something happened…but there's nothing chasing us."
Fay looked up the street as they continued to walk, and then back at Lance with a look of puzzlement.
"So why are we headed this way?" Fay inquired.
"Because a Civil Protection barracks is this way," Lance explained, "We can get him medical attention, and maybe we can talk to some other officers to tell us what's going on."
"Oh," Fay nodded; somewhat relieved that Lance seemed to know what he was doing.
"Can't have faith in everything," Lance smiled.
Fay's brow furrowed, and her nose wrinkled.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Fay demanded.
"Nothing," Lance shrugged, "Never mind."
Fay kept looking at Lance as they walked the streets, the massive buildings that stretched above them all quiet, dark, and seemingly empty, while a constant traffic of confused, scared people wandered the sidewalks in all directions. As they crossed a street, Fay looked a block down to see a thin group of people rushing into an unmanned store, running out with arms full of whatever they could carry.
"Looters," Lance chuckled, "Turn off the power and everyone becomes a criminal."
"That's a very disdainful view of the world," Fay said with a frown.
"You call it disdain, I call it realistic. Potato, po-tah-to," Lance dismissed, "Truth is, if you take away all of those things that keep people happy, safe, or in line, they lose their morality like it's going out of style. Create enough hell and everyone becomes a devil."
Fay closed her eyes, shaking her head.
"I don't believe that," Fay said firmly.
"You might change your mind before the end of today," Lance smirked.
They kept traveling up the street, and soon the ends of Fay's long ears pricked upwards as she became aware of a peculiar sound. Lance seemed to hear it as well, glancing around the street with his golden brown eyes. Fay looked down and saw Lance's hand resting on the handle of a blaster pistol holstered on his right thigh.
As the corporal began to shiver and let out a series of short whimpers, Fay listened to the sound, trying to figure out what it was. It was like multiple sounds at once.
A constant series of whining, mechanical clicks, like a piece of running machinery. A dull, echoing crack, like stone being crushed. Light thumps, as if hundreds of fingers were drumming on the street somewhere. And the sounds of people, yelling.
Fay and Lance's pace slowed as the sounds became louder, more distinct. The whining, clicking noise was definitely a machine of some sort. They continued, cautiously, crossing another street littered with hundreds of fallen skycars, finding it almost completely devoid of life. Pressing on, further up the street, the sounds suddenly grew exponentially clearer. The thumpings were definitely the sounds of hundreds, perhaps thousands of running footsteps. It became obvious that the people were not yelling.
They were screaming.
The three of them stopped dead in their tracks, frozen for a moment.
"Turn around," Lance breathed, "Right now."
"Fine by me," Fay exhaled.
They did an about face, Lance grabbing the disoriented corporal by the wrist and leading him back. They trotted back down the street as the screams grew closer. It was no longer a single, unified sound, but the amalgamation of hundreds of individual voices, all crying out in mutual terror.
Fay looked back, seeing nothing, and tried to keep up as Lance moved into a light jog.
"Whatever's going on, don't stop," Lance ordered, "Just keep running until I say so."
Fay kept up as best she could, but saw the corporal falling more and more behind, cradling his mangled arm in agony.
"Keep up, soldier!" Lance roared, "Or you're on your own!"
"Come on!" Fay begged, looking back at the corporal, and then she saw them: Two blocks behind, they spilled out of the intersecting street, a mob of people hundreds strong, running from what Fay could hardly imagine. The running masses scattered, some running up the street, others running down in their direction, as a large shadow moved up the street from whence they came.
"Keep going!" Lance commanded, and Fay ran, the corporal trying to keep up. Even louder than the screams of the mob behind them was the mechanized whining, clicking sound from before. Now, Fay could hear a new sound, the rumble of a heavy engine, and the whirr of servomotors.
"LOOK! LOOK! WHAT DID I TELL YOU?!?!?" the corporal shrieked behind them.
Fay looked back instinctively, her heart stopped with hysteria at what she saw: A massive, hulking metal shape, at least three stories tall; a huge robotic torso mounted upon a pair of gargantuan tank treads. The whole thing, colored silver and rust red, had a pair of large, four-fingered metal hands and a squat, cone-shaped head from which a single large blue eye stared out.
"What the fuck?!" Lance yelled as he turned around and saw it, and all that Fay could do was stand there, breathless in awe as the sixty-meter giant turned and began to roll down the street towards them.
The humungous torso atop the treads moved without warning, bringing one of its arms back and swiping into one of the skyscrapers along the street. The droid's steel claws and great arms tore into the glass and durasteel of the building's side like it was nothing, tearing out an avalanche of debris that rained down onto the fleeing crowd, knocking several off of their feet, many of which were crushed under the droid's colossal treads, never to be seen again. The shock of the incident snapped Fay out of her stupor, and she turned and began to run down the street, with Lance following close behind her.
