Marauder Kain: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Mating Wars Book 5) (14 page)

F
ive days
. That’s how long it took for them to arrive.

Kara and Felicia were given ample time to practice piloting the fighter jets--safe underground in the base, to my great relief. There are dozens of drones, so even if the first pair is shot down, Kara and Felicia can launch a second pair near instantly and continue fighting. The drones’ weaponry is not particularly strong against biosuits, but none of the Seraphim will even have biosuits.

“Kain,” Cygnus says. “He wants to talk to you.”

“My brother?” I ask.

“No,” Cygnus says, “Raius.”

I narrow my eyes. Adus sent Raius? Is he too busy acting as High Commander safe on Darkstar, or does he think I’m not even worth fighting. The second possibility shame debts me.

I step into the comms room, see Raius’s smug face, and ask, “Where’s my brother?”

“Dead,” Raius says. “I killed him.”

I don’t know what to feel. My first emotion is sheer disbelief--my second is anger. Am I angry that my brother is dead? No...I realize I’m angry that someone else killed him.

Raius grins. “I should have seen what you were up to...but I was too busy plotting my own betrayal. There was a slim chance it was going to work, but your bomb went off at the perfect time for me. I seized control during the confusion, killed Adus, and executed all the human prisoners.”

“You fucking bastard!” I throw a metal stool into the screen, but the screen is flexi-plastic, and it absorbs the impact without so much as a crack.

Raius laughs down at me. “You’re...incredibly outnumbered. If you hand over the antimatter--all of it--we’ll leave peacefully.”

“I’m going to kill you,” I snarl, and shut off the comms link.

“How many humans were on Darkstar?” Sara asks, voice grim.

“Hundreds,” I say. “All dead.”

“We’ll avenge them,” Cygnus says. “And look on the bright side, Darkstar’s High Commander is
here
. We can deliver a crippling blow and take them out of the picture.”

The comms blink again as Kara and Felicia walk inside.

I hit the button.

“Don’t throw another chair,” Sara says under her breath.

Malcolm’s face fills the screen.

“Who is that?” Felicia asks. “He’s hot.”

“My man on the inside,” I say. “Malcolm...why the fuck are you risking communication with me?”

Then I realize it’s a recording.

“Kain, sir,” he says.

“Cute,” Sara says, “You made him call you ‘sir?’”

I didn’t make him do that. He just started calling me it. Stupid seraph woman.

“I made sure they can’t intercept this signal,” Malcolm says. “But I’ve got good news, and bad news--”

“Jesus,” Felicia says. “Did you make him do that too?”

“I’ll start with the bad news. I lost the detonator. It’s a long story, and it’s actually kind of funny, it involves a clogged toilet and
a lot
of gruel, but--”

The signal cuts out into static.

“What happened?” I ask, my mouth dropping open.

“He
lost
the detonator?” Sara asks. “In the fucking toilet?”

“He didn’t specifically say he lost it in the toilet,” Felicia says, “Just that it
involved
a toilet--”

“Why are you sticking up for him?” Kara asks. “He
lost the detonator
!”

“He said there was good news,” I say. “Maybe he found a workaround--”

“Do you think it was real good news,” Kara asks, “Or Kain-style good news?”

“Hmm,” I say, flicking my ears. “I think we have to trust him. He seemed fairly upbeat. If all hope was lost, would he be telling us a funny story?”

“Maybe,” Sara says, “He’s the kind of guy that just smiles and laughs in the face of death?”

“No…” I say, thinking back to the way he buried his friend. “He’s not like that. We go ahead as planned.”

* * *

T
he first wave
of Raius’s attack begins with hundreds of decoys. The decoys throw out engine burn to mimic the dropships, and they draw fire from our automated defense turrets.

The dropships will not attack us directly--they aren’t made for that--instead they will try to land just out of range of our defenses so they can release the Seraphim army. They’ll try to surround us in a siege situation, making us burn through our antimatter to wear down their superior numbers--until we surrender or die.

But if Malcolm pulls through, there will be no superior numbers.

We wait inside the base, watching screens showing plasma turrets blasting beams high up into the orange, methane sky.

“We should be outside,” I say.

“Why?” Cygnus asks. “I’m too old for heroics. We wait here in case the bombs don’t go off. Hold them off long enough and hope that Mars can get reinforcements to us.”

“When the bombs go off,” I say. “We attack.”

“If the bombs go off,” Sara says.

Kara and Felicia’s drones are patrolling around the peninsula, looking for dropships. I never thought I’d be tucked away watching a screen while Kara actually
did
something. I should be out there keeping her safe, not the other way around.

A view from Kara’s drone overlays onto the screen. “Look!” She says.

Far in the distance from her drone’s camera, what looks like meteor tails are filling the sky in parallel lines.

“Hit them!” Cygnus roars.

The turrets re-align and open fire, and Kara’s drone fires missiles.

The dropships all cover themselves in teal shields, which bounce the plasma off harmlessly. When Kara’s missile hits, it explodes, but a intact bioshield remains when the blast clears.

“So they have a biosuited Marauder on each dropship,” I say. “That’s at least ten real threats.”

“And they’ll probably survive the bombs,” Sara says. “If they go off--I mean.”

I grin. She’s finally getting optimistic, at least.

The dropships hit the ground, I hold my breath.

“Kara,” I say, “Keep your drone back at max range, we need eyes on them more than we need you to get shots off.”

“Got it,” she says, and she starts to circle around on the edge of visibility.

