Never Fade Away: Friday Night Fire Fight (ch. 45) (Patreon)

"Not a lotta time darlin's, gotta up sticks for a spell, so I'll keep it quick.

Aliens are invading. Yes, they're real, and the ET's have already bombed the Biotechnica fields and the power plant, so be aware - cuz I probably won't be reporting anything for a bit. Here's Third Rock From the Sun by Joe Diffie on repeat 'til I get back on the air."

~

"They sure don't seem friendly. I don't think this is going to be a peaceful meet and greet," Johnny remarked, breaking me out of my momentary awe as I watched the ship banking towards the colony. I wasn't exactly shocked by their existence-- I still had the still of the Mass Relay, so I knew there was something out there. I just never expected them to come here. Had they realized that someone had found their technology?

I wasn't so certain about their intentions until I saw weapons systems train onto the entrance to the colony. I tensed, feeling fear pool into my gut, and not a second later, I saw muzzle flashes in the depths of space before light blue shots slammed into the colony's fortifications and I felt a rumble travel through my feet. The fortifications, however, seemed to survive the initial blast because they promptly returned fire, and the shrinking distance between the colony and the ship was filled with streaks of light.

The sight was almost hypnotic. "They're using Element Zero based weapons," I realized. That was a little worrying, but at the same time, nothing that I couldn't handle. The fact that they opened fire first was more worrying as it was a pretty clear demonstration of their intentions. However, I didn't feel a pressing threat until I saw what looked like drop pods launching from the carrier ship and quickly outpacing it as they raced down to the moon's surface. Hundreds of them. Maybe over a thousand, even. More than enough for a small army, especially considering the pods each likely contained multiple squads of alien soldiers. They were angled bricks with thrusters on them, and the colony's automated defenses were already firing at them.

"Just a question of what flavor of alien invasion we're dealing with here. The 'conquering assholes' or the 'destroy all humans' kind. Either way, L -- you better get a move on," Johnny encouraged. I nodded to him, and myself, before glancing at Kiwi one final time. The second person I had murdered, it felt like.

Turning away from her, I launched myself towards the bulkhead doors to see a full evacuation was already underway. The people in the garden were being ushered through bulkhead doors as various security systems began to reveal themselves -- mechs, turrets, and soldiers rapidly deploying cover within the hallway. "Please follow the designated line to a safe zone. You will be kept safe by our security forces until the emergency has been dealt with. Be warned, any and all security forces or materials have been commandeered, as stipulated in the contract for a code red emergency!"

The announcement played on repeat and I was ushered forward, a holographic green line leading me to a safe zone. I was far more interested in a realization I had about the gathered military forces than I was about getting somewhere 'safe', even as another vibration rumbled through my feet. "They knew this was coming," I told Johnny, communicating silently.

They had anticipated an invasion. They just didn't tell anyone who was invading.

"Didn't want word getting out," Johnny agreed. "Classic -- keeping the cards so close to their fuckin' chests that they're blind to what they have. Bet you a smoke that everyone high enough on the food chain to know is currently in a deep ass bunker sippin' pina coladas and watching the chaos unfold." I didn't disagree with him either. However, one thing was clear -- I couldn't trust the security forces to take care of anything.

I gave David a ring, only to find that the call was blocked. Not by him, but by some jammer that was killing all frequencies outside of a select few. A precaution, I reasoned, looking at a soldier and tearing through his ICE to gain access to those frequencies. It was then that I sent out a ping, looking for- there she was.

"What's happening? Did you get caught?!" Lucy's voice echoed in my ear as I found her signal, she had also breached the security's encryption.

"We're being invaded by aliens, it looks like. Seems to be whoever made the Mass Relay, if I have to guess," I answered shortly, spreading my influence inside of the colony's systems. Communications was first, then security cameras, then the operating systems for the mechs. Within thirty seconds, I could puppet the entire force. I almost found myself feeling nostalgic -- it had been some time since I had encountered such open systems. These days, everyone in Night City either had a closed system or compartmentalized everything specifically to stop me from doing what I just did.

Lucy paused for a moment, as if confirming it herself. I took the moment to klep an access token that gave me access to the bulkhead doors that were being shut and locked down. Breaking away from the green line, I headed towards their mansion and the kids. "We have to get off the moon," Lucy quickly determined. I felt another vibration through my feet -- this one stronger -- and I glanced through the cameras to see that the aliens had breached the outer layer of defenses and the dropships had landed.