"WHAT DID I TELL YOU?!?!? THEY'LL KILL US ALL!!! THEY'LL KILL US ALL!!!" the corporal raved, taking off down the other street that they had crossed moments ago, and Fay couldn't even comprehend going after him.
"Just keep going!" Lance yelled, "Don't look back!"
A series of high-pitched blasts behind her caught Fay's attention and she disobeyed Lance, looking over her shoulder to see a group of three hulking grey bipedal masses marching around the giant droid, much smaller than it but still too large to be a person. The three battle droids raised large, multi-barreled cannons in their hands, bringing them to bear on the fleeing crowd, firing a salvo of rounds and cutting down dozens of fleeing civilians in a hail of green blaster fire.
"Come on!" Lance roared, grabbing her wrist and dragging her along for a few steps before she turned around and began to run in pace with him, "Don't let the others catch up to us!"
The screams of the fleeing mob grew higher in pitch, and Fay spared one last look back in horror, witnessing the blue eye atop the gigantic droid beginning to glow, then a whirring particle beam of white blue light leapt from the eye, sweeping across the street and slicing into the crowd, vaporizing all that it touched in a flurry of blue flames. Fay let out a scream of fright and tore down the street next to Lance, never wanting to look back again lest she see further, even more heinous carnage.
They approached an intersection of two streets, and Lance bolted around the corner, Fay following close behind. The street was mostly empty aside from a few scattered groups of people ahead on the street, among the littered trails of wrecked skycars. They sprinted up the street, their feet pounding into the ferroconcrete sidewalk, and Lance yanked his blaster pistol out of its holster. Drawing closer and closer to the transparisteel windows of an office building, Lance fired off a single shot into one of the transparent plates. A single blue laser bolt leapt out from the pistol's end and plowed through the transparisteel, shattering it.
"Inside!" Lance called, leaping through the open window frame. Fay jumped through, landing roughly and stumbled the first few steps into the abandoned, marble-floored lobby of the office building. Several fountains and hologram projectors, all deactivated, gave the lobby a ghostly air as they tore through the room, past the turbo-lifts, and up to a red metal door.
"Stairs," Lance exhaled, throwing the door open into a utilitarian concrete stairwell, then charging up the steps, "We have to get deep enough and high enough in this place to be safe from that thing out there. Don't stop until I say so."
Fay obeyed, rushing up the stairs behind him, ignoring the draining ache in her lungs from the exertion. They stamped up the concrete stairwell, only ever hearing the faintest traces of an explosion or a scream, none of which sounded close enough to be of concern at the moment. After reaching the fifth floor, Lance came to a stop, leaning against the door and breathing hard. Fay found it difficult to stand, panting for air as she stared down at the floor. After a moment, Lance's breathing slowed, and he opened the door to the fifth floor. Fay looked up, still sucking in air.
"We can stop. I think we're okay for now," Lance said hoarsely.
Fay nodded and walked up the last three steps, traveling through the door with Lance close behind her. They found themselves in a dark, wide-open floor, a maze of office cubicles and massive, non-functioning InterLink servers. To the side, the entire wall of the floor was made up of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over Wayland. Fay began to walk quietly towards the windows, only to have Lance hold his hand in front of her.
"Be careful," Lance growled.
Fay nodded and walked slowly up to the window, looking down at the streets. She could see, just barely two floors below them in height, the head of the giant droid as it rolled down the street, a wave of fleeing victims in front of it. As it continued up the street, leaving their building behind, Fay let out an overwhelmed whistle as she looked out over the rest of the city. Just barely, in the distance, Fay thought she could see in between the buildings glimpses of another giant robot driving its way down a boulevard. And further up, high in the sky, the brownish-grey clouds continued to roll and swirl, though the lightning had subsided. Fay exhaled, sadly, and tiredly sat down on the floor, overlooking the city with a pained expression.
"What's happening, Lance?" Fay asked meekly.
"Isn't it obvious?" Lance shrugged, poorly feigning indifference, "It's an invasion."
"From where?" Fay murmured.
"Venom," Lance growled, "Where else?"
Fay looked at Lance, trying to process it.
"Goddamn it," Lance hissed, "Everyone said this wouldn't happen. Corneria said it. Venom said it. We said it. But it was so fucking obvious the whole time. We all knew those monkey bastards wouldn't be satisfied with that shithole Corneria gave them, and we still sat there with our thumbs up our asses while they were getting a blaster, charging it up and pressing it to our foreheads. And then we put a big fucking grin on our face and believed them when they promised not to pull the trigger. Well, ain't this the surprise of the fucking century?"
"Venom…did all this?" Fay lamented, gesturing to the sky.
