On the day that I’d been on Clamor for exactly a month, Sven gave me a call. I’d received one of those things that Magnus used to contact his brother when I first arrived. They weren’t phones, and I was too embarrassed to admit I couldn’t remember what they were called, so I was sticking with holoscreen for the sake of ease. Sven ended up being the first person to give me a call on the new device. For some reason, that made me feel a little nervous answering it.
“Ethan? There’s been a moggodrackin attack. Will you help?”
“Good morning to you too,” I grumbled.
“There’s no time for playing-”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. How do I get there? What kind of attack is it?” He must have been dying for my help, because if there was ever a moment I could feel the tension release from someone’s shoulders over the phone, it was that one.
“I’m a few minutes away. Do whatever you need to prepare. Get Magnus ready too, I’ll want both of you for this.” Sven hung up, leaving me alone with Magnus.
“You get any of that?” I asked. Magnus had been sitting next to me the whole time, so he was the only reason I could understand Sven anyway.
“Yep.” He sighed and did a couple of stretches. “I hate going to active sites like this. You seem pretty calm. Not your first battle?”
“Hey, you’ve been in my head, you know it’s not. Remember all the bragging Sven did about my mentality? All that stuff about being beyond my years and experience?” I was mostly calm with a dash of excitement thrown in. During the month I had been there, I never managed to land a hit on Sven, but he said I was improving and my natural calm was a great tool to have in any kind of combat. Emotional and irrational people got killed, even when fighting someone weaker than them. That’s how people like Eric died. I wasn’t sure if I bought that fully. I thought most actions should have some amount of emotional backing to them.
Another thing that put me in a better mindset was how I felt physically. I couldn’t let my mind wander to thoughts of everyone back on Earth all the time. If I let that happen, I would never be able to train with Sven, so I found something else to do with my time: work out. Sven and Magnus supported the idea, and despite how lanky the strongest pjulsen were, they still had plenty of gyms and workout tips. Magnus had given me a protein shake, except it was roughly a billion times stronger than anything on Earth. I had no idea what it did inside my body, nor did I want to know. I just knew it was giving me astonishingly visible results in a short time.
“I know, I know, you’re a big hotshot prodigy. I’m just making sure you’re ready. You got lucky with a sneak attack on those four last time. This one will be the real deal. He wouldn’t have asked for your help if he didn’t think it was needed.” Magnus looked outside and sighed again. “He’s here, let’s go.”
As fast as we could, we got out of the apartment and into the car Sven had waiting for us. It was a regular vehicle with no armor or weapons. It was the kind of thing you’d use for everyday use, not to drive into an active warzone. Maybe they were short on their version of tanks. Or, more likely, they didn’t want to have their equivalent of tanks going through an active civilian center.
“Magnus, you sit back and act as a line of communication between Ethan and myself,” Sven ordered. We barely had our butts in the seats before he sped off to wherever the hell we were going, jerking me sideways when he made a sharp turn. He activated something that sounded like the tornado sirens I heard being tested back in Nebraska. Any car within fifty feet of us made sure to split and get out.
“Okay, I’m here. What are you getting me into?” I tried not to sound accusatory with my tone, even if I was tense. I just needed to know what I was going up against.
“They call them Savants. They’re highly trained and well-armed soldiers. Despite their inferior technology, these warriors are not to be trifled with.” He made another sharp turn that sent my head into the window. While I rubbed where I just got hit, Sven didn’t even blink. “Compared to the guys you took care of when you first got here, the difference is night and day. They’re brutal and taking one down takes time. I’ll need you to take care of any other soldiers that the Savant has with them, and I want you to protect as many pjulsen as possible.”
“Got it.” I nodded and stared out the window, looking at the plumes of smoke that we were rapidly approaching. I sucked in a deep breath. “Protect the innocents, sounds good.”
If he asked me how I was feeling about it, I wouldn’t have been able to lie. Sven got me a little bit nervous about the Savant. If it was enough that he called me in a panic to act as backup, I figured I should be on alert. Even though it wasn’t my job to fight this Savant, I wasn’t going to rule anything out. In the car, I did everything I could to keep my fear from turning into full-blown terror. But fear could be good. Fear kept me on edge and helped keep me alive just as much as being calm did. It was a healthy balance, two things coming together to keep my ass from getting kicked so bad I couldn’t get back up.
