It had been a good month, but we’d all known this was coming. I doubted Frost had gotten any sleep in the past month because she must have spent it looking for us. I wanted more time to prepare, but the shaking room was telling me that it was too late.

“Frost is here?” Nessa glared at Connolly. “Damn it! We can’t let her find him, or she’ll let him go. I knew I should have ended him back on Epsilon. I won’t make that mistake twice. Lower the wall.”

“What? No. We have to get outside and help our friends. They’re in danger—we all are!”

Nessa’s face twisted with rage. “Are you serious? This will only take a second.”

“No it won’t, and you know it. We need to go, Nessa.”

She shot another glare at Connolly. The smirk he wore was so infuriating that it almost made me change my mind. I had a grudge against him too, but this wasn’t the time. Nessa growled and stormed out of the room. I followed her and willed my space suit’s helmet to activate as I did.

As Nessa and I ran down the dark hallway, I willed my helmet to contact Surge’s suit. I mentally thanked the AI for what they had done to our suits. Phones were practically obsolete with communication options like these.

“Kid, Frost is here,” Surge’s voice buzzed into my ears. “First Division ships are shrouding the sky, and they’re firing at us. I’m deploying the Blue Barricade to slow them down, but we need to abandon ship.”

“We’re retreating? What about the underground lab? And all our homes and facilities?”

“I’d love to defend them, but we’re not equipped for this fight. We may have the home advantage, but she has bigger weapons. Contact your team and make sure everyone gets to the hangar safe and sound.”

It sucked, but he had a point. They weren’t ready for a fight of this scale. They never would have been. An ambush was the only fight they could win against Frost. When she was the one ambushing them, the chances of their winning were less than zero.

“Got it,” I said. “I’ll get everyone out alive.”

A clicking sound filled my ears as the call ended. I willed my helmet to contact Laura’s suit next. Out of everyone still at the cafeteria, I trusted her the most. Plus I had to make sure she was okay. I’d lost her before, and I wasn’t letting it happen again.

“Please tell me I’m imagining all the explosions,” Laura said as she picked up. She spoke with the same electronic buzz as Surge, but all the commotion in the background garbled hers. It sounded like hundreds of people were engaged in a screaming match. “In case I’m not imagining them, I want you to know that the cafeteria’s still standing and we’re awaiting orders.”

Orders? I hadn’t even seen what we were dealing with yet. Nessa and I were almost out, but the constant shaking kept slowing us down. Nessa couldn’t move as fast as I could, and I refused to let her fall behind.

“Get everyone out of the building. Surge is deploying the Blue Barricade, so you guys should have some cover. We’re executing Protocol Four, so make sure everyone heads for the hangar.”

“Protocol Four? That means we’re running away. Didn’t we beat these guys last time?”

“How many AI do you see walking around? Without their power, we wouldn’t last against an FD fleet. I’ll see you at the hangar.”

I willed that call to end too. Just in time, because the front door was dead ahead.

The base shook as I pushed it open. The guards from earlier were nowhere to be seen, and, as I looked up, I found that I couldn’t blame them. The dark sky had been stripped of its stars. Instead, it was filled with purple and white ships: Frost’s armada. I couldn’t tell if they were battle ships or xeno ships, but either possibility was bad news.

“That woman just had to strike when we were least prepared,” Nessa growled. I felt the same frustration as her. “Do you really think we can all make it to the hangar?”

The back of my head tingled. I looked up and watched as blue spread across the sky just underneath the ships. It was like a blanket being pulled over a bed, and it offered me the same sense of security. Surge had kept Frost’s shield generator after the Red City business. The forge had made some adjustments so that it could be used without hijacking a city’s filth field control center.

Within seconds, the Blue Barricade had been erected over the whole base. Explosions decorated its surface as the First Division ships struggled to blast through the shield. I had no idea how long it’d last; I just knew that it wouldn’t. We had to move fast.

“Yeah, I think we can make it.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward my cruiser. “If I thought otherwise, I wouldn’t be a very inspiring leader.”