"No, we're just the unluckiest planet in Lylat to get struck by a storm that knocks out our power on the exact same day of a planetary invasion," Lance snapped, "Yes! Venom did all this! And this is just the appetizer."
"What?" Fay respired.
"You think they were banking on conquering a planet with a few giant robots and scary clouds?" Lance demanded incredulously.
"I don't know anything about this, Lance!" Fay exploded, "So how about you give the sarcasm a rest and tell me what else is coming?!"
Lance paused, breathed out and nodded, scratching his head between his horns and crouching down next to Fay.
Swallowing briefly and taking a breath, "However they did it; the storm was just to leave us blind and helpless. The clouds probably have some sort of chemical or something in them that prevents communications signals from getting through, or at least our communications signals. That meant that we couldn't find out that this stuff was probably happening all over Macbeth, or put out a distress call to Corneria, because planetary and interstellar communications rely on satellites to work. The clouds also meant that we couldn't see any spaceship that might park itself in the upper atmosphere. But that wasn't enough. To leave us completely vulnerable, they needed to cut the power. That lightning was probably some sort of energy pulse that shorts out anything that relies on electricity. That's why the power's out everywhere, that's why your Data Assistant doesn't work, and that's why all of the skycars just dropped right out of the air. I'm guessing though it wasn't quite as powerful as they thought, because my blaster's still working, so there might still be some things that the pulse didn't affect, for whatever reason. Eventually, though, they had to turn it off or else they couldn't land a ship or anything to continue the invasion. That's probably why the lightning stopped."
Looking down, Fay quietly nodded.
"What about the shooting stars? The pods, or whatever," Fay asked.
"I'm guessing they were shielded, or else the droids inside would've been fried by whatever took out our power. That's more reason to be on the lookout for things that still worked, things that might've been accidentally shielded," Lance speculated, "I'm guessing that they couldn't send soldiers or anything delicate in the pods, because they wouldn't survive the impact. But they still needed something to come out, make sure that the power was all out, and begin the attack. As I said, though, this is probably just the beginning."
"What's next?" Fay asked.
"I'm guessing we've got a little bit of time. They might wait for the clouds to clear so that they can communicate with each other better. Or maybe they won't," Lance mused, "Either way, I'm guessing we'll see fighters, landing craft, and soldiers pretty soon. Probably some other things, too. I've never even heard of anything like those big-ass droids out there, so I'd bet they've got some other stuff that we've never heard of, either."
Fay shivered, drawing her knees to her chest. Lance put a hand on her shoulder, and Fay let it stay there even though she would've shrugged it off in different circumstances.
"So what do we do?" Fay inquired next.
Lance sighed and glanced out the window, giving some thought to the idea. In the distance, Fay could just barely hear the sounds of more screaming, and she tried to tune them out.
"Same thing we'd do in the case of any major disaster. Evacuate," Lance proposed.
"Didn't you just say that anything electrical got fried by the storm? Doesn't a starship fall under that category?" Fay asked.
"Starships aren't like holoprojectors and skycars," Lance said, "They've got redundant circuits, thick hulls, components insulated against cosmic radiation. And if the electrical circuit was turned off at the time of the pulse, there's a better chance that it survived. At least, I'm guessing. And if they're not, hey, at least we tried, and we go into Plan B."
"What's Plan B?" Fay groaned with a raised eyebrow.
"Let's talk about that when we get there," Lance said flatly.
"Fair enough," Fay shrugged hoarsely, "You're the ram with the plan. Where are we headed?"
"Our best bet is the freight depot on Horsell Common, it's the closest," Lance said, "One of the few regulations that the government actually enforces on the corporations is to always have a spare, warp-capable freighter docked at every major shipping depot on Macbeth, in case there's an extreme shipping demand, or, in the case of an emergency, to transport supplies and refugees. I'd say this situation qualifies."
Fay smiled softly, and then nodded.
"Sounds like a plan," Fay answered.
"Alright," Lance said with a wave of his hand, "The catch is, there's probably more than a few other people that know about this. And other people are going to follow those people, which means a whole lot of people are going to be trying to get on this one extra freighter, and any other ones that might be in the city. So, we might have to fight, or at least deal with cramped conditions. That's assuming that the first people to find it don't just take off in it themselves. But I'm pretty sure that some CPs should be there trying to get everything under control."
"I can deal with cramped conditions, but I'm not going to fight another refugee for a chance to escape," Fay insisted, "It's selfish and it's not right."
"Er, okay. Whatever," Lance muttered dismissively as he rose to his feet, "We should probably go."
"Just a minute," Fay said, getting on her knees and gripping her pendant in her hand, closing her eyes.
"Is that really necessary?" Lance inquired dryly.
"Yes," Fay replied in a forceful tone.
