Titan Fleet: The Invictus Part 15

Chapter Seventy-Nine.

"Nova, I got it." yells Rusty through the comms. "Ive set it free out the rear hatch; its floating near the alien t.i.tan. Lets get out of here." Happy that he has found the beacon, Rusty holds on to the step ladder to the hatch, waiting for Nova to move off at speed. Nova has just witnessed seeing the mansion explode and the tracker on Paces armour going off line. She has even tracked the fighter, but that is also a wreck.

Rusty yells down the comms to Nova. "Lets kick it now or we are toast!" Nova burns the engines at full, but the blast from the PD1 just behind the s.h.i.+p, propels them forward but also knocks their cloaking device off line. The explosion, and the s.h.i.+p now being visible, attracts the attention of the alien t.i.tan s.h.i.+p once again and it begins to rain down fire on the Invictus, which is speeding away as fast as they can. More of the PD1 missiles. .h.i.t the t.i.tan s.h.i.+p and weakened from the battle before, it begins to break up the more that it is. .h.i.t, but as the last missile hits the hull and explodes, cracking the t.i.tan like an egg, a smaller vessel shoots out of the back, heading in the opposite direction at great speed.

"d.a.m.n it, they are getting away, Im gonna finish them!" cries Nova, tears pouring down her face and she is about to turn the s.h.i.+p around when she is stopped by Sam "Whats wrong? Stop. We have won, we are free, and we have saved so many people today." Breaking down totally, Nova can barely answer as she brings the s.h.i.+p to a sudden halt.

"Pace is gone. His suit tracker stopped. Noooo! Why is it always us? This s.h.i.+p is cursed. I hate it." Nova brings her fist down hard on Paces chair.

Sam runs over to Nova and embraces her with a warm hug of love. "Everyone dies, but he made a difference with the time he had, you should be proud to have known him, think of all the good times. Youre our captain now, finish his work. We are all here for you, dont worry."

Nova lifts her head from Sams chest. "Youre right, I know, its just ... We have lost so much, it hurts so bad." Nova wipes her eyes and sucks in a gasp of air to steady herself once again. "We need to get to the meeting point to catch up with Ca.s.sy and tell her the news. Its just not fair; she has only just found him." The engines glow once more as they head towards the meeting point.

Chapter Eighty.

Warning buzzers sound. They are faint at first, growing louder and louder as Pace begins to come around, his head spinning like a Waltzer ride at a fairground. He reaches up to release the canopy lever and the canopy fires off away from the fighter, doing a few flips as it goes, making lines in the sand. Pace falls out onto the ground. A piece of molten metal is now stuck to his metal arm and goes unnoticed as it welds itself to his shoulder plate.

He lies on his back, grateful that he is alive. He wonders how he survived the blast at all. The air rushes in and out of his lungs and he looks up at the clouds floating past, forgetting the world for a few moments and forgetting all his worries. He even sees the shape of a face that reminds him of an old school pal.

In this time, led flat out on his back, Pace feels rested again. There are two different colours of blood all over him. He had been impaled, cut, bruised and broken, and there he was alive, but with no possible escape.

Pace closes his eyes for a few moments while the suns rays wash over his body, warming his soul and making him smile again.

Images of Megan appear and her smile glowing at him. She was walking towards him in a poppy field, her red hair blowing in a gentle breeze, her hips swaying when she walked. It was peaceful there ... until the peace is broken by a blue destroying the poppies, running towards her, and the look of fear on her face, as Pace wakes with a jolt, spitting out blue blood in the process.

He was barely alive it seemed. Blood had stained the c.o.c.kpit and was now pooling on the floor. He could now hear screeches of blues coming from behind his head, so slowly he turns over onto his belly and looks forward, to see blues running in his direction, too many to count. Pace somehow finds the strength to rise to his feet. If he is going to die, he will do it fighting.

Pace staggers back towards the fighter to prop himself up tall, standing strong, blood dripping down his body and arms. The approaching blues do not know what to make of him. Now Pace has no suit, or gauntlet, or sword, just his metal arm and alien strength. Leaning back onto the wing of the fighter, he puts his hand onto a broken bar that was loose and easy to get free. This would be a great metal weapon with its sharp edges. Pace lifts it up and stands up straight and smashes the first small blue with it, gouging out part of its face with one swing. The creature flies to the left onto the floor.