She smiled. “You inspire me every day, so I’ll assume you know what you’re doing.”

I started my cruiser the second we jumped inside. Then I stomped on the pedal, catapulting the vehicle onto the street. Despite the barricade tanking most of the blows, the ground rumbled. That constant quaking made the cruiser shaky. It was like hovering over a trail of rocks. Nothing I couldn’t handle, but it’d leave me with a headache when we were done.

The Moon lit my way, but, every few seconds, an explosion would illuminate the night. It would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been pure destruction. That shield wouldn’t last much longer. I put all of my weight on the pedal. The acceleration punched me in the gut. Buildings drifted by so quickly that they blurred together.

I glanced around and saw numerous other cruisers driving past us. The rest of the base! A few of them waved at me as they drove off into the distance. They’d probably reach the hangar before us. I hoped they did. I didn’t need my bad luck affecting them, so, the more distance between us, the better.

A ridiculously loud noise filled my ears. It sounded like a building crashing to the ground. I looked up and watched as the Blue Barricade faded away, disappearing forever. They’d done it, they’d broken through. Hopefully, the shield had bought everyone enough time to reach the hangar. As long as Frost didn’t fire too many more missiles, we’d be fine. Was I even hearing myself?

“If only they weren’t so high!” Nessa aimed her palm at the massive ships. “If I shot a beam now, it wouldn’t even reach them.”

“It wouldn’t dent them either. I know it sucks, but sometimes all we can do is retreat.”

She sighed. “I suppose. Also, I think they stopped firing missiles. They’re shooting down something else now. They look like meteors.”

The lack of missiles was good, but new ammunition wasn’t. I lifted my foot off the pedal for a second as I surveyed the area. This was no time to slow down, but I had to assess whatever threat we were facing now. One of the meteors crashed into the ground a few yards away, rumbling the ground. That quake wasn’t nearly as strong as the ones the missiles had created.

Upon closer inspection, it wasn’t a meteor but a black ball. A twitching black ball. The ball pushed itself up. Now it stood in the crater it had created. It was a tall, dark humanoid. Its inhumanly large torso matched its shapeless face. It turned its whole body to fix its white eyes on me. Its stance tightened up as it realized what it was looking at. It knew me, and I knew it too.

“Frost is sending down Black Dwarfs!” I stomped on the pedal, sending us right back into high speed mode. “It’s just like what happened on Epsilon. That Dwarf’s eyes were white, so they’re also being controlled by a White Dwarf. This isn’t good.”

“What? What’s the problem?” Nessa asked. “I mean, I know the main problem, but it seems like you’re concerned about something extra.”

“If a controlled Black Dwarf has seen me, then so has the White Dwarf. The one that’s controlling all these guys. That means that they know where I am. This road’s about to get a lot bumpier.”

Nessa smirked as she sat up. “Finally, some action. Keep driving; I’ll cover us.”

Black Dwarfs rained down around us, like stars falling out of the sky. I kept seeing stuff like this way too often. The road was so unstable that my hands flew off the wheel a few times. White bursts of energy soared past me, raising the hair on the back of my neck. Nessa fired silver blasts back at them. I couldn’t tell if she was hitting anything, but I knew she was having fun trying.

Then the world flipped upside down.

One of the Dwarfs must have fallen on the cruiser. That had to be why we were flying through the air. It must have been why the ground had become the sky. We bounced against the ground once. The second time we hit it, we stayed grounded. My head pounded, and my vision blurred. Despite that, I forced myself to look ahead. The sky was the sky again. The cruiser had landed right-side up this time. Thank goodness. I didn’t think my head would have survived another crash if we hadn’t.

My left arm hurt as much as my head did, but my right arm couldn’t feel anything at all. Thank goodness for bionic limbs. I unclasped my belt buckle with it, coughing as I glanced at Nessa. Getting hurt this badly wasn’t new to me. It was the only reason why I could still move. Nessa groaned as she massaged her head, but her eyes were closed. I reached over and undid her seat belt too. She fell forward, but I pushed her back up.

