“Come on, come on!”
Miron raced toward the skimmer with rest of his unit. They’d watched the ground pounders dropping all over Redmoon and had gotten to their first before it even landed. He and the other three scholars did what they’d been told to do, and the ground pounder simply fell out of the sky. It hit so hard that the leg sections broke up, and he knew that his alien was dead. The other scholars reported varying levels of pain and agony, so it seemed pretty certain that this ground pounder was out of commission. They hadn’t even had to get out of the skimmer.
The second one was harder. It was already on the ground and firing shells toward Redmoon, lighting up the early morning sky with explosions. They’d gotten almost within range of it when something moved on the side facing them and a laser pulse hit the ground right in front of their skimmer. Somehow the Lead Guard managed to keep it upright, veering behind a small hill. He yelled at them to get out, to run up the hill and get in range, and they managed. Dropping to the grass atop the hill, they projected into the invaders’ minds. The effects were horrific. One Voloth opened a hatch in the floor of that blocky top and fell out, and the ground pounder stomped on him. Then it stopped moving, and two more Voloth dove out, breaking their necks when they hit the ground. The last one never appeared, but Hil, the young woman who was in his mind, said that he’d just…broken.
Now they were running back to the skimmer, the Lead Guard shouting at them to hurry. Every tick that passed meant more shells being lobbed into Redmoon, more buildings being destroyed, more Alseans dying. Not everyone had evacuated. But even if there hadn’t been a single soul left in the city, Miron would have given his last breath to save it.
They piled into the skimmer and moved off, the Lead Guard hardly waiting for the vehicle to fully lift up on its thrusters before putting it in gear.
“We don’t have decent cover,” one of the warriors called over the wind rushing past.
“It doesn’t matter; we can’t wait.” The Lead Guard drove straight ahead, slicing across the fields toward the monster that was stomping ahead of them. “Start projecting now!” he called over his shoulder.
It was too far out. Miron knew it was too far, but he tried anyway. He could feel their minds, but he couldn’t grasp any of them. And then he was flying through the air.
He hit the ground hard and rolled some distance before coming to a stop. Coughing the acrid taste out of his mouth, he sat up and looked around.
The skimmer was a burning hulk of metal, and all around him were bodies. Some of them moved; others didn’t.
He felt the thumping, the vibrations going through his legs as they rested on the ground. One of the scholars screamed.
“It’s coming back! It’s coming for us!”
Miron twisted around and saw the giant block of tubes and wiring moving toward them. He was mesmerized by the sight, unable to do anything but watch their impending death.
“Stop them!” someone else shouted. “Come on, stop them before they kill us!”
Jolted into action, he reached out and slid into an alien mind that was now within range, reeling when it immediately snapped. His own terror must have amplified the effect. Reaching for a second one, he shoved his fear at it, mentally screaming for it to die. It snapped as well.
The ground all around him sprayed upwards as projectiles ripped up the land, and something tugged at his leg. When he glanced down, everything seemed to slow.
His leg was lying half a body length away, torn and bloody at one end. A shard of bone protruded from the place on his body where the leg had once been. His ears filled with a dull roaring sound as he stared at it. The bone was so white that it didn’t look real…and maybe it wasn’t real. After all, it didn’t hurt. He couldn’t feel a thing.
He looked up at the ground pounder, now standing motionless on its giant legs. Some sort of gun was still pointed at him, but it had stopped firing. Still wrapped in that strange, slow calm, he reached out and found nothing left of the Voloth. At least one of the other scholars had been able to get to them. This ground pounder would never fire another shell at Redmoon.
He watched the blood pouring out of his leg and remembered reading somewhere that when it spurted like that, it meant his heart was pumping the blood out.
“I guess that’s it, then,” he murmured. Then he smiled. “But we got three of you.”