The second blue launches in the air and Pace impales it through the chest and then punches it off the bar, to free up its use once again. Two more blues launch air-born attacks at Pace, and are broken before they hit the ground in a b.l.o.o.d.y mess. Creature after creature falls, making a circular pile of bodies around the front of the fighter.

Pace cannot be touched. He is fighting for his life and his mind is clear. He has killed over twenty blues now, and then a large blue comes running in at full speed and with nowhere to go, Pace is. .h.i.t backwards into the wing. Regaining his feet, he pulls on a power cable and wraps it around the creatures neck and in one movement runs up the creatures chest and jumps over its back, snapping its neck with a battle cry that puts off the next wave of blues.

"Come on, fight me!" Shouts Pace, and as he shouts a red mist appears around him. It begins to spin faster, circling him and then it begins to pa.s.s through him, like it did on the leader alien before. Every blue in the area stops their advance and steps backwards in fear. They had seen this many times before and usually it was bad news. Pace was frightened, but at the same time intrigued as to what may happen. Was he going to explode? It did not matter; he was not getting off the planet.

Suddenly, bolts of red lightning jumped from his body into the surrounding blues and they fell to the floor and began to shrivel up, turning into grey b.a.l.l.s as the life was sucked out of them. Pace was beginning to feel better. His wounds seemed to be healing with every blue that fell.

He began to walk forward and the blue aliens parted around him, fearing him. Even the giant blues moved quickly out of his way. Maybe they would leave him alone now. They did not want to follow him. Pace walked back towards the broken t.i.tan, in the hope he could use something to signal someone, and if there was nothing there, then on to White Crest. The blues did not follow him and the red mist began to disappear from around him.

Chapter Eighty-One.

Eves eyes open and she finds herself in a room, hanging from the ceiling over red coloured murky pungent water that makes her feel sick. The pipe has gone from her mouth now, but metal wires have entered her body all over. They were painful when she tried to move. She was cold and barely dressed, and she could hear the moans and groans of other humans on the s.h.i.+p. The room is dimly lit and she cannot see the walls. There is a small computer in front of her, which has a beam of light illuminating it. Stood behind it is a tall blue creature, around seven feet tall, who looks up every now and then at her.

"What are you doing to me?" asks a scared Eve. No answer is given, but the wires feel like they are drilling into her deeper. Two more wires drift down from the darkness above her, and one begins to drill into Eves ear, slowly splas.h.i.+ng blood down the side of her face. Eve screams out loud in absolute agony as her hearing fails in that ear. The pain is incredible as she clenches her fists to try to weather this storm, thinking it will all be over soon.

A second blue enters the room and points at Eve. Its silver metal fingers glimmer in the false light. Eve can smell rotting flesh out of her left nostril. Stuck up her right nostril is an oxygen pipe so that she could breathe. The green gas in the air floated around like old pub smoke, and as the two blues spoke in a screeching kind of sound, she knew more trouble was ahead for her, especially when a larger pipe was being dragged along the floor towards her by the two blues and a light beamed down from above.

As Eve looks up, a hatch opens above her and a single robotic arm lowers into the room and grips Eve by the head. She could not struggle now, even if she wanted. Tears begin to run down Eves face and her body begins to shake in fear. The metal drills start to unwind slowly from Eves skin and retract away out of sight, and Eve begins to bleed, adding to the ooze beneath her. She reaches up and grabs hold of the robotic arm, taking some of the pressure off her neck. The two aliens were working just a couple of feet below her, attaching the pipe to another pipe in the ooze. Bending over, a very long tongue from one of the blues dips into the pungent b.l.o.o.d.y slime and small suckers began to savour the taste as it took a few moments enjoying its meal.

The creature then stood up straight and reached up to Eves dangling leg and pulled her downwards to get a better look at her, the robotic arm still gripping at her head. The creature looked Eve straight in the eyes with its own orange eyes. They did not blink and its smell made Eve gag. The creatures tongue once again slid out from its mouth, showing its red stained teeth. Its tongue met with Eves face and slid over it finding blood to taste.