"Okay," Lance verbally shrugged.
"Oh God Lyla, please deliver us safely from the peril that we face. Guide us through this dark time, so that we may see your light," Fay murmured, then said loudly, "And take extra special care of Lance, even though he doesn't want it or deserve it. I'll probably end up needing him somewhere along the road. Armen."
"Cute," Lance intoned flatly, "Can we go now? There is a war going on outside."
Releasing her pendant and getting to her feet, smoothing out her dress, now dirty and ripped at the bottom, Fay walked over to Lance as she scratched behind one of her long, shaggy ears.
"Yes," Fay replied in a saccharine tone, flashing a sarcastic grin of canine teeth, "Lead on."
Lance turned around and began walking down the stairs, Fay in tow, their footsteps scuffing and scraping down the ferroconcrete steps.
"Just to make something clear," Lance trailed off.
"Yeah?" Fay inquired.
"This may be hard to accept, but something might happen where it's going to be us or someone else," Lance explained, "You need to understand, that if that happens, we have to be prepared to shoot them if that's what it takes."
"I told you, I'm not fighting someone over a ride on that freighter," Fay reminded firmly.
"I'm not talking about that; I'm talking about something we don't have a choice in," Lance said confidently, "This isn't the seminary anymore. This is the real world. It's like I said before, when the chips are down and the heat is on, every last creature in this universe cares about one thing: its own survival. People turn on each other, and suddenly the simplest things become a matter of life and death. Even if they don't mean any harm, it's still just as dangerous; a drowning person can pull you down with them, even though they just want to save themselves. For whatever reason, if it's a question of our survival or someone else's being compromised, it's not going to be ours. That may not be your philosophy of life, but it's mine, and if you're going to stick with me you're going to have to accept that."
Fay was silent for an instant, glancing down at Lance's holstered blaster pistol.
"I may not respect it or subscribe to it, but I do accept it," Fay eventually said in a hushed tone, continuing to follow the ram soldier-cop down the stairwell.
Reaching the bottom after a while, Lance opened the door for Fay, and she graciously walked through and back into the abandoned lobby room.
"So…" Lance trailed off, "What's your tale, princess?"
"What do you mean?" Fay looked back with a burned-out suggestion of a smile.
"I mean, why are you going to St. Lassies?" Lance shrugged, "Aside from the occasional 'Miss Holier-Than-Thou' moment, you seem to have a pretty good head on your shoulders. What're you doing trying to be a priest?"
Fay gave Lance a comically derisive look, her tongue in her cheek for just a moment as they approached the shattered window pane that they'd run through earlier.
"So, by your implication, most priests don't have pretty good heads on their shoulders? I take it you don't have much respect for clergy?" Fay probed.
"Priests, politicians, business owners, they're all the same," Lance explained as they stepped out onto the street, "Just different jobs for people that think they're squeaky-clean and know better than everyone else."
"I guess that's one way of looking at it, if you want to be a total pessimist," Fay responded, examining the grey wreckage of the street, noticing the lack of people everywhere and the pair of heavy, scraping trails left by the treads of the giant droid.
Just as Fay was about to say something, Lance interjected, "We can keep talking and all, but keep your eyes and ears open. If we see something, or if I say so, keep your mouth shut and your head down, okay?"
Fay nodded, and Lance waved his hand.
"The way I see it, priests are teachers," Fay shrugged, continuing, "They do know more about the Tome and its teachings, and it's their job to spread that knowledge to others, and help people work out matters of faith."
"So that's why you want to be a priest?" Lance clarified, "To teach?"
"My father was a priest," Fay explained, "He helped a lot of people in our town. Inspired a lot of people, gave them hope, did a lot of good things. I can't really think of anything else in the universe I'd like to do more than be able to help people and give them hope. It's the most Lylatian thing you can do."
"So you're a preacher's daughter?" Lance remarked in a revelatory tone, "Should've guessed you were daddy's little girl, what with the bow and all."
Fay giggled just a bit as they traveled up the street, touching her bow and was amazed to find that it hadn't yet come undone. Up ahead, resting half on the pavement and half on the street was a discarded skycar, differentiated from all of the others around it by the crackling fire that burned in its open engine compartment. As Fay stared at it, she saw just out of the corner of her eye a small group of people on the other side of the street disappear around a corner.
"So how'd your mom feel about you becoming a canine of the cloth?" Lance presented, "Sounds like your dad had a pretty big influence on you. Did you and your mom not get along alright?"
"My mother died giving birth to me," Fay replied soberly.
"I'm sorry," Lance sympathized.
Fay shook it off with a nod and a shrug. They continued on in silence for a few moments, spying a group of perhaps twenty people huddled inside the shadows of a darkened, empty bank, hearing the echo of some far-off explosion.
