Sir ChickenBurger
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Killer Kittens from Outer Space- Chapter Nine
🕑 Added 2024-02-10 06:09:39 +0000 UTC
New York City
381 Earth days post-invasion
Yasmin
It was just after six in the morning, and the sun had begun to make its presence known with a grey lightening of the sky across the New York City boroughs. On the streets outside, the morning birds were striking up a tentative morning tune and, despite the early winter chill, in the darkened corridor of a burned-out building, sweat poured off Yasmin’s brow as she fought for her life.
Piles of dust that, given their depth, had probably begun forming long before the invasion, kicked up into violent plumes with every tiny movement she made in the drab Brooklyn apartment building. The clouds blinded her face and tickled her nose with a maddening intensity.
She fought the urge to sneeze with every fibre in her body because while it may have been mildly annoying in most circumstances, this morning, that urge could very well end her life. That was because she was kneeling as still as death, as still as the green goddess that watched over the city, with a live claymore two feet from her face.
It was one of several in the corridor, all facing FRONT TOWARD ENEMY at the open stairwell leading up from the ground floor. In her hand was an improvised blasting cap that she held as steadily as possible while she fought with her nostrils.
I am stone. Unmoving. Unbreakable. I will not give away my position to the enemy now.
Or, even worse, on the off chance that a scavenger or homeless neighbour was about the place, prompt an investigation from an unsuspecting visitor. The scouting party had assured her that the building was abandoned, and they’d secured the entrances for now, but plenty of women were doing it rough in this city. If someone stole their way in looking for scraps or an easy mark, they’d both be blown sky high and, as well as proving deadly to Yasmin, the entire operation would fail.
After what felt like an eternity, the itching subsided, and Yasmin returned to work. Once the claymores were taken care of, she moved into the first apartment on the floor, scattering spent brass cartridges as she went. The living room was partitioned on one side by a splintered folding wall, and behind it were some gifts from the advance scouts; a large hessian bag in mottled green and a row of speakers that occupied almost the entire length of the wall. Unzipping the bag, she checked its contents and nodded to herself. The M4A1 carbine was a ubiquitous human firearm, and while 5.56x45mm NATO barely registered as a threat to the wrinklies, the familiar form factor was a reassuring sight, and the guns would serve their purpose here.
The rifles were modified already with a boxy addition to the trigger mechanism. Pulling all four of them from the bag, she set them down carefully amongst the dust bunnies.
Next was the ammunition, obnoxiously large 100-round magazines that went straight into the rifles, and the brackets, custom welded to fit the modified carbines. The brackets were easy to install, slotting straight into the holes the scouts had drilled in the floor by the window. Then the guns slid into the brackets with machined precision, pointing out the window into the open sky at 45 degrees like a 21-gun salute. She chambered a round into each, and as she did, her radio crackled with three short bursts of static, a signal that the demolition team in the basement was wrapping things up.
The final contents of the bag came out: a slim black box with an antenna and several wires sticking out, which she plugged straight into the boxy modifications on the rifle trigger guards. Then she straightened up and sent her reply over the radio— one long and three. ‘Message received, job done, pulling out.’
Walking briskly into an adjoining room, Yasmin slid open the window to the fire escape ladder. In less than a minute, she was back on street level, wrapped in a nondescript grey hoodie and shambling in what passed as a drug-induced stumble down the street toward the safe house, appearing as just another affected human woman in a town decimated by the Imperium’s invasion.
A year ago the walk would have taken scarcely a few minutes, but Yasmin was forced to go slowly, dodging open sewerage and the twisted metal of car chassis. Back then, the street would have been bustling with cars, the sidewalks clear and populated by skateboarders, dog walkers and work-goers, but the new New York was a shell of its former self. The kespans represented military superiority and the ability to bring a fast death to dissidents, but they lacked the numbers to properly run things, and many of the vehicles rusting in the streets and on the sidewalks had been there since the day the nanomachines had been dropped.
She passed several other women as she went, women with sunken cheeks and gaunt figures, and she ignored them the same way they ignored her. To them, she was competition for good scavenging materials. To her, they were unpredictable and best left alone. Desperation made people that way. When the infrastructure failed in the weeks post-invasion, most people had left in droves. Those who remained had no other options, surviving on scraps and what little aid the kespans could give. Things were better in the smaller towns where the remaining women could keep things running, but a city the size of New York relied on too many moving parts, all of which were now rusting away.
It took her half an hour to reach the safe room, and the next stage of the operation wouldn’t begin for another four hours after that. The hideout was located in a basement alcove two blocks from the apartment. It was cramped and cold, but dry, which was important because it was also filled to the brim with several gently humming machines and enough inert explosives to level the gymnasium that sat above.
Once, this had been an all-boys school, a proud institution for wealthy NYC magnates to send their sons off to become the next generation of elites. Now, it was a wasteland of spent potential, picked clean of useable materials and left to rot.
Sitting amongst the reminders of what they’d lost was uncomfortable, but if you could stand to share space with old photos and trophies from basketball teams whose players were dead before their time, there were benefits to using these places. The wrinklies were slower to send their troops into areas where the evidence of their crimes was obvious; they were, after all, fighting a battle for the morale of their forces as much as they were fighting the scattered resistance cells and solo actors whose husbands and sons they’d slaughtered. Wreaths of flowers and remembrance tributes were still being left out in front of the school, and so long as it wasn’t apparent that there was more going on inside than grieving, the kespans would probably leave it well enough alone.
Probably. They’d still hid the room well, behind a false wall covered by the picture of a graduating class whose school years had never ended. The smell of old gym socks would also help; there was some evidence that the pink aliens had keen olfactory senses, and as unpleasant as the idea was, the amount of stale testosterone in the air might keep their attention focused elsewhere.