Eve brought down her two arms from above her head and grabbed the creatures tongue and gouged at one of his orange eyes. It let out a high pitched scream, but its tongue just wrapped around Eves hand, pulling it into its mouth, where its jaw clamped down on Eves hand with what seemed to be ten tons of pressure and billions of teeth. As she pulled back in pain, her hand was left inside the creatures mouth and it chewed happily. As Eve looked at the now b.l.o.o.d.y stump, and grabs the end of it with her other hand to try to stop the bleeding, she begins to feel dizzy and sick. The pain was disappearing as she entered shock. She could hear a high pitched screaming in the distance, but when she looked down, she realised the screaming was hers. The creatures eye, that had been hanging out on his face, was now back in its head and it was healing itself at great speed.

Then, shocking Eve, the creature spoke, "The deal was, you gave us people to eat and we gave you a chance to live. We have destroyed many worlds and many beings, but you were the only species that wanted to work for us. We had an endless supply of food and then you betrayed us by trying to escape your planet, and now you are all doomed, your race will be no more."

Eve begins to laugh, spitting out blood in the process. "You may think you will destroy us, but we have an edge over you and that is the spirit to survive. Now get on with it and kill me. I dont have time to acquaint myself with sc.u.m." Eve tries to kick the blue with her foot but misses.

The blue replies, as he licks the final bit of blood from its mouth. "We will find the ones who have escaped, they will be a tasty meal, but as for you, we will make your final days as slow and painful as we can, as your punishment." The creature presses a few b.u.t.tons on the computer and Eve, now giddy, begins to move upward towards the light and the opening above.

She enters a tube, where she is dragged along at such a speed her stomach gets knotted up and she begins to be sick, her vomit lining the inside of the tube behind her. All the while, the robotic arm is clutching her head tightly with its serrated fingers. She is freezing cold, which was a good thing as she could not feel pain now, which was a blessing.

The robot arm comes to a halt and another door opens below her, and she is dropped into a dark room with a green tinge. Her oxygen tube is ripped from her nose and lungs, which causes discomfort as she falls and hits a hard cold floor with a thud and she sprains an ankle, but she could breathe in this room at least. She feared to move as she sat defeated on the floor, tearing some of her blouse to begin to wrap the stump to try to stop the bleeding. It was so dark she could not see any further than two feet away from her, but what she could see was bones littering the floor and not just human bones.

Then Eves ears catch a grumbling, growling sound from a few feet away and grabbing for a large bone on the floor, she feels her heart begin to race as she then hears something begin to walk around in the room, sniffing and clawing at old bones, obviously looking for food. Eve grips the bone in her hand and decides to stay as still and quiet as she can, but she needs to find a way out of this room. She is breathing deeply and trying to slow herself down, when the footsteps grow closer and closer. She can feel the warmth in the air change around her when the thing is stood right next to her, sniffing at the air and ground looking for food. Eve holds her breath and the thing loses interest and wonders off, scratching as it goes. Eve can only imagine how big it was and how a bone would be useless against it. Then a tiny dot of a light flashes twice and then twice more in the darkness, and Eve, cradling her arm against her chest, turns onto her hand and knees and slowly begins to make her way towards the light, through all the bones, trying not to make a sound.

It takes some time, but she is just two feet away when she hears a quiet voice say, "Its ok, follow me, shush." The small light flashes every few minutes, so Eve can follow it, and eventually it stops and a large bang behind Eve shakes her bones with fright.

"Its ok, lights coming on now, cover your eyes, ok." One by one, tiny lights appear in the room lighting the corners, which in turn lights the whole room with a dim red glow, but enough to see what is in the room. Sat in one of the corners is a small boy, who is dressed all in black. Another human survivor, thought Eve.

"Thanks. Who are you, little one?" Eve is now sat on the floor, resting, looking around the room, which seemed safe for the time being. The boy is very shy and is only half facing Eve. He coughs as Eve tries to move closer to him to comfort him.

"Stay away from me, dont come no closer, please." shouts the boy.

"Ok, ok, its ok. Whats your name?" Eve stops shuffling and sits, still holding her hand tight. Now that she was getting warm again, the pain was intensifying once more.

"I think it is Stephen, I cant remember, whats yours?" Eve tries to get a closer look at the boy, but to her tired eyes he is just a boy dressed in black in the corner.

