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

The oxygen cord snapped taut and Strom stopped with an abrupt halt. He let out a deep breath, which he didn't realise he had been holding in. He swam through space, as if doing the breast-crawl. Drifting slowly back towards the satellite, Strom realised that he had worried for nothing. Last time, before, he remembered that the cord had snapped; he relied solely on the backup oxygen supply in the small cannisters embedded in the suit.

Approaching the satellite once more, he put his hand out, slowly and carefully this time. He felt the touch of cold metal through the spacesuit's gloves as his hand clasped a ridge on the side of the Orbital Cannon. He dragged himself closer, painfully slamming his body into the metal surface, making him wince as his ribs erupted with pain again.

The satellite was larger than he had expected when he had first seen it; it was close to the size of a small house, obviously to house all of the ammunition as they did not get serviced often. Clambering along it, Strom searched for an access panel. The panel would not be large, only big enough for an arm to fit in and fix any software faults; the satellites were controlled completely by a special AI, which would sort and fix any mechanical failures. With the solar panels powering it, the AI would never go offline. Hence, the only reason for the cannon not firing would be a failure within the AI, which should be fixed by rebooting the system.

Strom barely felt the groove of the access panel through his gloves, but he knew it was there; perhaps the absence of sound heightened his sense of touch. He considered this as he thought never would've been able to feel that normally.... He wrapped his fingers around the edges and slid the panel open. Inside was a small screen with a touchscreen keypad. Strom entered the numbers 7719: the reboot code. The screen went black, before some white text came up saying “REBOOTING”. Beneath was a bar which was slowly lengthening. Strom nodded, satisfied with the job he'd done. He pushed himself off of the satellite, towards his Stinger. Pulling himself into the seat once more, he closed the cockpit and sealed the airlocks again before quickly stripping off the spacesuit. Disengaging the gravity-locks, the craft began to move again and Strom steered it away from the Orbital Cannon while he slowly counted down, nodding to each number.

Just before he reached “one”, the cannon fired.

A barrage of missiles tore into The Dominion's forcefield, flashes exploding like miniature stars in the space around it. Strom veered towards the flagship, as did many of the other Stingers, and they rained fire down upon it. They flew the length of the ship again, and still more and more Stingers were destroyed, but The Dominion was untouched. Strom pulled up, ready for another swoop when he saw part of The Dominion's hull splinter.

“The forcefield is down!” yelled Admiral Fairns over the speaker. “Concentrate all fire on The Dominion!”

A surge of adrenaline rushed through Strom as he turned the Stinger around, ready for another bombardment. A missile narrowly missed his ship and destroyed the orbital cannon he had just fixed. Strom felt a pang of annoyance at the fact that all of the effort he had gone to repair it was now for naught; it had helped bring the forcefield down, but now it was useless. He looked back at The Dominion just in time to see two huge panels at the bottom of the ship slowly slide away from each other. Out of the ravine that was left behind emerged a semi-spherical device, with a cylindrical object in the centre. The device was covered in solar panels, which slowly lit up one by one as it absorbed the Solus's light. With a sudden panic, Strom knew what was about to happen.

A deep growl came over the speakers; a Xaosian voice. “You ignored my warning.”

The Dominion's Earth-Scorcher fired on the Sea of Oil.

Trexor watched the screens as snipers surrounded the Xaosian camp at the base of the bridge; they had regrouped there in the last hour. The snipers moved under cover of darkness, scaling the buildings around the camp, sights trained on the invaders. Trexor's team of soldiers may not even be needed; the Xaosians had very few ground troops left as most stayed in the skies above Tapal. “You ready?” Trexor asked his team; better to be safe than sorry. He waited for them all to nod to him, before he spoke into his com.

“Go.”

The snipers fired, but the Xaosians were ready, their own snipers following back the bullet trails to the Raanians in the skyscrapers. The Raanians, however, were not in the open and were barely visible in the dark buildings and more of their bullets hit their targets than the Xaosians'. Trexor turned to his men. “The Xaosians aren't as submissive to our snipers as we hoped; they have their own. So we're gonna go out there, and we're gonna end this battle on land, and hope the others can end it in the air!” The doors of the base opened, and the soldiers rushed out, taking cover behind makeshift barriers; the ruins of the earlier battle. Gun fire cracked through the air as they took the Xaosians unaware. The gun felt light in Trexor's hand and he noted how guns used to have a recoil before the R-Suppressors were installed in the gun's chambers.