We needed to get out of the wreck. I believed the cruiser still worked despite its highly dented front.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

A white blast zoomed over my head: the Black Dwarf. I could have taken it if I wasn’t already suffering. Its thundering stomps were headed our way. I craned my head toward it. Its white eyes pierced the darkness, reminding me of the time I first saw it on the gremlins’ planet. I raised my left hand though it was shaking terribly. It was the only hand that could shoot electricity now. Blue light crackled between my fingers as I held out my palm.

Blue filled my vision as a beam of plasma shot past my face. It exploded against the Dwarf, knocking it back. Obviously, I’d had nothing to do with that. I turned around and saw a girl with golden-brown hair dressed from head to toe in a space suit designed for combat rather than survival. She was holding a rifle with a blade underneath the barrel: the same one she’d just used to shoot that Dwarf. I knew her.

She was my sister.

“Beth?” I groaned as pain spread through my ribs. “Where did you come from?”

“I was on my way here for my weekly visit. Then I saw you in need of help, as usual.” She fired another beam at the Dwarf. “Pull yourself together while I finish this mistake. We need to move.”

She assembled her creepy helmet and rushed toward the Dwarf. Last time she’d done that, she’d lost instantly. Hopefully she’d learned her lesson about being reckless. I squeezed Nessa’s shoulder as I stretched out my damaged limbs. Then I opened my door and crawled out. Nessa did the same from her side.

Beth circled the Dwarf as she unloaded her rifle. Blast after blast forced the robot to flinch. She then leapt forward to slash at the Dwarf, which was the dumbest thing she could have done. It struck her across her helmet, sending her skidding across the ground. Then it picked her up and pressed its arm barrel against her stomach. A white glow filled it.

A silver blast soared past me and exploded against the Dwarf’s head, causing it to drop Beth. I knew that was Nessa even before turning to look at her. She wore a huge grin as she leaned against my cruiser. Once Beth hit the ground, she jumped back into the air. She drove her riflesword into the Dwarf’s head and squeezed the trigger. A blue explosion launched her and simultaneously forced the Dwarf to stumble.

“Does the cruiser still function?” Beth called out as she took aim again.

I glanced at the dented hood. That was where the Dwarf had landed. It was also where the engine was located…

“Unclear!” I said.

“Then forget it. I’ll just take us to my ship.”

Her ship? Where was it? I assumed that she had teleported down here, but that meant that her ship was in the air. I looked up and saw the black ship with light blue strips that I’d come to associate with Beth. It shot a missile at a First Division(FD) ship, which exploded upon contact. Had it been doing that the whole time? How had it fired that without Beth behind the dashboard?

Beth tapped her wrist as she jumped away from the Dwarf. She had done a number on it. Its head had been blown open, and it was moving slowly, but it was still going. She backed up in between us as she continued to tap her wrist. Blue light filled my vision. Usually, my electricity did that, but this didn’t feel as warm. It was more tingly, like my insides were rearranging themselves.

The light grew as bright as the Sun, and then it vanished entirely. I almost thought it had done nothing, but then I realized that my entire environment had changed. The ground wasn’t firm and solid anymore, it was metallic and dark. A series of lights lined the ceiling, brightening the room up just enough. It seemed like Beth had teleported us into her ship.

The range on her teleporter almost surprised me, but then I remembered the time she had teleported onto Surge’s ship. I was glad that kind of tech was on our side now.

Beth ran up to her dashboard and tapped a few buttons on it. “Now I can finally take autopilot off. I have a few medic bracelets lying around. They’re easy for the AI to create given how primitive they are, so take as many as you need.”

Nessa had already grabbed two bracelets. She strapped one around my left arm even though she hadn’t put hers on yet. The bracelet filled my body with healing energy. It felt like I was being wrapped in a warm blanket. I watched Nessa put on her bracelet before I headed toward Beth.