"Eve is my name. I am Prime Lady on Foloss. Havent you heard of me?"

The boy looks up quickly at Eve. "Yes, you are the one that put my family here when my parents stole some food so we could eat, and in that other room is my father and mother. They did not make it. If you are lucky, you may survive a while down here, but if I had known who you were I would have let you rot. You used us, and now Im going to use you." Eve looks at the boy, who is now stood up. Where his left arm used to be, there were now two tendrils, and the black clothing was just the boys charred skin, burned and scared and dirty.

The boy walked over to Eve. "See what you did to us. Im lucky to have survived the challenge this far. They experimented on me, cut me, bled me dry a few times and set monsters onto me, to see how I would do. So the next room, you can go in first and take a chance." Eve feels disgusted with herself, but what was done had to be done, she thought to herself, once again denying the evil doings as anything but to better mankind.

Lying, she touches the boy on his human shoulder. "I am so sorry, my dear boy, but it was not my choice. The General was holding my children to ransom, and I had to do these things to get them back. I hate myself for it, I really do." Pouring out crocodile tears, which Eve had used so many times before, she persuades the boy it was not her fault, and the boy asks Eve a question while looking into her teary eyes.

"Did you get to see your children again?"

Eve replies with a shake in her upset voice. "No, they may be here for all I know. I had a little boy and little girl. Perhaps we may find them, you said something about the next room." The boy walks over to the other door on the far side of the room and taps on it with his finger.

"One room after the next. Some rooms, there are supplies and some rooms there are monsters, its the chance you take. You could starve staying in one room or eaten in the next, who knows. It may be freedom behind this next door. Its ok; I have been playing this game for a long time now." The boys tendrils wrap around the rusty handle on the door, readying to open it for Eve.

"Are you ready, Eve?" Eve can hardly stand. She has lost a lot of blood, but the food and supplies had been used in this room and it was better to keep moving, and now there were two of them.

"Can I get one of those lights, Stephen, in case I get lost in the dark again?" Stephen pa.s.ses Eve a small light source and she clips it onto her skirt loop in front of her so she could use it, instead of holding it, she needed her hand free to hold the bone weapon. Eve takes a deep breath and Stephen opens the door to the next room and she walks in to it first, while Stephen stands in the doorway, afraid to enter.

The room looked like a science lab, very clean and there were a few oxygen tanks in the corner of the room, and a counter with a body on it under a white sheet. The sheet was blood stained and as Eve walked over to it to investigate, the door closed behind her, trapping her in the room. Stephen peered through the small window in the door with interest.

"Stephen, what are you doing?" Running back towards the door, Eve begins to panic. Stephen smiles back, "Just desserts for my parents." Eve spins around to see a large half blue, half human creature walking towards her. It had a metal claw for a hand on one side and two tendrils on the other side. It had scales all over its legs and birdlike feet. It was dark blue with orange eyes, but its face and chest were human. Although now scarred, it used to be a man, but all his hair had been eaten away by something, and bits of flesh hung off its head like leaves on a tree.

Eve hits the creature with the large bone in the face, and although it does some damage to its face, it grabs her with its strong tendrils and tosses her across the room, towards the table. Implements crash to the floor and she quickly grabs a scalpel and gets back to her feet, but the creature has once again grabbed her, but this time it picks her up and slams her onto a table, where it quickly secures her with straps. Eve drops the scalpel on the floor and she is once again defenceless. She cries out to Stephen for help, but to her disbelief, he is now stood behind the creature, looking on.

"Stephen, please help me!"

Stephen leans in and tightens a strap. "This will be painful, very painful. Oh, and I lied. This is my father, and you are our food, and with whats left we will feed to the dog in the next room, or you could have made a change and become like us, but that is forbidden, as the master told us." Eve tries to struggle but to no avail. The metal claw on the large creature grabs hold of Eves knee and thigh, and tears her leg clean off her body. It is held high in the air and the shoe falls off and lands on the floor. Eves eyes widen and the pain is immense, worse than when she lost her hand. She screams out in hope someone will help, and then she pa.s.ses out on the table in a pool of blood.

