Emergence by Chris Harris (best feel good books .txt) 📕

Strom knew that, as a member of the military, he would need to get to the military-base in the centre of the Hub; half a mile away. Streets were ruined and wrecked, distorted from the flat and straight structures they were, into twisters and spirals of rubble. Some had craters that reached the plumbing and electrical networks below. Sparks shot from them irregularly, so Strom endeavoured to avoid them. There was no other living Raanian outside, only corpses and remains; a severed hand still gripped a case's handle tightly, but the rest of the body was nowhere to be seen. Tired from the sprinting and his fight, Strom tried to run but found he could not, having to double over, hands on his knees, and gasp for breath from the poison air; Raan's industrial district cast pollutants over the North. His side hurt as he breathed, as if a knife was twisted into his lung. He rubbed his side, realising that the pain must be from where the Xaosian hit him. He walked towards his goal as he tried to catch his breath and, when he did so, he broke into a jog before running again, not as fast as before. Few Xaosian troopers were around, but broken and felled buildings were in no short supply and neither was the amount of Reapers he saw overhead.

Strom ducked behind a ten-foot high remnant of a skyscraper as he arrived at the Hub. Xaosian troopers were everywhere, shooting civilians as they fled, killing them instantly. Some tried to fight back, and they were dispatched with cruelty: the acid ammunition melted through their chests in under a minute, but that's a long time for someone to feel their bones melt away. Others tried to flee in their Autos, but they were destroyed by the Xaosian Crushers; tanks the size of houses and moved, instead of on caterpillar treads, on massive steamroller-esque barrels, allowing the vehicle to crush everything the huge tank cannon, nor the ones on the barrels' axles, could not destroy.

Strom knew he had two choices; sprint through and hope for the best, or take it slowly and sneak past troops. He contemplated it for a moment before deciding.

With a deep breath, he set the X-46 to Projectile-kill.

Leaning around his shelter, he saw two Xaosians; one held a woman by her blonde hair as she knelt in front of him, while the other brandished a long serrated combat-knife. Strom took aim and shot the one holding the knife, who fell flat, the knife clattering on the concrete road. The other one, alerted by the gunshot, took aim at where Strom was standing and opened fire. This was no X-46, this was the U-7 Machine Weapon. Four ammo settings; three similar to the X-46, but with an extra setting for explosive shells. The U-7 held huge amounts of ammunition, and the Xaosian had four extra belts crossed over its back; one for each ammunition type. Strom recognised the ammo currently sending shards of shrapnel at him as Projectile-kill. The shooting stopped for a moment and Strom took advantage of this reprieve, leant out from his cover and shot the Xaosian three times; leg, chest, head. The Xaosian staggered back, before dropping to the floor, armour pierced by the high-intensity bullets.

Strom ran over and, after glancing at the sobbing woman to make sure she was okay, grabbed the U-7 and, noting the small amount of Projectile-kill ammo left, switched to Explosives. He could not see any Xaosians around but the Crusher loomed ahead, facing the other way, the shots gone unheard. He looked towards the military-base. To his horror, the one bridge into the base had multiple Crushers and possibly hundreds of troopers on it, all striving to break the base.

“No...” he muttered to himself; he had no way in.

And if he stayed outside, he would almost definitely die.

Trexor clenched his fists, staring at the horror outside via the huge array of screens. He watched hundreds – if not thousands – of Xaosian troops make barricades on the Military-Bridge from the debris that their Crushers, which remained to the sides of the barricade, had created. All around, buildings crumbled, their grey bricks falling from sky; this was a hard rain. Another screen showed him a view from Raan's orbit, where the Oribtial Defence System (ODS) was in tatters, open circuitry and explosive pods suspended in the desolate vacuum. The Raanian Stinger-Class Aerospace-Fighters darted back and forth in a dreadful, almost ominous, silence. When the larger Xaosian ships fired upon them, they exploded in equal silence and when the ship was destroyed, the pilot's suit was ruptured and he asphyxiated in a deathly silence. In the midst of the clash between Reapers and Stingers was a much larger ship.

The Dominion was a behemoth; a monstrous feat in Aerospace engineering, this ships fired upon what remained of Raan's ODS with the power of the Solus* itself; inspired by the Adjeti World-Burner absorbed through enhanced solar-panels, The Dominion was able to convert light and heat into a laser-like weapon of mass destruction. Trexor watched the laser obliterate an Orbital Cannon, shattering it into jagged, blackened shards that joined their brothers in a floating grave.

As Trexor turned away from the screens, his eyes fell on a man on a stretcher, injured on the Bridge as the Xaosians first moved in. His right leg was stripped of skin, to the bone in some cases. Trexor could make out the pulsing arteries that spewed out spurts of blood like a half-empty bottle. In the few areas where dark pink muscle was still attached to bone, it was lacerated and burnt. But it wasn't just the man's leg that was injured; a chunk of his left cheek was missing, sheared off by flying shrapnel. In his younger years, Trexor may have retched at the very sight, but instead his nose wrinkled in disgust; he had seen worse injuries whilst patrolling the Northernmost parts of Tapal.

“Trexor!”

Trexor turned to see Admiral Fairns walking towards him. “Admiral.” Trexor responded, bowing his head briefly.

“We need you ext there.” The Admiral said. “Ext on the front lines.”

“And you would send us all to our deaths, sir.” Trexor replied, as bluntly as the Admiral had spoken.

The Admiral grimaced. “Then what would you suggest?”

“Teams of snipers from the windows on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors,” Trexor said quickly; he had already thought this through, “Get the Stingers to distract and take down the Crushers. My team will move in, with the snipers covering us.”

The Admiral mulled this over. “This seems viable. Get your team ready, I'll sort the rest.”

Trexor bowed his head again as the Admiral turned and walked away, speaking into his Communicator. “Idiot...” Trexor muttered.

No-one turned from the screens as Trexor walked by, the horrific images displayed both captivating and terrifying them. United in their silence, they gazed with wide eyes, most of them barely older than boys. Trexor shook his head; this was not right. He scanned the computer bays until he found what he was looking for.

“You!” Trexor said as he reached his destination. “Name?”

The girl at the computer pushed his outstretched finger away from her face. “I'm Tya, General. Wha' do you wan'?”

Trexor noted the Northern accent.“You're in charge of the ODS?”

“At the momen' sir; Officer Amei is injured, sir.” said the flustered girl.

Trexor leaned in. “Just because your from the North, doesn't mean you have to call us Southern twats “sir” all the time.”

“Yes General.” Tya said.

“Now, you answer to me from now on.” Trexor said.

“Bu', Admiral Fairns-”

Trexor leant in towards her and hissed, “Fairns is an idiot; he can't make the decisions best for this planet. Best for us. His plan would've got me and all of my team slaughtered. I am in charge now.”

Tya moved away, sliding her chair along the computer bay's railing. “...Wha' do you wan'?”

“Your loyalty. And with that comes the control of the ODS. Full control. How much of it do we have left?”

Tya turned to her computer. “Abou' Seventeen percen', but only four of the Orbital Cannons remain.”

“Turn two cannons off, and keep them like that until I say otherwise. Don't ask questions!” Trexor's tone softened. “Just do as I tell you. And don't tell Fairns.”

Trexor turned to walk away, but quickly turned back. “I will be in contact. Watch the coms.”

There was a group of men near the the weapons bay, who turned to Trexor as he arrived. Trexor surveyed them; there was probably over fifty of them, but no more than seventy. All of their armours had pockmarks, dents and holes in, and Trexor could see wounds ranging from cuts and bruises, to a full bloody gash lining one man's face. “General Trexor, sir.” said one of the men nearest to him; Reinf. The others soon followed suit, their voices wavering. Trexor sensed the fear emanating from them.

“Men. You have been chosen for this task because you are all we've got. I'm not going to sugar-coat this and say that you're the best, because you're probably not.” Trexor noticed that some of the men exchanged looks at this, but he continued anyway. “That aside, you are the last line of defence for this city. We are the last line. You may be scared right now, and you should be. The Xaosians ext there want you dead. Their machines want you dead. Their entire planet wants you to die. Hell, even Admiral Fairns was prepared to send us on a suicide mission. But I said no! Our planet needs more men, men like you. You may not be the best, but you are determined. You are still here, unlike the ones who fled earlier. Today, you fight for your planet, your family, your friends. But ignore them; fight for yourselves. Fight until you are kicking and screaming. If you flee, we will recondition or kill you. If you stay and fight with me, and we win, your rewards will be unparalleled.” The men were looking more hopeful now, Trexor decided. It was time. “Let's kill them before they can kill us!” The men raised their weapons and cheered.

Trexor grabbed the General's Sword of Rank and a standard issue assault rifle, before signalling one of the men to open the doors. “Let's do this.” he muttered whilst putting a helmet on, more to himself than to the others.

The doors opened.

Fire flew from the sky as Stingers targeted and fired upon the Crushers and Xaosians. Reapers were closing in on the Stingers. One of the Crushers exploded. The other Crusher turned its turret and fired upon the Stingers. Most of the shots missed, but a lucky few hit, sending the Stinger spiralling down before gouging a gash in the planet itself, or simply shattering it into an airborne oblivion. One exploded above the Bridge, sending shrapnel flying around Trexor and his men. Xaosian troops began to drop dead suddenly, not because of the Stingers, but the snipers in the base. But still one Crusher remained.

More Stingers fired upon the Crusher, drowning it in flames and smoke yet causing no damage