"Did your father blame you for it?" Lance asked, "For what happened to your mother?"
"No," Fay retorted, feeling slighted, "He viewed it as a gift of God that I survived. He was devastated by it, but he always thought of it as Lyla calling my mother up because it was her time. God working in mysterious ways, that sort of thing. As much as he loved her, he was thankful for only losing one person instead of two."
"Oh," Lance nodded awkwardly.
After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, wanting to change the subject, Fay asked, "What about you? Why are you a…corporal?"
"Sergeant, thank you very much," Lance corrected with a feigned air of snobbery.
"Whatever," Fay dismissed, "What made you join Civil Protection?"
Lance glanced up at the sky, still leaden and churning like boiling toxic sludge, thinking to himself.
"I can deal with people," Lance offered hesitantly, in a tone that suggested to Fay that he couldn't think of anything else to say, "I pretty much expect the worst from all of them, so it doesn't surprise me when I'm investigating a crime or raiding some smuggler's den and I see some pretty bad things. It actually helps, since most of the time I get to punish the evil I see. And I trust in the law. It's something concrete that I can depend on, and it's always there."
"Hmm," Fay mused, "You may not have faith in God, or people, Lance, but you do have faith in something. Perhaps there's hope for you yet."
"We'll see," Lance smiled grimly, looking back at her, "But what good is the law going to do when everything's falling apart around us?"
"That's why I have faith in God," Fay responded simply.
Lance didn't offer a reply.
They journeyed the next few blocks up the street in silence, seeing more and more fires in buildings, the wreckage of cars, and built out of garbage on the sidewalk. On the tall building above them, a huge hole perhaps two stories high had been bored, parts of the building's skeletal framework visible, and the suggestion of large claw-marks at the borders of the damage. Up ahead, on the perpendicular street, another pair of large, scraped tread marks was visible.
Discarded amongst the rubble and piles of skycars were perhaps hundreds of bodies, some crushed and lying in dark puddles of drying blood, others with scorched black holes in their backs, and grouped together were clusters of corpses that were little more than charred black skeletons with faint specters of smoke still wafting up from their bones. Fay let out a quiet, shuddering gasp of lament and dismay, staring down at the ground so that she wouldn't see anymore.
"It helps if you don't think of them as people," Lance suggested coldly.
"But then we forget why it's so awful," Fay swallowed, and Lance frowned.
"Where is everyone?" Fay inquired as they passed the wrecked street, not quite expecting an answer.
"They're probably spread out in other parts of the city; it's pretty big. I told you, they probably only sent a few pods down here, just enough to scout it out and start causing trouble," Lance guessed, "More than likely we're going to start seeing more coming down soon."
"No, I mean the people," Fay clarified with a shake of her head, "Where are all the people?"
"Oh," Lance remarked, understanding, "Hiding, I guess. The underground maglev tunnels would be pretty safe places, at least for now, and there are tons of buildings to choose from. If I didn't have a plan, I'd be hiding in a situation like this, so I'd wager that's what most are doing. Others might be on their way to the freight depot like us, or some other place that they might be able to get to a working starship. The ones that aren't in that grand majority that's hiding or trying to escape? I don't mean to be disrespectful, but they're probably dead, if not now then soon. These streets aren't safe, so unless you're trying to get to a safer place, like us, going outside is just taking an unnecessary risk."
Pressing on, Fay could see perhaps half a kilometer in the distance a large hill, where the street sloped up. At the very top of the hill, hidden amongst the buildings, she could just make out the vague outline of a huge, slab-like building made of stone, with a tall, branching antenna and a huge concave satellite dish mounted on the roof.
"That's Horsell Common," Lance instructed, "We're almost there."
"Wait," Fay suddenly urged, grabbing Lance's shoulder, "Do you hear something?"
They both stopped and listened, hearing, far off but growing closer, a series of mechanized, clattering whines. The spaniel and the ram looked at each other, realizing with dread that they had heard this sound before.
"Let's go, right now," Lance commanded, taking off at a light jog, Fay close behind.
"We don't know which way it's coming from!" Fay cried.
"Stay close to the buildings, they won't notice you as easy," Lance instructed, his boots slapping on the pavement, "Plus we can get cover in one of them if we need it."
Fay obeyed, running behind and keeping herself within arms-length of the buildings lining the street. They came at an intersection, and Fay looked down the other street, giving off a cry of alarm as she saw them. Less than six blocks down the avenue, a giant robot steamed in their direction on its caterpillar tracks, escorted by another trio of grey, three meter-tall battle droids armed with heavy multi-barreled plasma cannons.
"Run!" Lance barked, and Fay took off at a full sprint, giving off a scream of terror as the battle droids' guns spoke, a cacophony of high-pitched blasts that spewed green laser bolts all around her.