A few seconds later, she is awake again. The creature must have been a doctor in his old life, and has brought her back around again. This time she was wearing an oxygen mask and was feeling no pain, and a few tubes were stuck in her now naked chest. She looked down to see that her second leg had also been removed and the creature was cutting off her only good arm. Her heart beat was fast and she could hear the thumping of it in her head. These creatures were like cannibals and were cutting her up for food like she would cut up a cow or pig, but the worst was yet to come. Stephen approached the table with a large gla.s.s container with around twenty small parasites in it. He leans over Eve and lifts her oxygen mask up and he prises open her mouth with his two long sharp metal tendrils.

"Open wide, Eve. I know you lied to me about your children. I read everything about you and your life and how great you lived, while we all suffered, but you now will be the host for our children." Stephen pours the blue parasites into Eves mouth. They are like small scaly b.a.l.l.s covered with spikes. Their small fibres grip her tongue to help pull themselves down her throat, choking her of air as they fill the void of her windpipe. She shakes her head, struggling for air, thinking that this is her last few moments. Her senses are working overtime, trying to hear out of one ear and see with eyes full of water and grit, unable to wipe them as they stream salty water down her blood stained checks. She remembers the words of Stephen. "... just desserts," but it was too late to change now. What had been done was done.

Eve began to remember back to her childhood days, small flashes of good and bad memories ran through her mind at lightning speed. She had gotten her own way all her life and was very spoiled. Her father was Prime Gentleman while she grew up, and she remembered going to the end of school party and everyone laughing at the colour of her dress, as it did not match the colour everyone else was wearing. She was beaten up that night, and she went crying to her father, who took the matter further and had everyone involved whipped, twenty lashes for all to see. She knew from then on that she would be able to blackmail people for things she wanted, which made her powerful at a young age. She also began to remember her father carrying her on his shoulders through fields of flowers, and pus.h.i.+ng her on a swing. She felt so safe back then. Eves eyes close, but her heart is still beating as she lies on the table.

Chapter Eighty-Two.

Pace finally reaches the broken t.i.tan s.h.i.+p, outside all around the s.h.i.+p laid thousands of blues and Kalgoray, some still trying to crawl away from death with lines of blood following them to their end. The smell of death surrounds the area and Pace covers his nose as he walks towards an entranceway. Pace moves a pile of dead blues from a hatch and enters the t.i.tan once again. This time there were no guards and nothing stopping him.

It was cool inside and dark, but Pace could remember his way to the bridge with no real problems, apart from having to move bodies in awkward places to get by. Pace continued to walk towards the bridge, unaware that something was following him. It went unnoticed in the dark, skulking behind objects when it could and blending into the shadows as if it were mist. Pace turned around a few times to see something move, but thought it was just his imagination, or his eyes adjusting from the light to the dark.

Upon reaching the bridge, Pace notices some of the power going to life support was still working, but to get the comms up he would have to patch the power conduit from one terminal to the other and the align the dish, before he could even try to signal anyone, and then it would be down to how strong the signal would be and if anyone was close enough to hear it. But he had time on his hands and nowhere to go and all seemed quiet now.

Then realisation hit home. He was sat half-naked on the floor, with a turbo tool in his hand and no suit, which meant no gauntlet, which also meant that all of the files he had downloaded at Eves mansion were still on his gauntlet, now destroyed in the blast at Eves mansion. Shaking his head to himself, Pace carries on to undo the consoles bolts and then work his way through the ma.s.s of wires that seemed never ending. Systems come on and off and the doors opened and closed, and lights flickered on and off, until the comms console began to power up. The sound of buzzing was music to Paces ears.

He stands back up and walks up to the console. The dish was pointing in the wrong way and releasing the clamps that held it steady, the dish began to find a new direction. This was going to take a short amount of time and then Pace could hopefully send a message out, so Pace took the time to rewire other systems to increase the power output of the dish when it was aligned. Pace shrugged his shoulders. It felt as though someone was watching him. The hair on the back of his neck stood to attention, as if in a military parade and he knew something was behind him, somewhere lurking in the shadows. Normally this would frighten Pace somewhat, but now he just did not care.

Speaking in a loud voice and peering over his right shoulder, looking down the corridor, Pace waits to see if anything moved. "I know you are there and Im not scared in the slightest. Why dont you come out and stop wasting my time, eh?" The air around Pace begins to feel heavy and a green mist begins to form in front of Paces eyes, and Pace stumbles backwards, expecting a blue to come running at him, but the green mist is somewhat different to the usual green gas that he has seen before. The green mist begins to take form, at first a face of a Gulmed and then a body, and although it is still in mist form, it can move like a normal Gulmed.