They attacked the exposed habitats, cutting holes in them before setting up an airlock that they began to funnel through. I saw that the aliens were humanoid, with two arms, two legs, and a single head and torso. They wore metallic armor and featureless helmets, wielding guns that didn't seem unfamiliar, yet were clearly made for their three fingered hands.

"I can get us there," I confirmed, agreeing with her. The moon colony, and the ones on Mars, were isolated and much easier to take out because of it. Earth, on the other hand, would be far more concentrated and developed. The aliens would have more difficulty taking it. Likewise, I would have more materials to build something so that we could finally abandon the planet entirely. If this wasn't a clear sign that I shouldn't have bothered with the megacorps and instead should have just built a ship and gotten us the hell out of here the moment we got David back, I'm not sure what could be.

"Get here as fast as you can," Lucy told me, to which I fired up my sandevistan and blurred forward, intent on doing exactly that. Time dilated, slowing to a fraction of what it was, giving me the time to scope out the situation. There were messages of panic and disbelief, confirming that the soldiers stationed here hadn't been informed who they would be fighting.

I also saw the battle itself and how it was shaping up -- the aliens had managed to get past the initial defenses rather easily thanks to their air superiority, but the moment they entered the tunnels, it became a slugging match. I saw bullets pinging off what seemed to be Barrier-like personal forcefields around the aliens, but they could quickly be overwhelmed with enough concentrated firepower. Additionally, smart bullets bypassed them entirely, even if they did struggle to get through the actual armor.

I wasn't seeing much in the way of implants in the aliens either. The exact opposite, really. Wherever there was someone with a sandevistan, or a monowire, the invading forces were stopped cold. From my initial impression, at least, they didn't seem to have a hard counter for military grade implants. That could change if they turned out to have bigger guns, but initially, the defensive forces seemed to be holding out strong.

My musings were cut short when I entered an interchange area. And sight of one of the safe zones, I noticed, with a number of people being walked down into a bunker beneath the floor. At first, nothing was amiss, but it was as I sped my way along that a red laser appeared before me. Thin, unintrusive, not that much different than the laser sight on a gun -- I wouldn't have given it a second thought if it wasn't for one simple fact.

The laser was pointed down from the ceiling.

I looked up just in time to see an explosion punched down through a section of the roof, sending down moon dust and metal. I darted out of the way, the large room becoming filled with panicked screaming. As the chunks of the ceiling fell, a breach team fell with them. Four mechs stood back to back -- twelve feet tall, white and gray coloring with a red logo on the surface inscribed with… something. An alien language, I realized.

The soldiers in the room instantly responded, taking shots at the four machines that seemed to come to life as soon as they touched down. Both of their arms were heavy machine guns, that they leveled at the soldiers before firing. Blue muzzle flashes filled the room as the power failed and the emergency lights filled the area with the color red. The bullets hit with explosive impacts, tearing the men to shreds and splashing blood over the floor and their comrades.

I zoomed in with my optics, catching some footage as I stepped back and took cover. The alien bullets weren't really bullets. They were clusters of grains of metal surrounded by some kind of energy field -- probably biotic -- that tore into soft tissue. A quick replay revealed that it was by far best used on soft tissue, because a soldier managed to survive a hit with subdermal armor, even if he probably wished that he hadn't. As the robots advanced, and the civilians scrambled, my attention was drawn upwards as more chunks of the ceiling fell down.

The aliens had created an airlock, and now that they didn't have to worry about depressurization, they dropped down in squads of five. They had similar weapons as the robots, though I noticed that their guns only fired three or four grains of metal that hit with less force.  The aliens deployed cover when they touched down, their weapons firing constantly, and I didn't see anything that looked like a magazine. No need to reload?

It was useful information, but nothing particularly pressing. I began to turn away, leaving the battle to sort itself out. I had far more important things to deal with -- like how I was going to get back to Earth with the others. However, just as I turned away from the battle, something caught my eye.

An alien, turning to face a shambling kid with blood spattered on his face and his hands on his ears, screaming at the top of his lungs in an attempt to drown out the chaos. The alien seemed to hesitate for the briefest of seconds, but I saw it furling a finger around the trigger.