“Your ship was on autopilot?” I peered out the windshield. A fleet of enemy ships stared back at me. Every single one of them was three times the size of Beth’s ship. “That’s why it could fire missiles by itself?”

“And yours can’t?” Beth smirked a little at her own sass. “Fill me in on what’s happening here. Why are these ships here, and what’s your plan for dealing with them?”

I told Beth that the ships had just shown up, but I didn’t tell her why. I couldn’t sell Anderson out like that. I also told her that we were headed toward the hangar, which she scoffed at.

“We’re running? Why don’t we stay and make our last stand here? Oh, I know. It’s because the AI aren’t here to carry us! I bet you wish you’d tried harder to establish relations, don’t you, Ambassador?”

“Beth, all our friends could be dead right now, and you want to waste time arguing?”

“Your friends. Hold on, I’ll take you cowards to your hangar.”

A missile whistled past the windshield. So, instead of firing at the base, they were firing at us. It had taken them long enough. I shook as I sat down. Were we making the right call? If we actually escaped, we’d be losing everything. We’d also be protecting all of our friends by getting them out safely. Was it a fair exchange? No. Nothing about this was fair.

Beth swerved and dived to avoid the next barrage of missiles. Our ship’s small size was a major advantage here. We had much easier maneuverability. They weren’t hitting us, but hearing the missiles whistle from beyond the ship’s walls was terrifying. Could Beth’s ship take a single blow from them?

“When did you learn to pilot again?” I asked to distract myself from the potential death zooming all around us.

“The AI know a lot more than you think they do,” Beth said through clenched teeth. Seeing as we were still alive, the AI must have been good teachers. Odd, but good for us.

The massive building known as the hangar popped up on the horizon. That was where all our ships were stored. It was also where all my friends were taking shelter from Frost’s assault. Beth dove toward it. Thankfully, the missiles had stopped. They must have gone back to shipping out Black Dwarfs. That wasn’t much better, but I preferred it.

The ship slowed as Beth deployed the landing gear. We rolled up to the hangar’s entrance, which looked about as bad as I’d expected. A wall of Black Dwarfs separated us from the others. Luckily, that wasn’t enough to stop my team. A plasma barrage slammed into the Dwarfs. A few of Laura’s fireballs followed close behind. A huge beam even plowed into a Dwarf, scraping its face. That had come from Kaela’s rifle.

It was time to make our entrance. I raised a crackling hand and fired a bolt at the nearest Dwarf. It fidgeted and seized up as I essentially brainwashed it. It was one of my most draining moves, but…it was so cool. I made the Dwarf point its cannon at one of its robotic friends. Then I willed it to blast its friend’s head apart with a white blast. The second one fell to the side, creating a gap in the Dwarf wall. I spotted my friends through that gap.

Kaela and Laura stood side by side as they took aim at the bots. Anderson was using one of the new AI rifles. He gritted his teeth after every shot because of the recoil. The rifle’s red bullets drilled through the Dwarfs and left smoking red holes behind. It was nice to see that they worked. Surrounding my close friends were all the other rebels. The base’s population. They’d all made it here…or most of them had. There was no way everyone had made it before the Blue Barricade fell. There might have been a few stranglers…

Laura’s eyes grew as she spotted the three of us. She turned and shouted something at someone. I couldn’t hear her over the constant discharge of weaponry. But I realized what she had said when Rebecca Stein leaped into the air and stomped a Black Dwarf into the ground. She slammed her fist into the next one then leapt onto another. She was tearing the Dwarfs apart with greater ferocity than I’d ever seen from her. She wasn’t holding back at all.

The battle became a blur as everyone fought for their lives. Immense pride welled up inside me. This was our home, and we weren’t going to die on it. Once all the bots were down, I allowed myself to take a breath. My hand buzzed from the amount of electricity I’d used. Seeing the Dwarf graveyard we’d just created made it all worth it.

“Great job, everyone! Especially you, Rebecca.” I patted her muscular arm. “I knew we could count on your ridiculous power. Keep that up, and we’ll win this war by tomorrow.”