We watch as the tiny teal spheres sit still on the rocky ground. One sphere melts away, and an intact dropship reveals.

“Dammit!” Sara says, but she doesn’t take her eyes off the screen.

We all hold our breath now.

A second sphere falls away, but rather than a gleaming dropship, there is a single teal speck--a figure--standing in the center of charred metal, bloodied body parts, and a pile corpses more charr-black than pink.

“Hell yes!” Kara shouts, “The bomb went off inside the shield!”

“One bomb,” Sara says.

But then the rest of the spheres fall away, revealing nine ships blown to pieces. And three of the Marauders are dead as well--killed in the blast despite their biosuits--probably they didn’t have enough antimatter left to shield their vital organs or brains.

“Six Marauders,” Cygnus says. “Two-hundred Seraphim…”

“We need to attack!” I shout. “Malcolm and his squad are in that ship, ready to join us.”

“Alright,” Cygnus says. “Let’s go.”

* * *

“
I
can’t help
but think this feels fucking stupid,” Sara says.

It does feel stupid. There are seven of us in biosuits, loaded to the bring with antimatter at least, but still only seven of us.

We then have fourteen humans in combat armor, and Kara and Felicia’s drones hovering over us.

And we’re walking straight into six Marauders in biosuits, and an army of 200 Seraphim.

“Think how crazy they think we are,” Kain says.

“They’ll know we’re up to something,” Cygnus says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Seraphim break.”

“I trained them to kill each other,” I say. “Hopefully they’ll remember their training.

There’s a crater between us and the Darkstar army, and we climb the lip of the crater as Kara’s drone feeds an overhead view of them onto the corner of our HUDs.

Kara zooms in, and I see the Marauder generals waving their arms around, thrusting fingers at each other, while the Seraphim stand in disarray.

“They know there’s a traitor,” I say, “And they’re afraid to commit to an engagement before they figure it out.”

“I hope Malcolm will be okay,” Felicia says.

“Alright,” Sara says, “I know I was skeptical, but I’m all in now. Can you get eyes on Malcolm? Let’s unload some plasma beams down onto them from the crater lip, force them to start fighting. Don’t hit Malcolm and his squad.”

“How does that help him, exactly?” Felicia asks.

“They’ll be forced to start fighting,” Cygnus says, “locked down, and we give Malcolm a big opening to do whatever he’s got planned.

Kara and Felicia’s drones start to zoom way in until they can see faces through the faceplates of the suits. They take pictures in rapid fire, until Kara’s drone spots Malcolm. He looks right into the camera, tilts his head toward it to show the top of his helmet, and he traces an ‘x’ on it with his finger.

“Switch to ultraviolet view,” I say.

The view from Kara’s drone switches over, and I see that there is actually an ‘x’ painted on.

“How did you know that?” Sara asks.

“I did train them.”

Kara zooms out, and there’s over thirty other Seraphim with x’s painted on their helmets in ultraviolet paint.

“Shit,” Sara says, “They’re all spread out along the back line…”

“Perfect,” I say. “Everyone ready?”

Our small squad crawls the last few meters up to reach the lip of the crater,

A plasma beam shoots up toward Kara’s drone, blowing it to pieces.

“Shit,” she says, “Sending in another, pull back, Felicia.”

Felicia’s drone starts to lower down below the lip of the crater, just as we pull ourselves over it.

We all fire immediately. We can’t see anything, as the lip of their crater shields them, but our plasma beams sweep across the lip, melting it to molten rock. Within moments a wave of lava is pouring down the crater lip toward the Seraphim.

I watch on the view from Felicia’s drone as the Seraphim on the front lines all fall to the ground, their ankles melting out from underneath them, dropping their bodies into the molten rock. The middle lines of Seraphim begin to fall back, and the Marauders scramble, shielding themselves and leaving the Seraphim as cannon fodder. Ironically just as Adus wanted them to be used.

As the Seraphim run back, our human soldiers open fire into their backs, combining with our plasma beams. We cut them down dozens at a time, and Malcolm and his squad drop to the ground and open fire into the Seraphim lines.

Few Seraphim manage to get their guns up in time. Malcolm’s squad lobs grenades into the Seraphim as they run from lava and plasma and bullets, and the explosions totally break them. When the smoke clears and the magma hardens, there is nothing left of the Seraphim. Though Malcolm and his squad remain untouched.

But then one of the Marauders who fled fires a beam at Malcolm

“No!” Felicia shouts, but Malolm raises his hand and forms a shield.

“What the fuck?” Cygnus asks. “They gave a Seraphim a biosuit?”

Malcolm blocks the plasma beam as his squad falls in behind him. The rest of us open fire on the Marauders, and they stop firing on Malcolm to shield themselves and retreat.

Malcolm gives a hand signal for his squad to move around the edges of the crater, circling it to meet up with us.

Cygnus and I lead our squad down the lip of the crater--not wanting to stay to close to the edge for fear the Darkstar Marauders will melt the lip into our feet just as we did.

Kara’s fresh drone comes in behind us as we circle around toward Malcolm.

“That was totally badass,” Felicia says. “Did you see what he did?”

“We get it, Felicia,” Kara says, “You think he’s hot.”

Sara laughs, and Malcolm comes into view. We throw tendrils out to each other and to the rest of Malcolm’s Seraphim, and patch them into our comms network.

“I mean,” Felicia says, “Let’s just say that if Malcolm wanted to
claim
me...I would totally let him.”

“Who am I claiming?” Malcolm asks.