Earth Encounter Part Two
by Seldom, seldomlasts@yahoo.com
The second story of the Subat-Victar war.


***** AUTHOR'S CORNER *****

I got a lot of good feedback for the first part, so I'm continuing the series.
My offer still stands: if you like it, tell me to write more parts, if not,
let me know so I can forward my spam mail to you (valid criticisms are always
welcome, however). I'm terribly vain; flattery will get you everywhere.

* * * * *

"Sir, I think you should take a look at this."

Captain Jim Hayley, United States Air Force, sighed and looked up from his
silent contemplation of his ex-wife and their two kids. The divorce was only
three months old, and it still stung. He looked at the young private, then out
over NORAD's Space Defense facility, buried deep under Colorado's Cheyenne
Mountain, safe from every attack known to man. Not even a nuclear strike could
destroy the building, tucked under several hundred feet of solid earth.

Hayley took the report from the private and glanced through it briefly. "Well,
what is it?" he asked. He hated reading these damn routine reports. What did
it matter that the Russians put up new spy satellites, or that France was
launching another shuttle mission? Putting a weapons platform in space was
impractical, and shooting down spy satellites was uneconomical, so it seemed
pretty pointless that he should have to read about every damn multimillion
dollar piece of junk in space.

"Intermittent contact with an unidentified object moving at high velocity
through Earth orbit, sir." Great, just great, some radar jockey spilled a soft
drink on his screen and thought he saw a UFO. "Probable impact site just
outside White Plains, New York."

Captain Hayley gave the private his best attempt at interest: a bored frown.
"Well, Hawkins, did it blow up?" he asked.

"No, sir," Private Hawkins responded.

"Any casualties?"

"None that we know of, sir."

"And did an alien spacecraft land disgorging little green men demanding to see
our leader?"

Hawkins smiled. "Not yet, sir."

"Then do I give a shit?" Hayley asked wearily.

Hawkins smile fell. "Sir?" he asked, confused.

"It's NASA's department, Hawkins, not ours. Tell them a meteorite may have
landed near New York. If they care enough to send a team to investigate it,
good for them. My guess is, after these budget cuts, they don't have any more
funds to indulge idle curiosity than we do."

"Yes, sir," Hawkins said, and left. Captain Hayley looked at the report on his
desk and tossed it in with the other reports that arrived during the night. He
would have to read them sometime, but it was late, and his shift was over, and
he was going home. No, I don't have a home anymore, he thought bitterly. Just
an empty little apartment.

Hayley locked his office on the way out and went home angry and tired. The
reports would still be there, he knew, waiting on his desk for his return.

* * * * *

Tim stared at the ceiling. He couldn't fall asleep, not now! Had it been a
dream? He fought the impulse to go into the guest bedroom to find out, but
lost. He quietly slipped out of bed and padded down the hall. He opened the
door a crack and let his eyes adjust to the darkness in the room.

Her chest rose up and down rhythmically. Tim slipped quietly into the room.
The sheet had pulled down a little, baring her broad powerful shoulders and
revealing the swell of the upper part of her breasts. Tim knew she was naked
now, the most beautiful, most perfect body he had ever seen lay naked just
feet away from him.

She shifted restlessly. Her mental barriers were weakened by exhaustion and
depression. He caught brief flashes of extreme sadness, anger, and pain. She
moaned and rolled over, the cover slipping completely off her enormous body.
Tim held his breath in awe, staring at her naked magnificent back. Her breasts
squashed roundly under her bulk.

He couldn't see much in the darkness; he could only catch glimpses of huge
powerfully flexing muscles as she writhed about in the bed. He watched her,
slightly disbelieving. How had this beautiful telepathic alien giantess ended
up in his guest bedroom? The workings of fate are mysterious when we
understand them most, incomprehensible any other time.

Something beeped. Tim jumped, startled. He cautiously made his way over to
where her black jumpsuit lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. He searched
around until he found a small hard black device. The beeping came from it. He
was about to press it when the alien woman groaned loudly. Tim dropped the
device and hurried over, staring at her face in concern. Her beautiful
features were twisted into a snarl, baring long sharp teeth. Tim felt an
immense sadness rush into his mind.

* * * * *

Kareen's chest exploded. Sha'Keth instantly fired a grenade round where the
shot had come from. Gory bits of the Victar sniper coated the rocks.

Sha'Keth did not have time to mourn for her fallen comrade. Her squad was
quickly surrounded by twenty snarling Victar warriors. The Subat team crouched
low. The two races growled at each other, the Victar soldiers smaller but more
numerous. A brief moment of tension and then both sides erupted into furious
violent attacks.