When we reached the edge of the battlefield, Sven parked and we got out. It was eerily silent for the location of a warzone battle. I heard the crackling sound of fires raging a bit up the road, accompanied by the shattering of glass. I didn’t see anyone out there, not a soul, pjulsen, or otherwise. Broken glass, chunks of building, and abandoned cars littered the road, the only proof that anyone had been there at all. As a precaution, I put my Shimmer-Armor on.
“That’s new,” Sven said, admiring a change I made to it.
“I was hoping I’d get the drop on you in our next practice session.
I shrugged. “Oh well, what can you do, right?”
I’d started to compress the defensive power of my barriers into small diamond shapes, almost like scales. It was something I practiced at Magnus’ apartment when the thoughts of home became too much. The stress of trying to put as much defensive power into such a tiny shape was a pleasant escape from reality. When I layered my scales on top of each other, I was able to significantly increase the protection on whatever part of my body I put them on. I hadn’t fully mastered it yet, and I could only manage to keep a limited number of scales up, so I chose the most important parts of my body to keep safe. My head, my chest, and my legs were all covered in them. If I lost my arms, I could still use my powers. Same with my legs, though my mobility would be reduced to a literal crawl.
Without waiting for Sven, I hugged the line of buildings near his car and made my way toward the billowing smoke and crackling fires. Shop windows were broken everywhere I looked, still without a sign of anyone nearby, living or dead. There wasn’t even any blood. I wouldn’t say that something felt wrong, but the whole thing did feel strange. Then again, someone like McLeod was so proud of his destruction that he burned a man and had a woman crushed on live television, so my standards were a bit off.
When I rounded the corner at the intersection, still careful not to step on any of the broken glass that littered the ground, I nearly slammed into the back of a few moggodrackin soldiers. Seeing them up close and in the light of day was strange. From what I could tell from my place behind them, they had pale gray skin and slightly elongated heads. The image of the stereotypical grey alien came to mind, but the guys in front of me were all tall and bulky. If they were all like the ones I had in front of me, that meant an entire military force composed of guys who looked like Alex, albeit way less handsome.
Orders were barked in a deep, growly language that I couldn’t understand. The one I nearly slammed into pointed down the street, exposing a rifle that hung past his hip. The middle soldier let out a gross, phlegmy sound that had to be laughter. The one on the farthest side just stood there, staring at something I couldn’t see. About a hundred feet in front of them was the base of the smoke pillar I’d been following. Again, no one else was in sight.
I couldn’t what was burning. I didn’t need to see a damn thing. I could smell it well enough. It was almost exactly the same smell that came from my arm when McLeod burned a hole through it.
Since arriving on Clamor, when my mind was left to wander, I often thought about when I killed the Sentinels and the moggodrackin that were about to attack the nightclub. I didn’t take pride in killing them and I wasn’t happy I did it, but I understood that I almost had to, given my situation and control over my power at the time. With the three in front of me, knowing they were burning the bodies of the pjulsen, burning the bodies of the people who had accepted and welcomed me to their planet, it took all the restraint I could muster to not send spears through their heads because I wanted to.
But I had no problem with their limbs.
Three Shimmer-Spears manifested around me and I sent one each into a leg of the moggodrackin standing in front of me. They cried out in pain and surprise. When the one closest to me tried to reach for his rifle, I created another spear and pinned his hand to the ground, forcing his whole body to crumple at an awkward angle. I did the same for the other two. Stubborn bastards they were, they tried to use their free hands, but couldn’t lift the rifles from their positions on the ground. I cut the straps that kept the rifles to their bodies. Carefully, I moved them to the empty building that sat on the corner.
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There wasn’t much I could do to stop the fire, let alone have any chance at saving anyone in the pile, not that anyone could have been saved at that point. Instead, I searched the area for survivors I could do something to help. Walking by the pile nearly made me lose my lunch, but I was determined to search every nook and cranny. If there was even a chance a pjulsen citizen was nearby and needed help, I wouldn’t miss them. I would frequently check over my shoulder to make sure that the three soldiers I incapacitated stayed as such. Outside of some yelling in their grumbly language, they weren’t causing any more trouble. Every time they tried to pry a spear free, they winced and thought better of it.