Fuck.

I blurred into action, a vibroblade erupting from my prosthetic while my hand shifted into a laser minigun. In a single smooth action, I swiped the blade through the alien's arms. I almost hadn't been convinced that they were aliens until I saw brightly blue blood spill out from the stumps, and inhuman flesh inside of the armored sleeves. The alien went down, making a horrid noise as it waved its stumps in the air and splashed blood all over itself.

The action brought attention to me and the laser minigun began to spiral before blood red lasers shot out of my wrist. The barriers did nothing to protect them from energy projectiles, I learned, blurring forward. The aliens hadn't even managed to react to my new position before I closed in on them, my vibroblade lashing out to catch one in the throat, only for my swing to catch resistance. The barrier. It activated for things moving at high speeds, then?

Slowing my swing, the barrier deactivated, allowing me to behead the alien. Killing the rest of the squad was much smoother in execution, the four of them still standing, not even realizing that they were dead as time stood still. Turning my attention to the robots, I reached out with the Skeleton Key towards the alien machines, only to find that the signal washed over them like a river over stones. Completely incompatible software. No surprise there -- they were aliens.

Leaping forward, I drove my vibroblade into one of them, looking for some kind of port I could jack into, only to find they had nothing. A completely closed program? Annoying. At least the vibroblade cut through the metal easily enough, letting me finally dispatch the machines.

Then, time resumed its normal speeds and the tide of battle was shoved in favor of the humans. The aliens had no idea what happened, and before they could recover, the security forces pressed the attack -- they might not have expected it, but they knew the work of a sandevistan when they saw one. Which left me a moment to head to the kid, who was still curled into a ball and screaming, his prosthetic arm marked with gold fingers. A corpo kid.

He wasn't one of my kids, I had to remind myself.

"A kid is a kid," Johnny remarked as I turned my attention to the dearmed alien. "And I suppose we have our answer on what flavor of asshole we're dealing with," he added.

"... Did you have to phrase it like that?" I asked him, reaching out to the alien. I did a quick scan of it -- no implants, as far as I could tell. There could be some bioware, but I wouldn't know even if I saw it. Stabbing my sword in the ground, my prosthetic hand becoming a hand again, I reached out to the helmet and depressurized it so I could slide it off.

Revealing the face of the alien. No skin or hair to speak of. Instead, there was almost metallic face plates -- flat nose, mandibles, dark gray eyes in a pool of black. There was some kind of war paint on its face plates, but in all, it was distinctly not human. It clicked and garbled something at me, but I couldn't understand a word it was saying. If I had to guess, based on tone, it wasn't anything friendly.

"Kinda looks like a bird if it fucked a dinosaur," Johnny summarized his thoughts, squatting next to the alien as I began to search it. No port at all, not even a neural one.

"I don't think it has any cybernetics," I ventured, only to have Johnny blink out to nudge the arms in a pool of blue blood. I scanned them and saw something. A chip in the wrist. Grabbing my sword, I ignored the battle around me to cut the chip out of the severed arm. "Doesn't seem like much," I decided, pulling it out. It was at least something, though. But, for all I knew, it could be their equivalent to a smart gun chip.

"You saved our asses!" I noticed the battle was over when I heard a human approach me, and I saw a goofy looking man in blood spattered armor. The rest of his squad was securing the… de-armed alien and another soldier took the shell-shocked kid somewhere. My gaze swept over the battleground -- a good two dozen soldiers dead, more civilians, but in all it was a solid enough victory. Here, at least.

The aliens breaching the tunnels behind the defenses hadn't been entirely unexpected according to the plans I quickly tabbed through, but I did see that it turned the situation from 'manageable' to something a lot more chaotic.

"Don't mention it," I began, turning away. If the aliens were breaching the tunnels, then it just got a lot more pressing that I got back to the manor.

"Can't believe L is here. Fuckin' nova," I heard the soldier remark to himself before I blurred forward, tapping into my sandevistan to blast through the exit. So I had been recognized. Not ideal, but security had much bigger problems than me at the moment. They wouldn't be able to try anything until I was already gone. And I soon saw as much, because in the other tunnels were more aliens -- they were proving to be pretty accurate with their breaches.