Fay squinted her eyes shut as the blaster fire whizzed amongst her, dashing forward and not wanting to see the moment that one of the blasts hit and killed her. Her booted foot stubbed itself on something, and she tripped forward, instinctively opening her eyes as Lance caught her and helped her steady herself. Fay looked over her shoulder and saw that she'd caught herself on the curb crossing the street, the skyscrapers lining the street giving them cover from the killer robots around the corner. By some miracle, she had made it across alive and without a scratch.
"I thought you were toast, you lucky bitch!" Lance cried with amazement, taking Fay's hand and pulling her along as he fled up the street. Fay stumbled along, still in a state of shock, and then felt the adrenaline rush to her head ebbing. She worked her legs once more, ignoring the fatigue in her muscles and the aching in her heels, focusing instead on the rush of wind and the flapping of her skirt on her furry white legs. Lance led her to the other side of their street, weaving amongst the littered trails of skycars and back onto the sidewalk, taking her up to the next block where there was yet another intersection.
"We'll cross over to the next street, then keep heading up to the depot," Lance informed her, "That way even if they try to follow us, they won't be right behind us."
Fay understood, struggling to maintain her speed while they turned the corner and followed the street for a block, only to turn left at the next corner and continue heading in the same direction they had before. Just as Fay began to notice that they were definitely on an incline, Lance slowed his pace, decreasing his speed into a progressive walk as he breathed audibly. Fay had to stop for a second, putting her hands on her knees and catching her breath before continuing on. They made their way up the sloping hill, following the incline of the streets, listening for telltale sounds of the giant droid behind them. After about five minutes of hearing the whining clicks of the droid's immense treads, the mechanized sounds faded away into the distance, not to be heard from again.
"Shouldn't be… much further…" Lance panted as they hiked up the hill.
Fay stuck her thumb up in a gesture of mocking enthusiasm. Slowly, the buildings began to thin out, and looking around, Fay could notice several other groups of people traveling up the hill in the same direction. The two of them reached the top of Horsell Common and beheld the disheartening sight of the depot: a teeming crowd of people that had gathered around the huge slate building, amongst its stacked piles of large storage capsules and fuel tanks, bottlenecking into the wide, open doors of one of the loading docks.
Fay saw people of all walks of life, children and elderly, rich and poor, canid, feline, reptile, avian, and all in between. As they silently walked past a female vulpine trying to comfort her tear-streaked, sobbing child, Fay was bewildered by the amount of children that she saw amongst the masses; dozens upon dozens of cubs, pups, kits and babies, from infant to adolescent, all with the same distraught, terrified and confused look in their wide eyes and quivering faces. Husbands cradled their wives, mouths twisted in scowls of bitter anger, mothers labored to comfort their children, and those without spouses, children or friends around them looked the most frightened and desperate of all.
"Guess we weren't the only ones to have this idea," Lance sighed, "But at least that means the freighter's probably functional. At least there's that."
"At least there's that," Fay echoed.
"Look!" someone cried in astonishment, and everyone looked out in the distance, over the expanses of the city of Wayland offered by their high vantage point. Far off, nearly across the city, they saw a giant robot rolling up one of Wayland's main streets, a wave of black dots, each representing a running fugitive, sweeping away in terror. The blue beam of light leapt from the eye of the giant droid, incinerating hundreds in the crowd, and it was at this moment, surveying the hell that Wayland had become, that they saw the first insect-like Venomian fighters dip from above the clouds and zoom over the skyline.
Many in the crowd gasped and cried out in terror as swarm after swarm of star fighters began to sail out of the dark clouds, buzzing over the rooftops or soaring along the path of the River Tyrell that flowed through the center of Wayland. In the most chilling image of all, another wing of Venomian ships appeared and flew above the Statue of Freedom before scattering and splitting up in different directions over the terrified city.
"It's started," Lance murmured to himself, and Fay's jaw fell open a bit as her heart beat heavily in her chest.
Across Wayland, a flock of fighters could be seen gathered into a v-formation, flying over the city and dropping glowing orange proton bombs from their underbellies that plunged to the ground below and detonated with thunderous cracks and billowing flashes of fire. The crowd grew ever thicker and more agitated, shoving and packing themselves closer and more cramped towards the bottleneck of the loading dock's doors.
People began screaming, yelling, shoving each other, fighting over closer space to the doors like starving wild animals over a scrap of food. Fay and Lance were carried along, and it was all that they could do to avoid being separated. High above, on the roof of the depot, a uniformed canine Civil Protection officer cupped his hands together and shouted something to the crowd below. He was much too far away and the other people yelling much too loudly to hear, but the message the officer had conveyed spread quickly throughout the crowd: "Too full."