Even with all that going for her, she felt the familiar flutter of nerves in her stomach. This wasn’t the first operation she’d been a part of, not by a long shot; she’d been in the army before she’d been resistance, but it was by far the flashiest. It was also highly likely that they would find her when all was said and done. Imperial tech was in a league of its own. She just had to hope that the initial confusion would do its job. The mission came first.
She eyed the sleek black box in the centre of the room with some apprehension. It hadn’t been easy to acquire a kespan communications device, let alone one that, as far as they knew, still had clearance. The soldier that they’d taken it from had been drunk and off-duty, which meant that she probably wouldn’t be missed for another few hours. Probably. They’d been planning this for the better part of a month, so as soon as they’d confirmed the device’s functionality, the operation had begun.
Yasmin spent the hours stretching, pacing, and doing her best to stay alert until the signal came. On the third hour, she looked up as a green light pulsed on a console by the door, five flashes, bright and insistent. Go time.
Picking up the communicator, she turned it on and dialled into the kespan open broadcast frequency. She’d been trained in its theoretical use by a woman who swore up and down that the kespan she’d tortured the information out of had been earnest. To her relief, the device was idiot-proof, and soon the room was filled with alien chatter. She changed the frequency, opening comms to what she’d been told was the emergency channel, and reached across the desk to press a small black button.
Two things happened simultaneously. The first was immediately evident as a burst of sound erupted from all around her as several surround-sound speakers roared into life, kespan dialect spewing from them, as well as the sounds of gunfire and, in the background, muffled shouting in English.
The second was that a block away in the apartment, the carbines started up their staccato retorts, and audio that mimicked the surround sound speakers in her hideout also started playing from the wall speakers there. Yasmin didn’t know kespan- she’d refused the implant, but the rough translation she’d been given was something to the effect of ‘Unit pinned down by rebel fire at the Royal Castle apartments on Ralph Avenue, requesting immediate backup, VIP in need of extraction’ or something to that effect. Then, she cut off the communicator as the gunfire at the apartment block continued.
Now she only had to wait. With any luck, the broadcast would bring half the occupying force in New York City down on the apartment building.
It didn’t take long. Not thirty seconds later, the skies above the school were filled with the keening scream of an Imperial shuttle’s in-atmosphere flight jets. Even from the depths of the basement, the noise was uncomfortably loud, drowning out the explosion of Kespan comms chatter that had erupted onto the frequency in the wake of the ‘emergency’ transmission. As the ships approached from the occupied J.F.K International Airport, the sound swept over the top of the gymnasium and then held steady in the direction of the apartments, where it was joined by a second, and then a third. The noise was indescribable, like ten tornado sirens blasting directly above the city streets.
Just a little longer. There was no way she’d hear the claymores over this racket, so instead, she kept her eyes glued firmly on the little green light, willing it to flash, to give her the go-ahead to drop a building on the murderous fucks who had taken everything from her.
Finally, it came. Five insistent red flashes. Enemy units in the complex, blow the joint.
“This one’s for you, Marc.”
She pressed the switch and sat silently, counting down in her head. Three, two… Then the mortar around her shook, dust raining down from the ceiling as the entire room vibrated, and an enormous cracking sound had her ducking for cover, even in the depths of the basement.
Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Then another three green flashes lit the wall, and she let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. A successful hit. The explosion may even have downed a shuttle or two if they were lucky, though she doubted it.
She took a moment to bask. Finally, a solid blow. She’d never so much as landed a scratch on a kespan foot soldier in the months since she’d joined the resistance. Now, women the world over would whisper about this success.
The adrenaline had almost run its course out of her body and her heart rate was finally on its way back down when the sound of the jet engines doubled, and a second light flickered into life just to the right of the green one— red, and flashing in long continuous pulses.
Even as the pit of dread in her stomach yawned like the mouth of an angler fish, sharp and black, she accepted what that meant. Discovery had always been a possibility.
“Looks like I’ll be seeing you soon, my love,” Yasmin said aloud, almost laughing.
Everyone died sometime. There were still a few things to do before her time came though.
She ripped the hard drives out of each machine in the room, stacked them atop each other and walked to the back corner where a large drum stood against the far wall. Opening it with care, she then lowered each hard drive into it one by one with tongs, making sure not to splash any of the acid within onto her skin.
The red light was still blinking when she was done with that, and as she turned away from the acid drum a crash from the gym above signalled the arrival of the aliens. Yasmin glanced over at her insurance policy, then sighed and picked it up. The detonator was a lead weight in her hand, and as she hefted it an explosive bang came from the west side of the gymnasium. She snorted; she hadn’t even locked that door.
Peering around the corner and up the stairs at the false wall, she waited. Metal boots thudded over the surface of the basketball court, fanning out as an alien voice rattled off commands in a language that she didn’t recognise.
Even as the world slowed down around her, her breaths came hard and fast, and Yasmin’s hand trembled around the handle of the detonator. Finger still on the trigger, she sat with her back to the wall and fished in her jacket pocket with her left hand until she found what she needed.
The photo was old, taken well over a decade ago on a beach in Spain. She’d been fresh off the plane from her first deployment, and it had been his first time outside the United States. Sangria by the ocean; she could almost taste it on her lips, as well as the warmth of the sun on their backs mingling with the afterglow of morning hotel sex as they lay on the sand. When she swallowed, it turned to the taste of blood. She’d bitten her tongue. Marc looked so young in that photo.
She took a deep breath, and her hands steadied. Yasmin turned her eyes back up the stairs as the thumping sounds grew louder. Then, there was an exclamation, and a scraping sound as the faux wall moved aside.
Light spilled down the stairway, and she pulled the trigger.