"Do not fear me. I have been sent to protect you. You have been attacked by the blues nanites, which appeared to you as a red mist. They drain the life force from others to make you strong, they were engineered that way. However, we were engineered a different way. We can still heal you but not at the cost of other life forms. We can help you to rest and offer a force-field so that you can walk free of s.p.a.cesuits and still breathe at the same time, and if you wish it, we can cure the blue parasites in your body returning your body to human again. This will take time and we would need to re-enter your body, and that is where we will stay, until you are well and we can return to our master."

Pace is gob smacked and relieved at the same time. No longer will he have to look like a freak and no longer worry about becoming totally blue, as the parasite was still spreading slowly.

"Ok, a mist thingy is talking to me and telling me what I want to hear. I must have some sort of sickness again, d.a.m.n parasites." Pace shakes his head and closes his eyes, but the Gulmed mist is still there in front of him when he opens them again. "You are real then? Can you really fix me up, and what about the red nanites still in my body? Some of them still must be in me if what you say is true."

"We would overpower the red nanites and destroy them. This would be quite painful. It will be like having a war inside of your body, but we will win, I a.s.sure you of it." The green mist Gulmed walks slowly up to Pace. "Do you trust us?"

Pace smiles and raises his eyebrows, "Not much to lose really, go for it. The dish will be online in around half an hour. I dont suppose you have a mist s.h.i.+p out there, that we could fly off in, do you?" Pace laughs at such a thought. The green mist enters his body, in and out, knocking him to the floor. Spasms jolt every muscle in his body and the pain is like having cramp all over at once. He cant even speak, it is so painful.

After a few minutes, the spasms become less and less. The green mist had won and although very dizzy, Pace is able to sit up slowly, although his stomach muscles feel like he has done a few hundred sit ups. Now it is just a question of time and he would be better again. The Gulmeds are so advanced, to have designed such things, he thought as he typed away on the console once more.

A second screen popped up and Pace could see that thousands of blues were now approaching the t.i.tan once again. They must have known the red nanites were gone and Pace was fair game food again. Pace was quick to work this out, and finding a gauntlet on a dead guard, he slid it onto his arm, where it began to adjust to his body system and power up. At least he had a blaster this time, and a new green glow about him in the way of a force field. It would be interesting to see how well it did against a blue, or what now seemed to be an army of them, all marching on his location. He just needed a bit more time for the dish to align and then he could send a message for help from his gauntlet, in theory anyway.

Pace manages to get some of the broken turret guns back online, in a feat of engineering his parents would have been proud of, and with sweat pouring from his brow, he closes the hatch doors and begins to vent oxygen into the s.h.i.+p, the air ducts now blowing cool air into his face and he pauses for a moments rest.

The peace is broken by turret fire, and Pace wonders if he will get a chance to sleep after all this is done, but he is feeling remarkably well for the state he is in. It must be the nanites working their magic, he thinks. A message flashes up on the console screen telling him that the dish had finished moving, and the clamps were engaged once more and Pace stands in front of the screen, ready to send his mayday message. Explosions rocked the s.h.i.+p, but the turrets blew apart many of the blues that were brave enough to get close, and none of the blues had gotten onto the t.i.tan yet.

"Mayday, mayday! This is Captain Pace of the Invictus. I am marooned on Foloss. Can anyone hear me? Over?" Pace looks at a blank, fuzzy, grey screen. "I say again, mayday, mayday. This is Captain Pace of the ..."

He is interrupted by the face of a man on the screen, smiling back at him. "We read you Captain. This is Acting Captain Kaylen of the mining s.h.i.+p, Malachite. By the looks of things, you need an urgent pick up. Get on top of the s.h.i.+p and we will swing by for you."

Pace is amazed that the signal was picked up by someone, but then remembered that Ca.s.sys husband and Lily were on board a mining s.h.i.+p, heading towards the rendezvous point, so they could be on board this s.h.i.+p with any luck.

"Great to hear your voice, Captain, but you better get your skates on, I dont have much time."