Fay's heart sank, and she let out a rattling croak of defeat. Lance gritted his teeth, hissing profanities as those still outside screamed and flailed, still pushing their way into the depot.
"They're going to tear this place apart!" Lance yelled into Fay's ear, and even then she could barely hear over the pushing, roaring crowd, "We gotta leave!"
Fay took Lance's hand as he shoved his way through the crowd. Up ahead, a bulky male equine with foam at the corners of his mouth and tears of rage at the corners of his eyes gave off a bellow and shoved Lance hard in the chest, throwing the ram backwards into Fay. Fay fell back as Lance crumpled into her, falling against a female feline that was screaming and clawing at the elderly toad in front of her.
"Fucker…" Lance snarled, grabbing the handle of his blaster pistol and beginning to withdraw it.
"Lance, don't!" Fay begged, grabbing Lance's wrist, "Let's just get out of here."
He glared at her but still shoved the blaster back into the holster. She helped him back to his feet and they proceeded to make their way through the panicking riot, working their way carefully past the horse that had shoved Lance, then more and more through the sea of people until it began to get slightly thinner. As Fay ducked under the outstretched arm of another male ram, she caught a glimpse of the clouds out of the corner of her eye, noticing something unusual. She looked back again, allowing Lance to tow her through the crowd, and saw the brownish-grey clouds billowing and boiling more ferociously than ever before. Meanwhile, a titanic, abstract black shape could be seen moving like a shadow beyond the clouds, deforming them in a thick ripple like a tidal wave on an ocean.
"Something's happening!" Fay yelled as Lance pulled her through the final groups of people.
"What?!" Lance demanded, and Fay pointed to the sky. A worried expression formed on the ram's face.
"Come on," Lance ordered, grabbing Fay's hand and leading her along the outer edges of the mob, towards the depot, "We're going up to the roof."
They sprinted past the riot as much as they could, cutting through them carefully when they had to, until they reached the side of the building, where a stack of cargo pods hid a series of zigzagging steel grating stairs and platforms that eventually led to the roof of the depot. A heavy, computerized padlock now deactivated and jammed shut, held the door to the chain-link fence that surrounded the first series of steps closed. Lance yanked out his blaster pistol and pressed it to the padlock, firing off a laser blast that punched clear through the mechanism, which fell limply open.
The ram yanked the broken lock off of the door latch and threw the door open, and then proceeded to run up the steel stairs with Fay two steps behind. As they darted up the stairs and around the platforms, going higher and higher up the large building, Fay could see the edges of a huge hangar built at the back of the depot of durasteel and ferroconcrete. When they reached the point of two more flights of stairs separating them from the roof, a mechanical whining grind could be heard as the roof of the hangar split open and began to open up into the air.
"Let's go!" Lance shouted, and Fay tore up the stairs after him, reaching the last platform barely a half second after him. They climbed up onto the roof, their boots crunching on the gravel and traveling in the shadow of the depot's large satellite dish, as the doors clanked fully open. The dull rumble of heavy starship engines sounded, and a large, fat bronze-colored space freighter with three engines began to rise out of the hangar bay.
Their glance shifted from the hangar to the sky, where the shadow had shifted into a definite, dark shape behind the clouds, the ripple having become a boiling wave of fog that just barely cloaked the super massive object as it slowly descended. Whatever it was coming through the clouds, it had to be one of the largest moving things Fay had ever seen, as big as an entire district of Wayland. The freighter lifted fully out of the hangar bay, and the rioting crowd below could be heard to scream and fight in desperation even more intense than before. Its engines glowing yellowish white, the large brown ship began to blast its way slowly through the air, picking up speed.
Fay was moved with a sense of dominating hope, praying that the freighter would make it safely through the clouds and out of this hell, but the clouds around the shape in the sky suddenly broke apart, and an enormous, dark saucer-shaped craft, easily eight kilometers wide, emerged and began to float through the skies above the city. The town-sized flying disk, so large and terrible that it would've blocked out the sun had the clouds not already seen to that, drifted amazingly quick and without pause through the air until it blocked the exit of the freighter, hovering between the ship and any chance of freedom.
"Shit, they'll be slaughtered," Lance gasped.
"Oh, God," Fay trembled, clutching her pendant.
Then, out of nowhere, levitating over the River Tyrell came the slow approach of a huge white battle platform, a curving rectangular box almost a hundred meters in length with three large, swiveling turbolaser turrets at each end. Spotting the approaching hovercraft, a look of amazed disbelief crossed over Lance's face and he cried out, "That's the Thunder Child!"
"What is it?" Fay inquired.
"It's like a tank the size of a stadium," Lance remarked, "It must've survived the pulse!"