To buy myself time, I slaughtered any that I came across. And one by one, I saw that they all possessed that chip in their wrist. I collected a couple, just in case, but for the most part the aliens weren't that much different than the average gangoon for me. If I could just figure out a way to tap into their systems, I could wipe out the lot of them with a piece of code. Assuming that their net acted like ours did.

Within a handful of minutes, the manor entered my sight and relief flooded me when I saw that the ongoing battle hadn't touched it. I blurred forward, busting through the front door where I was greeted by a gun in my face and a stone-faced David. Even as time was dilated to a fraction of itself, I saw that he had his Ssandevistan firing too. We exchanged a quick nod and he lowered the gun-

Blood spurted out of my nose, warning me that I had pushed my sandevistan already. I was toeing the line rather than having stepped over it though, so things should be fine with a couple more uses. "Is everyone ready to delta?" I asked, earning a nod from David.

"More or less. Lucy is securing a ride for us to get out of here, but it's going to be messy between here and Night City," David informed, a TV flickering on and I saw President Meyers, the leader of the NUSA, standing behind a podium. Platinum blonde hair, flawless skin, wearing a grayish white business suit and a pin on her chest.

"This is a state of emergency. Earth has been attacked by an unknown alien threat determined to conquer our species. They have sent no demands, or attempted any form of communication," she said, beginning a firm speech. "This is not a kind of war that our species has faced before. This is not a war over borders and resources, but a war over our very way of life. It is a war that we must win, no matter the cost. We will not yield. We cannot!"

"With so much shit coming out of her mouth, I'm not sure what she uses her ass for," Johnny remarked, leaning on the couch in front of the TV, disdain in his voice. "Whole lot of hoo-rahing coming from some bitch safe in a bunker a hundred miles below the dirt."

"As this is a war unlike any we have ever faced, we must come together as we never have before in the history of our species. We must fight as one to repel this alien threat and to make it clear with no uncertainty that Earth belongs to us," she continued. "Benjamin Franklin made a joke at the founding of our great nation -- and it is a quote that has never been more true. We must all stand together, else we will all hang separately." She quoted before the TV signal cut out as another vibration ran through my feet.

"What was that?" David questioned, and I started cycling through cameras while I pinched off my nosebleed. I saw that about two dozen cameras were suddenly offline, but I couldn't see what actually took them offline. Peering deeper, I piggybacked off some drone footage to see that one of the habitats had depressurized, sending out glass, metal, and everything else into the void of space. More pressingly, however, was that the alien ship overhead was bombarding the moon, kicking up great big plumes of dust.

Based on the map I had of the colony, they were punching down into the deeper levels of the colony.

"We need to go," I quickly summarized my thoughts. The aliens, on initial analysis, hadn't been going out of their way to kill civilians. If they had been, then they would have started bombarding the habitats right at the start and following that with the upper tunnels. Now, it seemed that they were a little more willing to kill non-combatants than I thought they were. "Now."

"Lucy?!" David called out, leading me deeper into the manor and I saw Lucy was jacked into a monitor while she sat in an ice bath. I looked away, and it was thanks to that I saw a message flashing on the monitor.

'PORT IS TRASHED. NO SHIPS.'

I took in a sharp breath, not terribly surprised by the revelation, but it was still unwelcome. "I'll have to make something. What do we have in terms of supplies?" I asked David, and he darted out of the bathroom and reappeared with a cylinder in his hands. The same cylinder that was used to smuggle all the kids, who should be back inside safe as can be. I jacked into the cylinder, getting a read out of-

Another vibration ran through my feet before the lights went out in the house. That was alarming, but not quite as alarming as gravity suddenly failing and all of us becoming weightless.

A thousand kids - and all their stuff. In terms of materials… not a whole lot, but I could cannibalize a lot of the tools and items they had made to reclaim some of the expenditure. In short, it was close, but it was doable.

"L!" I heard T call out to me, bouncing off of the walls. His speed doing him no favors in zero G. My heart just about leapt out of my throat when I saw him, and I realized that he hadn't checked into the container. "Are we fighting?!" He asked, managing to kick off a wall and sail straight towards me while David took Lucy out of her ice bath and wrapped a towel around her.

"T, we're leaving. Get in the container," I instructed, half tempted to shove him in there the hard way. A quick check told me that T was the only one that hadn't gotten in the container.

T looked up at me, his expression confused. "What about everyone else?" He asked, floating before me. It was odd speaking to him at an eye to eye level.