Satisfied to leave them for a moment, I ducked behind an alleyway. There weren’t any doors or windows leading inside any of the surrounding buildings. It was there I found what—or who—I was looking for. In the dark, grimy corner was a blue pjulsen child cowering. They covered their head and whimpered when they saw me. Slowly, I tried to approach and look as harmless as possible. Yeah, that didn’t really work out so well with my glowing armor and being an alien and all.
“Hey, it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.” I tried to touch the kid, but they flinched and recoiled back, so I just set my hands down. They mumbled something I couldn’t understand. I muttered a curse the kid couldn’t understand when I realized I was too far away from Magnus for his brain link thing to translate for me. That didn’t stop me from trying. “Will you take my hand? I want to get you out of here.”
The kid wasn’t having it, and credit to them, I wouldn’t have gone with an alien stranger if someone put me in that same position either. I had a horrible realization that this poor child’s parents were likely being burned in the pile behind me. I saw red and I wanted nothing more than to give the moggodrackin a taste of their own medicine. With a deep, shaky breath, I forced myself to calm down for the benefit of the kid in front of me. As vile as they were, I wouldn’t let myself give in to just killing everyone. Plus, they had value for the pjulsen to interrogate.
Keeping my eyes on the kid, I sensed something off behind me. God, was I appreciative of those sixth senses people had when in danger. My armor may have been active, but I was feeling jumpy and on edge, probably with plenty of good reason. Without turning to give away the fact I knew someone was behind me, I tried to spot any reflective surfaces that I could use to my advantage. The wall, as expected, gave me nothing helpful to work with. The kid’s face still showed nothing but their fear, so they couldn’t tell me anything or give me any sign.
With a sigh, I whipped around to see a smirking moggodrackin staring back at me. They didn’t have a rifle like the others. Instead, they flashed a silver orb in his right hand, reminding me of the tool Rosie used all those months ago when I first saw her spar with Alex. I only had time to tilt my head in confusion before it blasted me in the chest with a red laser.
The blast pushed me back against the wall, putting me right next to the pjulsen kid. My breath hitched for a second, expecting me to look down to find a gaping hole in my chest. Good fortune was on my side, my armor protected against that and the laser. I patted the spot where it hit, and there was some minor damage to the armor. It was nothing I couldn’t repair with a quick thought. “Yes! I knew this would work, hell yeah!”
It was the moggodrackin’s turn to tilt their head in confusion. I was glad to let them try and punch through my armor before I remembered the terrified kid next to me. I had to get them and get myself out of the corner we were backed into. Even if they weren’t there, tight corridors weren’t my favorite place to fight in. Throw an opponent of unknown capabilities in the mix, and that was going to be a hard pass from me. I put myself between the moggodrackin and the child, prepared to stand my ground if another blast came.
But it didn’t. The moggodrackin just stared at me like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
Whatever, they could gawk at me all they wanted. I wasn’t going to waste time. I tried to pepper them with a Shimmer-Spears I hastily created, but they were a cut above the guys who were still pinned to the ground and screaming just around the alley’s corner. They pulled two devices from their sides that wrapped around part of their hands, looking like a cross between biker gloves and brass knuckles. Those two devices produced wicked, nasty swords that were longer than my arms. With surprising grace and mobility for someone so big, they danced through all of my spears or destroyed them. I didn’t necessarily want them dead—not more than the others, anyway—but I did want to push them back.
My plan of pushing them back was slowly working, though not for a lack of effort from the moggodrackin and their nasty swords. I had to throw in an extra spear attack. I wasn’t hitting them at all, and I learned I didn’t need to land every attack. They would jump a few feet back on every third or fourth attack without being able to gain much solid ground. Using so many spears in such a short amount of time made a thin layer of sweat form on my hairline. I couldn’t get winded and lose the advantage I had against them. At the same time, I couldn’t let that kid stay cornered with what I was assuming was the Savant. In the middle of hurling purple-pink spears at a dual-sword-wielding madman, I thought how strange it was that the pjulsen called them Savants.
There was a small gap between when they landed and when my next spear went out. That was all they needed to make the strike count.
With quickness they hadn’t displayed in our sloppy little dance to that point, the moggodrackin jumped forward. There was another flash of silver and a searing pain in my right arm. I was positive it was a knife they threw, even though I couldn’t see how they could have thrown anything with their hands occupied. The only upside was that I heard it stick deep in the wall behind me and not the child behind me. That bit of comforting knowledge wasn’t much of a painkiller for my arm, though.