Her heart in her throat, Fay watched as the repulsorlift platform picked up pace, driving at full speed towards the waiting saucer. At the edge of the River Tyrell appeared the shape of a giant robot, its eye beginning to glow whitish blue with the charge of its weapon. Without even slowing down, a single turret on the Thunder Child's rear spun around and fired a red laser blast, blowing the robot's head off. Fay and Lance let out a cheering roar, getting the attention of some of the crowd below, and now all eyes and hopes were on the Thunder Child's valiant advance.
Above, the saucer-shaped craft seemed to have taken notice of the battle platform kilometers below, rotating around and without warning releasing a green particle beam from one of its edges. The beam seared through the ground, leaving a trail of explosions and fire as it traveled along the shore of the river, then sweeping over the water, visibly heating it to a boil. The beam suddenly reached the Thunder Child, the shields of the battle platform absorbing the particle beam in a hue of pale blue light.
The hovercraft sped on, raising all six of its turrets to the sky and firing with a series of echoing shots, pelting the undersides of the saucer with thick red laser blasts that impacted the huge black craft with fiery explosions, the echoes of which could be heard loud and clear from where they stood. The crowds below roared with exultation, and there was a rising feeling of warmth in Fay's bosom as she watched, captivated. A large chute opened on the saucer's underside, from which swarmed dozens of fighters like hornets from a nest. The fighters began to flit around the Thunder Child, pelting it with thin green laser fire, which was absorbed by the hovercraft's powerful shields.
Three turrets on the hovercraft began to track the star fighters circling around, blasting into the air and barely missing the first few shots only to strike gold on another, blowing a ship out of the sky. The other three turrets stayed concentrated on the saucer, firing turbolaser blast after turbolaser blast into the huge ship, the beams now being absorbed by the saucer's own newly-activated energy shields. As the Thunder Child shot the last fighter out of the air, it once again raised all six of its turrets to the saucer, continuing its assault with renewed vigor.
The cracks and explosions of the turbolaser blasts against the saucer's shields carried throughout Wayland like the sounds of fireworks, filling the hearts of Fay and everyone else with the hope that the day could somehow still be won. The fighter hatch began to open once again on the saucer's bottom, however this time the Thunder Child rained a barrage of laser fire onto the hatch, concentrating firepower to the point that the lasers penetrated the shields and erupted with a direct hit on the hatch, which exploded and forced the saucer to withdraw the chute.
Suddenly, from overhead roared a group of four star fighters that looked nothing like the others Fay had seen; swift, angular craft colored red black and white, with an x-shaped arrangement of four bladelike wings and a horizontally split fuselage like the open mouth of a hungry beast. The quartet of star fighters screamed over the depot with a distinct, echoing roar like the terrified shriek of a dying monster, leaving trails of green engine fire in their wake. Fay's breath was taken away as she watched the fighters dive towards the Thunder Child, spitting dozens of rapid-fire red laser beams at the hovercraft that the shields harmlessly deflected.
The turrets of the Thunder Child attempted to track the fast-moving interceptor craft in vain, all four of which pulled up into the air and curved overtop the saucer craft. As the fighters came back around the top side of the saucer, the lead ship of the star fighter team blasted ahead of the others in a burst of speed and green engine exhaust, nose pointed directly at the battle platform and diving fast. From the split fuselage of the fighter erupted a squat crimson cone that glowed hot red, then the ship pulled up hard, screaming into the sky. The cone impacted the Thunder Child, detonating in a supernova of bright blue orange light and deafening shockwaves of sound.
Fay had to turn away for a moment; the brightness of the explosion was so harsh. The explosion faded and Fay looked back at the scene, seeing the Thunder Child still intact and hovering, but a column of smoke was billowing from its center, its shields now spent. Hovering above the repulsorcraft was the saucer, a large, stinger-like spindle now extending from its core, directly over the center of the battle platform. Fay, Lance and the crowd of gathered refugees watched in horror as the spindle glowed an eerie greenish blue, then without warning it fired a powerful beam of green energy into the valiant heart of the Thunder Child.
A massive explosion of light and sound left Fay, along with everyone else temporarily blinded, but when her vision cleared, she was able to see the last traces of the freighter escape through the blanket of dark clouds, hopefully carrying thousands of refugees to safety. On the ground below the saucer, all that remained of the Thunder Child lay burning up in flames, along with the entire planet's only hope of salvation. The brownish clouds began to churn, followed by a shower of falling stars that streaked across the heavens more frequent than ever before, and there was nothing left to fight them.
Macbeth had fallen to Venom.
Wouldn't it SUCK if that was the ending? Though it would be kind of cool to end this story on a dark note like that, there's still more I'd like to tell, and I'm sure you don't want it to end right here, either. I could be wrong though. Leave me some praise and help me decide. Or just leave me some praise, period. God, StarFox stories are so fun!