Rebecca chuckled as she rubbed that arm. “Right. All I have to do is keep fighting. Easy.”

Why was she holding her arm like that? I hoped that I hadn’t accidentally messed with her Implants.

“Have the enemies been subdued?” Manning marched up to us. He must have been helping people into the ships. He met my gaze and frowned. “Never mind, I see that they have been. Excellent work. Onto the ships, everyone. There’s a lovely patch of space that’s waiting for us to float around in it.”

Protocol Four was the plan to evacuate Earth and float around in an untouched section of space. We were going to live in all the exploration ships we’d collected over the years. It’d be cramped, but it’d work, or at least it would if I didn’t come up with a different plan. Beth was the only reason why that Black Dwarf hadn’t killed Nessa and I earlier. I didn’t know where I stood on religion, but that was a sign.

“Guys…we’re not going to hide in space. If Frost finds us there, we’ll be more defenseless than we were today. We need to go to a place that’ll give us some cover. Somewhere we can confidently fight back from. We should go to Epsilon.”

Beth broke into a huge grin. It was more out of satisfaction than happiness. It must have looked like I was taking her side, but I was just doing what I thought was best. The last time we’d defended Epsilon, we’d won. I thought we might as well keep the streak going.

Manning glared at me, his mouth gaping. “You cannot be serious. It’s bad enough to be allied with those monsters, but now you want us to live with them.”

“The idea disgusts me, but I can’t pretend that it’s not a good option.” Surge marched up behind Manning. Of course he’d made it here before I had. “Ironically, the planet full of AI is the safest place for us. Beth here is proof that it’s possible for humans to live there. I also have no idea when Beth got here, but I’ll assume it has something to do with Wander’s change of heart.”

I nodded. “I know a lot of people here have issues with the AI. I’m one of them! It’s just that there’s no other logical choice. We’ve been delaying this alliance long enough. It’s time to literally face our demons.”

My words hung in the air like the dread we all felt. I’d definitely be losing popularity after this decision.

Beth suddenly shouted out a warning, causing me to whip around. My jaw dropped as I watched a missile soar toward us. My mind went blank. We couldn’t outrun a missile. I’d survived a lot of crashes, but I didn’t think there was any surviving this…

Then a transparent red barrier separated us from the missile. The missile exploded against it, shattering it into bursts of light. As the shock wave washed over me, I shielded my head. I flew back and rolled on the ground until I slammed into something metallic. It hurt, but at least I wasn’t dead.

I pushed myself up…and saw a boy in a green and black suit standing amid everyone else. A group of people stood close behind him. His greasy black hair, as well as the team standing behind him, told me exactly who he was: Dylan. He must have just returned from his mission, and that had to be his team. “Good timing” was a serious understatement. Dylan was the Delta Hybrid, which explained that red wall. His power was creating shields, and I’d never expected it to come in handy until now.

“You’re welcome, fools.” Dylan crossed his arms. “Now can we get to the ships before they launch another one?”

“I second that.” Surge whipped around. “Let’s go, people!”

Everyone rushed to their respective ships, everyone but Laura, Anderson, and Kaela. I raised an eyebrow out of confusion. Hopefully, they understood that they would get blown up if they kept standing around.

“I don’t know why Beth’s here, but you guys came here in her ship, right?” Laura asked. “If that’s the case, we should ride with you. Especially if you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

I stared up at the FD ships hovering over us. “That we need to distract Frost’s ships while everyone escapes? Yeah. We’re on the same page. As usual.”

“I didn’t sign up to be bait, but standing around discussing it will get us killed.” Beth let down her helmet as she looked me in the eyes. “Come up with a plan, and tell me once we’re safe…well, safer anyway.”

I felt I already had one. We all ran toward Beth’s ship. Even Anderson, Kaela, and Nessa, who hadn’t verbally agreed, were in sync with us. Funny how I had such a unique relationship with all five of these guys. If I were to have a special team like my grandfather, it’d be made up of them.

Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea…