Chapter Seven

Desslok looked again at the radar hologram in his left hand, mentally tracking the journey of the various craft across their flight paths. A chill wind was blowing through the abandoned business district of the Megalopolis, sending dark clouds to cover the sky. That low visibility would work in their favor.

He redirected his gaze to the towering buildings around them, their darkened windows hiding the operatives within. The rest of their soldiers were scattered around the roadways leading up to the single building at the very center of the entire city, the tallest on the planet. Most of the space had been repurposed as a coordination center for the forces distributed around Terran airspace.

He looked upwards, towards the very top of the tower, only identifiable by the flashing white light showing through the cloud cover.

Their single complete database of all their information about the invasion force.

"I think we're clear," Royster said in his headset, crackling from the secure communication line. A brief pause, then, "Verified. We're clear for infiltration."

"Phase One, initiate."

Shots rang out in the stillness, followed mere moments later by the sound of breaking glass as the sharp, deadly shards tumbled from their former positions to meet the street far below. The fighters swung out across the gap and landed within the darkness of the tower, almost a thousand feet up.

At almost the same moment, Desslok switched the readout on his handheld monitor to the infrared setting, the soldiers standing out in shades of bright red and yellow against the cold metal. In response to the threat, the guards were already shifting positions, heading to the middle levels.

"Phase Two."

Five Galman bombers SMITE'd in, immediately strafing the building on the lower levels, taking care to leave the supports intact. As the anti-aircraft batteries swung up to fire, the bombers dropped off the radar, only to have a squadron of Terra Cosmo Tigers shoot the AA batteries off their supports.

"Phase Three."

The fighters peeled off, back into the upper atmosphere, closely pursued by a Dinguil fighter squadron.

Desslok met Nova's eyes, and she nodded. He drew Wildstar's Astro-automatic, flipping the safety off at the same time.

"Phase Four."

The operatives arranged around the building broke cover and ran flat-out for the main entrance. The defenders were caught off guard briefly, but quickly rallied and began firing down into the crowd.

Nova loosed a grenade and flung it directly into a cluster of enemy snipers. While they were still dazed from the explosion, Desslok sent a deadly volley of sapphire blasts into the defenders' forces.

"Nova, get ready to run."

She looked over at him and nodded grimly, sending off a final few shots.

Desslok looked over at the fierce volley, counting silently.

"How am I even going to get through that?"

"Trust me."

She nodded slowly, and he carefully took aim.

"Now!"

His sidearm fired, the blue bolt tearing through the thin support strut that was now the only thing holding a heavy metal beam aloft. Almost gracefully, the beam fell, slamming into the ranks of Dinguilian snipers perched at the edge of the building before toppling over the edge and crushing the gun emplacements that tried to slow its fall.

In the sudden absence of cover fire, Nova dashed across the asphalt and beneath the protective cover of the front doors. She turned back to him and nodded once.

He was almost halfway across when a flash of bright metal alerted him to the newcomers.

A red-tinted bolt whistled past his head as he ducked, barely missing. The masked soldier was taking aim again when another blast slammed into him and Nova darted to his side, gripping her weapon tightly, safety off.

"Nova!" someone shouted over the radio.

"Get inside," Nova ordered. "We'll take care of them and catch up in a bit."

"Um, guys?" Royster said slowly. "They're not the only ones."

Desslok looked down at the holographic projection and instantly understood what Royster meant.

Two huge masses of Dinguilian fighters were converging directly on their location.

He looked up, meeting Nova's eyes. Her sharp gaze held his, and she nodded grimly.

She spun around to face the soldiers, laying down a powerful volley of cover fire as Desslok sent off several precise shots that downed those who dared move from cover.

"Royster!" Desslok shouted over the headset as a few shots whistled past. "Can you hack their defense systems?"

A brief silence, then: "I can try."

We still need a backup strategy.

He dropped back quickly and switched over to another frequency. "Talan?"

"Leader, we're picking up several Dinguil squadrons converging on your position. Kai's flight group is launching now."

Desslok smiled slightly. "You read my mind."

"I have known you practically our entire lives. It's not that hard to predict what you think."

"Fair point."

Another soldier leaped out of cover, leveling a grenade launcher at their position. Faster than thought, Desslok whipped around and shot the explosive from the air. His second round soared unerringly through the cloud of smoke to impact solidly in the left side of his chest.

Red fire burst all around them, setting alight a few patches of debris, but he knew it was nigh impossible to hit two small moving targets from the cockpit of a strike fighter. The ground troops had far better odds.

As the squadron came screaming around for another pass, Royster let out a triumphant shout over the comm bands. In response, the fighters released a blistering attack against the clustered Dinguil soldiers as they soared overhead, vanishing into the darkened sky as they looped around.

Desslok caught a flash of emerald out of the corner of his eye at about the same moment the distinctive sound of SMITE transport reached his position.

Oh, excellent. . .

"Nova, take cover!"

"We're dead!" the young warrior shot back as she let off a few parting shots before going to duck behind a decorative column at the front of the neighboring building.

Accurate assessment.

Only a moment later, the Gamilon fighter squadron Talan had called in shot down one of Royster's commandeered Dinguilian ships. With the pilot unable to recover from the hit, and their hacker distracted by the numerous planes he was controlling, the fighter came spiralling down to make a fiery landing right in the center of the enemy forces.

The resultant explosion, flaring bright white before dimming slightly to shades of red and gold, released a shockwave that brought down the few remaining intact glass windows in the nearby area, shattered stone, and twisted metal.

"All right down there?" Kai crackled in their headsets as his squadron streaked over their heads in pursuit of the remaining autonomous fighters.

"No thanks to you," Nova retorted. She glanced over at him, blowing her disheveled hair out of her face.

"Stay in the area in case we need your 'assistance' again."

"I can hear you smirking at me! . . . Sir."

Nova chuckled as she brushed off dust and replaced the plasma cartridge in her Astro-automatic. "Shall we?"

Desslok opened the metal skeleton of what had once been an impressive glass door and bowed. "After you, milady."

Nova rolled her eyes as she entered the building, black boots crunching on the powdered glass littering the marble floors.

The first few hundred stories were silent, the only signs of disturbance their strike team's footprints in the glass from the blown-out windows.

On the 467th floor, already into the low-hanging clouds, they heard the telltale sounds of combat; the whistling of small missiles, the harsh concussive blasts of the resulting explosions, and the hiss of rifle fire.

Desslok twisted the holographic display around to give a larger-scale image of their surroundings and hissed in combined frustration and anger, even as Nova crept to the corner and slowly peeked around, swiftly jerking her head back as a bolt whipped past her face.

"They're pinned down in there," she noted.

"And the current Dinguil forces are merely trying to hold the defense lines until they can regroup and send in the military's elite." Desslok glanced towards the vicious battle in the next room and scowled. "It'll be a slaughter."

"Where are we trying to get to, again?" Nova murmured absently.

"The control room that can conveniently only be accessed via a single elevator which opens into that room."

"Pity."

He glanced over at her, one eyebrow lifted. "You are not listening to me, are you."

Nova remained silent for several long moments, staring up at a small overhang above them that should overlook the room beyond, before turning and smiling. "Nope, but I've got a plan."

A polished stone wall exploded outward and Nova removed her fingers from her ears, grinning triumphantly. "I told you they wouldn't hear us."

Desslok rolled his eyes. "Yes, mock me for being the voice of caution."

"I intend to," she responded cheerfully and walked out onto the platform. From here, the bright plasma flashes were clearly visible in the darkness.

Suddenly, Nova's gaze narrowed to one of the more recent Star Force members, the young gunner Sakimaki, as he fell from a shot to the lower abdomen from the apparent leader of the Dinguil soldiers. The masked officer stepped up to his side and leveled his sidearm at Sakimaki's head; though Nova couldn't see beneath his helmet, she could quite clearly envision the cruel smirk across his face.

Nova braced herself for the leap, even though she knew she would never reach them in time, when a voice suddenly screamed "No!" and a small form lunged forward and tackled the soldier to the ground, knocking his weapon from his hand. A shot tore through his helmet and ended his life in a moment as Nova rolled to her feet a few meters from Sakimaki and cried out, "Earth Forces, counterattack!"

At her sudden appearance, the Earthling fighters let out a collective battle cry and sent a simultaneous volley across the arena, decimating the Dinguil forces. As they began to recover from the first assault, several sapphire beams sliced into the enemy combatants. Nova turned and met Desslok's gaze where he stood atop the overhang and nodded, which he returned with a smirk and a two-fingered salute.

The Dinguil swiftly regrouped and countered the sudden Terrance aggression, but Nova noted inwardly that they were quite clearly accustomed to civilians being easily suppressed, and every time one of their volunteer soldiers acted in a manner more consistent with trained military members, it unnerved them even more than the tales of the Yamato and her crew.

Nova sighed in relief as the last enemy fell dead at her feet, and then jumped as Desslok appeared in front of her and smoothly shot down a fighter advancing on her from behind.

"You need to get our people out of here," Desslok ordered as he turned to an older woman in black combat armor. "A major enemy force is advancing on our position. Treat the wounded enough so that they can make it out - " he glanced around sorrowfully at the few Terran corpses " - and leave the dead."

"Yes, my lord," she acknowledged, saluting, before she turned back to the partisans and began relaying his orders.

"Let's go," Nova whispered, and quietly slipped across the battlefield towards the sliding glass doors that opened onto the lift to the database.

They had almost reached it when Desslok stiffened imperceptibly and suddenly whirled, aiming his Astro-automatic directly at the face of a young and very surprised Dinguil boy.

He relaxed and reholstered the weapon, sighing in mild irritation. "You should not have followed me so quietly," Desslok chided. "I might have killed you."

"But you didn't," the boy pointed out, and then looked away. "If you had been Dinguil, you would have shot without looking. But you didn't."

"Your point?"

"I want to help. I don't want to have to be complicit in what my people do to your people, to so many others." He looked up sadly at him, blue eyes wide. "You are fighting with honor. I want to be a part of that."

Nova nodded in understanding, and then said gently, "And part of that honor is keeping children from having to fight. I'm sorry, but you'll have to go with the others."

"We don't have time for that," Desslok said shortly, and swiftly stepped in front of them both as a shot whistled from the dark and tore into his right shoulder.

Nova swept her sidearm from its holster and fired off several blind shots as she opened the glass doors and shoved the boy through behind her. Plasma blasts skipped around them as Desslok staggered into the lift, supporting himself on the glass wall. The doors swiftly slid closed on the advancing enemy and they shot up into the tower.

"Desslok, are you - "

"I'm fine," he gasped out, pressing one hand to the blood welling up on his wound, shocking scarlet against the grey of his uniform.

She tapped her earpiece, switching it to the Excelsior's frequency before saying, "Talan, Desslok's slightly injured and we've made it into the lift, but there's a small army waiting at the bottom. Are there any other ways out of the tower?"

Talan's sigh crackled in her ear. "I'm sorry, Nova, but finding anything just off radar scans will take time. I can have them look, but we might not be able to find anything swiftly enough."

"Please look, thank you." She switched off the link and rubbed her temples, trying to stave off a headache.

"I know a way out."

Nova twisted around to stare at him, but before she could react to that unexpected statement, Desslok said painfully, "And how are we to know you are trustworthy?"

The boy looked away, clearly uncomfortable, and something about his stance tickled at her memory.

"You were the boy who tackled the officer to the ground when he was about to shoot one of ours."

The boy looked up at her and hesitantly nodded.

Desslok laughed, but it was harsh and strained. "You could have mentioned that sooner."

"Probably."

The lift slowed down before stopping gently at the top of the tower with a pleasant ding as the doors slid open. In the room beyond, a few Dinguil soldiers looked up in surprise. First a moment, they remained standing in silence before two of them went down from several sapphire beams. Nova whipped out her sidearm, downing the last as he ran for their communications.

Desslok moved to sit in front of the main database, dropping his Astro-automatic to the table and awkwardly bringing up the screen left-handed. Nova hooked up the transmitter Royster had programmed as he began the remote download, sending the contents of the database to their headquarters.

Nova tapped her earpiece. "Royster, you got it?"

"Oh, absolutely. This will be fun."

She smiled and cut the connection, straightening and then grabbing onto the edge of the table as the tower shook. "What the - "

"The Dinguil just set off an explosion above a quarter of the way up from the lift. The tower is now highly unstable."

"Excellent," Desslok said sarcastically as he stood and carefully reholstered his weapon. "I hope your friend knows what he's doing."

"Aha!"

"Sounds like it," Nova replied sotto voce.

"This way, you two! Hurry!" the boy called out, waving them over to what appeared to be an empty alcove. As he spotted their skeptical expressions, he shook his head and said, "It's a variant of SMITE technology that provides a stable portal from one location to another."

"Um, Desslok?"

"Yes?"

"Our radar scans are picking up the Dinguil forces setting up several powerful explosives which will likely destroy what little of the building is still standing."

Desslok closed his eyes briefly before he turned to the Dinguil child. "If this fails, I will kill you."

The boy merely smiled in response and stepped into the alcove.

The three of them burst out the front entrance of the building just as fire billowed through the destroyed windows. As they walked towards the cluster of transports assembled in the debris-strewn plaza, the building began to collapse behind them, the metal and stone edifice crumbling under its own weight before settling to the ground amidst a cloud of dust.

Nova turned and looked behind at the destruction. "Here's hoping we actually managed to download the right information and not the Dinguil version of Galaga."

"We did a bit more than that, Nova." Royster said.

"How so?" Desslok demanded.

"We've found her. The Yamato."