Kaylen nods and is gone, and Pace begins to travel upwards through the decks to the outer hatch, on the top of the t.i.tan, where he opens it and climbs out, closely followed by a blue, which attacks him on his back, but is repelled by the force-field generator. It was already burnt and bleeding on the floor, when Pace realises he was attacked. He slams the hatch shut and notices a dozen blues, scurrying along one side of the s.h.i.+p, where the turrets had gone silent. He readies himself for combat, blasting the first one that shows its face, and it falls off the side of the s.h.i.+p in a blue and purple splash of colour. Pace can see a fast shuttle s.h.i.+p appear in the clouds, and the s.h.i.+p cuts two lines of pain through the ranks of the ma.s.sing blues, and then hovering just feet from Pace, Kaylen offers a hand to Pace, which Pace grips it with all his life and Kaylen pulls Paces heavy body on board the ramp of the s.h.i.+p, blasting a leaping blue at the same time. The blue falls to its doom. A second one makes the jump from the t.i.tan onto the ramp, where Pace punches it to one side of the s.h.i.+p, and Kaylen and another man jump on it and hold it down, while they use their suits mining drills to drill deep into it. They crack it open like they would a gold vein, but this time only blood runs free, and the blue is defeated. However, this blue begins to regenerate slowly, and so they push it of the ramp, as they did not want to fight it twice. It falls like a paper plane in a circle, to the dusty planet below.

"Thanks! Thought that was it for me for some time, I must say." Pace stands up, brus.h.i.+ng himself off. "I know Im blue, but Im being healed as we speak. Its a long story, that I will fill you in on later." Kaylen pushes the close b.u.t.ton to the ramp, and it rises up and seals for s.p.a.ce flight.

"I know all about you, Captain. Im Ca.s.sys husband, Kaylen. That makes you my brother in my book. Lets get you some food and a shower on my s.h.i.+p." Pace is pleased that Ca.s.sy married such a hero of a man; he would look after her no doubt.

"Nice to finally meet you, Kaylen. Can you get word to the Invictus for me, and tell them Im ok." Pace follows Kaylen to a seat, where he sits down and looks at the pilot, as Kaylen instructs him to contact the Invictus.

The screen comes to life on Novas seat in front of her.

"Invictus, this is Captain Kaylen of the Malachite. We have Captain Pace aboard. He is alive and well, and we will bring him to the meeting point with us. Over and out." Nova shouts with joy, as she was just about to contact Ca.s.sy to tell her that Pace was dead. She did not care about how he was alive, but was just relieved that he was.

"Pace is alive, everyone. All is well and we are all safe. There is no sign on my scanners of any blue s.h.i.+ps in the area, so sit back, relax and enjoy the ride." Nova is dancing in her chair and cant wait to get to the meeting point to hug Pace again.

Kaylens s.h.i.+p floats up out of the atmosphere without a trouble, and glides through s.p.a.ce, before docking with the Malachite. It was an old s.h.i.+p but a solid one. It had many mining blasters pointing down and was a deep red in colour. The s.h.i.+p could hold a few hundred people, but was carrying almost a thousand, so every corridor and every room was crammed with people fleeing for their lives.

"Sorry about s.p.a.ce on board, Captain. We saved as many as we could. We have a second vessel some distance behind, which is full too, but we are alive and free. Come with me, you can share my quarters. You heard that you have a niece, then?" Pace squeezes past a group of people, and follows Kaylen to his room near the bridge.

"I would love to meet Lily." Opening the sliding door to his room, Kaylen is greeted by a small girl, dressed in a pretty little dress.

"Daddy, Daddy!" She runs from her nanny into Kaylens arms. "Hey Lily, this is your uncle Pace, say h.e.l.lo, Lily." but Lily slides out of Kaylens arms and hides around the back of his legs.

"Its ok, Kaylen. I must frighten her, the way I look. Ill come back when Im better and then she can see the real me. Ill bunk up somewhere else, its no problem." Pace shakes Kaylens hand. Lily is still clutching his leg and peeping at Pace every now and then. Pace leaves the room and grabs a blanket and sits in a corner of the canteen, where he drifts slowly off to sleep, warm and safe for the first time in ages. It was so good to hear other people laugh and sing once again.