I dared a glance down at the damage. They’d cleanly cut through the weaker part of my armor, much to my annoyance, but the slash on my arm wasn’t much. At least, it didn’t look like it was much. I had dealt with much worse when I sparred with Braden and ended up with more cuts and slashes than healthy skin. There was no reason that it should have been hurting as much as it was.
Poison.
It was the first possibility that came to mind. The thought got my heart racing, which was probably the last thing I wanted to happen if I had poison—or maybe some kind of venom—running through my bloodstream. I’d always heard that keeping calm helped slow the venom from something like a snake bite. I had no idea what stupid space poison just got put into my body, or if it worked the same way as venom on Earth. For all I knew, whatever was put in my veins could just teleport to my heart or brain whenever it wanted.
The smug look on the Savant bastard’s face told me that I was right in thinking the dagger was laced with something. That put a timer on what I could do, so I did my best to calm my breathing and focus, trying to will my heart to settle down to slow the spread of the contaminant through my body. The pain in my arm was searing, though it was manageable. After all, I was carved up by Braden and had a hole blown through my arm by McLeod. I could handle a little cut, especially when there was a kid who depended on me.
The Savant took another step forward, so I made them take three steps back, careful not to give them a new opening to attack me. I kept up my assault of spears, creating more and putting more speed behind them, pushing aside the protests of my body and mind. They had some trouble adjusting to the new onslaught. The poison running through me turned a thin layer of sweat on my forehead into a waterfall that burned my eyes. Keeping my eyes open suddenly becoming a tall task was exactly what I needed in a fight. All I needed was to give the kid a clear and obvious chance to run, hoping they took it...
The Savant did a flip backward, going farther than should have been possible, landing in the street. I took the chance and ran with it, keeping up wave after wave of spears while pushing forward out of the alley. Without looking behind me, I tried to wave to signal the kid to get the hell out of there. Even if I’d braved looking behind me, I wouldn’t have been able to see the kid. My vision was blurry from a mix of sweat and the poison taking its toll on my body. I stood there, panting, and I could feel the pleased look on the Savant’s face before I could even hope to see it.
Then, a strange feeling overcame me. It took me a few seconds to realize that the hairs on my arms were standing up and there was a weird smell in the air. My brain was screaming at me to duck, and while I had a somewhat rocky relationship with my brain, I followed its advice and slammed belly-first onto the street beneath me. Thank goodness my armor was there to prevent me from smashing my entire face against the ground.
My reward was not getting fried by a bolt of lightning that slammed right into the Savant’s chest, the arching electricity harmlessly striking against my armor.
“Ethan, why did you run off!? Are you insane!?” Sven was at my side kneeling down next to me. He carefully picked up my arm and examined the wound as best he could. “Heavy Green, that’s not good. Magnus, take him to safety!”
Magnus was right there on the left side of my body, slowly helping to bring me to my feet. “You’re going to be fine.”
“Magnus, there’s a kid.” I groaned and tried to point to the alleyway. “There’s a kid back there. They need more help than I do.”
He really didn’t look convinced I was okay. I proved I was doing well enough to stand under my own power, giving him the green light to take off to where I directed him. I made sure to put up a barrier between him and the Savant, but they weren’t even thinking about Magnus. His eyes were glued to Sven.
“Ethan, you need to leave. You don’t want to get caught up in this.” Sven kept his voice low, calm, and firm. If I was better at reading pjulsen voices, I might’ve thought he sounded disappointed in me.
I wanted to help. I wasn’t cut out for hero work, and I was tired of constantly hurting. Still, there was a kid who was in the alley, and that kid needed someone to make sure they were safe. I slowly started to back away, not risking turning my back on the Savant. Even with Sven there, his last dagger hit me in the blink of an eye. If I was really unlucky, I figured his next one would be right between my shoulder blades.
Sadly, my work wasn’t done. Right when I thought the whole mess couldn’t get weirder, an actual robot burst through one of the buildings to my left, kicking up a fresh cloud of dust and dirt. The low-sitting building groaned as a chunk of its support was kicked out from under it. It had a massive sword-like extension from its arm. It must’ve been a law that no one on Clamor could catch a break, because the massive hunk of metal’s aim was right on Sven.