The Xaosians began to fire back, bullets at first. Some tore into Trexor's comrades, piercing the armour and drawing blood. Some died instantly, but Trexor would worry about those later. He fired on one particular Xaosian three times before seeing it go down, weapon still clutched in its hand. At the edge of his vision, he saw something dart past, before the Xaosian camp was engulfed in smoke. Trexor looked up and saw a Stinger fly into the hangar bay. He noticed the white stripe which ran the length of it and knew that it was Admiral Fairns.

“Everyone, back inside!” Trexor yelled over the sound of gunshots. “Now!” He laid down covering fire as the others ran inside; he didn't hit many Xaosians, but enough to let his soldiers escape. He moved backwards, still firing, until he reached the base, whereupon the thick doors slid shut once again. Trexor left his soldiers and ran up a flight of stairs to the hangar bay, where Admiral Fairns was climbing out of his Stinger. “Sir?” Trexor said, with an upwards inflection.

“The forcefield of The Dominion is down; it's only a matter of time before Xaos will need to bargain with us.” Fairns said, smiling. “We have won!”

They went back down the stairs and Trexor headed over to the array of computers and found Tya. He spoke to her, making her jump. She placed a hand on her chest and “Bloody hell, you scare' the life ex' of me!”

“Sorry.” Trexor said with a smile. “I just wanted to thank you for what you did today. You helped me save Tapal today, and the state will reward you well for this.”

Tya smiled, but tried to hide it, twisting her face into a faux-neutral expression. “No need at all, just doing my duty.”

“And you are proud of it. And so you should be.” Trexor said with a smile, not bothering to hide his mild amusement with her shyness. “You shouldn't hide your smile, y'know; it's beautiful.”

This time she did smile, but she didn't bother to hide it this time. Her cheeks turned slightly pink as she blushed. “Thank you.” Tya said quietly; Trexor barely heard her. She wriggled in her seat, before saying, slightly louder, “After this is over, do you wan'...do you wan' to go ex' sometime?”

Trexor smiled slightly; there may be nearly ten years age difference between the two, but he couldn't help but feel attracted to her. “Sure.” He nodded enthusiastically. “Love to.”

She jumped and threw her arms around his chest; she couldn't reach his neck. Her head was buried in his chest as she said, “Thank you.”

There was a sudden muttering behind him, and Tya let go as she saw the monitors behind him. Trexor turned and saw The Dominion on the screens. Part of it was sliding open. A growl echoed from all of the monitors.

“You ignored my warning.”

“How'd they jack the monitors?” yelled one technician.

But no-one listened as a red beam shot from the bottom of the monolithic flagship.

The room froze in shock, before Fairns yelled “Get me a visual on the Impact Zone, now! Trexor, get hold of one of the Space Team!”

Trexor turned to Tya's console and brought up the Com-Screen. Keying in a 7-digit number on the touchpad, he spoke to the screen. “Space Team, come in.” There was no answer. “Space Team, this is General Trexor. Someone please answer.” Trexor was greeted only by static. “Admiral, they've knocked out our communication!”

“Try it again!” Fairns roared; Trexor could tell that he was petrified; it was the madness in his eyes.

“Sir, we have visual on the Earth-Scorcher!” called a young man, his voice wavering. He didn't look a week older than Eighteen; for all Trexor knew, it could very well be his first week here.

“Put it on the big screens.” Fairns said, deceptively clam; like the calm before the storm.

The image was put on the big screen and Trexor flinched.

The sky was ablaze.

Strom could see it from orbit, the once-black oil sea now engulfed by orange-red flames. He imagined the flames licking at the land and spreading, destroying everything in their way. People burning, animals burning, buildings crumbling, and atop it all standing the Xaosian army, claiming the resulting wasteland as their own.

He shook his head and dispelled the image. A voice came over his com. “Strom?” The voice was female and the voice shook; Ilisa's usually strong voice was barely recognisable.

“Ilisa, it'll be okay.” Strom said, his voice cracking. He noticed a sensation is his eyes and at the back of his throat. He fought it back, swallowing hard.

“No Strom,” Ilisa said. This time, when she spoke, she breathed in short, sharp bursts; she was crying. “It's not going to be okay. You know it's not, I know it's not; don't treat me like a kid.”

Strom let out a deep breath and closed his eyes briefly, trying