What about everyone else? "They'll figure something out. My priority is you and the others," I said, priming the container for T to get in it. I held it out to him to get in, but I was thoroughly caught off guard by the way his expression twisted.

Betrayal. He looked at me like he couldn't believe his ears.

"But, L… my… my friends…" T trailed off and I could see it. He wanted to argue, but he was too afraid to. Or didn't know how to. "You saved us. You can save everyone else, right? You're a hero!" T pleaded, a note of desperation in his voice. He had the wrong idea, I wanted to tell him. I was no hero. I didn't want to be one either. My only concern and priority was the safety of those that I cared about.

"Shouldn't ever meet your heroes. Never ends well," Johnny remarked unhappily.

"Shut it," I snapped at him. "They'll be fine, T. They'll figure something out. You and the others come first," I tried to convince him and I could see him digging his heels in even as he hovered in the air.

"You're lying," he accused. "We- we just can't leave them, L! They'll die! Monsters will get them! Like the ones in the Orphanage!"

"I-" I began, only to be cut off by another rumbling. Much stronger this time. Closer. My lips pressed into a thin line, and I looked to David, hoping that he had an answer. Or a way to convince T to just get into the container so we could get off this rock. However, he just gave me a lopsided smile that conveyed his message perfectly.

I grit my teeth, my memory flashing back to that screaming kid. He wasn't one of mine. I didn't even know his name. The memory sunk like a stone in my gut, it just not feeling right even if I knew that I was making the smart call. "T- I can't save them. Not without putting you all in danger," I told him, and I knew the words were a mistake as soon as I said them.

T lit up, "I'm not scared to die. I… just don't want anyone else to," T argued and the words were a fucking dagger in the heart.

Fuck.

Fuck!

"Heh," Johnny chuckled but offered no further comment. The bastard.

I looked at David and Lucy to see that they had a knowing expression. They knew I was going to cave. Fuck. I knew I was going to cave. I blew out a sigh, putting the pieces together as I primed the container. "Fine. You win. But you will get in the container and you will be the safest gonk on this moon or I'm going to throttle you," I warned and T was everything but repentant.

"I'll hop in too," David said, floating forward. His expression was serious. "Time I knocked the rust off," he said, and I knew exactly what he intended to do. He was going to chip in the implants I gave him. They were meant to be a just in case, but now… now we were going to need them.

I nodded, handing the container to Lucy while it scanned us. Targeted PYM particles shrunk us down to the size of a thumbtack before we were brought into the container itself.

To my now small eyes, the container was the size of a building. Bulkhead doors opened for us, revealing an airlock, and beyond it was a recreation area. Lining the walls were pods for the kids to sleep in, and a good dozen floors had plenty of different forms of entertainment, even schooling. And due to the emergency entry, all the kids were in their pods with bubble shields surrounding them.

I quickly moved to a workstation that had a wide variety of materials to work with, along with a last gen fabricator and recycler -- I had meant it to be so that David, Lucy and the kids could print off anything they liked. I never imagined that I would be using it in a warzone.

"Got any ideas?" David asked me as T scampered off to his pod, spreading the good news.

PYM particles were going to be the greatest issue. I would need a lot more than what I had to produce enough of the particle to shrink down the entire colony. The issue being that to build the infrastructure to be able to produce enough PYM particles, as well as a containment method for the remaining thirty odd thousand people on the moon… I wouldn't have enough to build a spaceship. This wasn't Night City where I could just fly out to a mountain of garbage and snag hundreds of thousands of tons of raw materials. All I had was what was on the moon.

Which could be fine, but cannibalizing the colony ran the risk of depressurization and as of right now, that was as deadly as the alien invasion.

I needed… I needed both. Something that could act as the infrastructure to create the PYM particles, then something to build a spaceship with. Could I just break down the machinery when I was done with it? Maybe? But-

I clenched my jaw.

"Now isn't the time to think," I realized, feeling it in my gut. Now is the time to do.

Johnny was rubbing off on me more than I expected already.

And with that, I removed the dam and my charges came flooding forward.

A charge has been spent!

Big Hero 6: Microbots -- 8

Metal Gear Solid: Augmentation -- 4

Language: Alien -- 4

Mass Effect: Hacking -- 5

Starfield: Grav Drive -- 3