Sha'Keth grabbed a Victar by its green-scaled neck, held it up, and fired two
shots into its chest. The first round weakened the lizard's body armor, the
second went straight through, disintegrating its heart. She dropped the corpse
and whirled around, ignoring the energy shots impacting on her armor. She
lifted her energy rifle and fired off three shots. Two headless Victar corpses
slumped to the ground, the third shook its head, removed its ruined helmet,
snarled, and charged at Sha'Keth. It drew a long sharp knife and launched
itself through the air.

A shot impacted the warrior in mid-air, severing its arm. The lizard howled in
anguish and dropped to the ground. Sha'Keth turned to smile her thanks at
Yangzi. "Sha'Keth!" he yelled out. She instantly sidestepped. The fallen
Victar's shot passed by her and caught Yangzi in the gut, slipping through a
crack in his armor. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he slumped
to the ground moaning.

"Nooo!" Sha'Keth screamed and whirled around, bringing her foot crashing down
onto the Victar's head. Its skull split under her heavy foot. Sha'Keth gritted
her teeth and rejoined the fray. It was a narrow fight, they could not afford
a wasted moment.

Anger overrunning training, Sha'Keth simply plucked a Victar warrior from its
stand-off with another Subat and sunk her teeth into its neck. She bit,
feeling the lizard's blood gush into her mouth. She ripped her mouth away,
tearing the Victar's throat out. She spat the gory mess onto the ground and
dropped the corpse, mildly surprised to find that the Victar's final act had
been to slice her in the abdomen. Her stomach muscles were nearly as hard as
body armor. She felt no pain, only anger.

Sha'Keth waded through the Victar warriors, brutally slaughtering all of them.
One massive arm wrapped around a lizard's throat. Sha'Keth growled and flexed,
the thickly corded solid ball of her bicep stretching the Victar's neck in a
direction it could not go. It snapped loudly and she let the creature slump to
the ground. Another she merely grabbed by the snout and slammed it brutally
hard against her knee, cracking open its reptilian head. Her thick arms and
massive legs spread death and carnage. Her body was the only weapon she
needed.

The remaining Subat looked at her expectantly. The squad leader lay dead on
the ground, which left Sha'Keth in charge. She stood there, chest heaving, and
wiped the blood from her face. She was big even for a member of the warrior
caste, her vast rippling musculature demanding attention and respect,
especially after the brutality she had just unleashed.

An explosion sounded in the distance. One of the Victar teams had cracked the
defenses around the shield generator, leaving the planet vulnerable to
high-energy weapons. A planet destroyer would not be far behind. Sha'Keth
glanced briefly at the hellish sky, wondering how the orbital battle was
going.

"All teams, a destroyer-class Victar ship has entered the system. Estimated
time to planetary destruction is twelve minutes. You have seven minutes to
reach an evac site. Over." The radio crackled and repeated the message, then
went silent.

"Alright, move!" Sha'Keth yelled. She knelt over Yangzi's body.

"Leave me," he wheezed. "Go!"

"No," she said, lifting him up. He felt light in her strong arms. She jogged
after her team, relying on them to cover her and her burden from enemy fire.
She was the only one large and strong enough to run the two miles to evac with
their fallen comrade. The Subat's long strides ate the terrain, their
warrior's height and strength carrying them faster than any non-geneered race
could hope to match. Six minutes later they hurled themselves into the
dropship.

Yangzi was wounded but would live. He smiled gratefully up at Sha'Keth. "You
stupid girl," he gasped out. An energy blast strayed through the door and hit
the side of his head. Sha'Keth stared down at half of her friend's skull. He
died in her arms. Two of the remaining squad stood in the dropship's doorway
and pounded the landscape with grenades.

Sha'Keth clambered into the pilot's compartment in a daze, gasping for breath.
Yangzi was dead. She had carried him all that way. He would have been fine
were his head intact. Hatred burned deep within her.

"Strap in, we're leaving," the pilot said. Sha'Keth just tightened her grip on
the pilot's chair. She towered over the pilot and co-pilot, nearly twice their
non-warrior caste height and over four times their weight.

The pilot glanced up at Sha'Keth and shrugged. Her fingers closed around the
flightstick and she gave the thumb's up to her co-pilot.

An explosion flashed three miles north. One of the dropships fell to the
ground, it's flaming wreckage crashing into the rocks. A group of warriors
surrounded several dozen civilians in a defensive formation, protecting them
from retreating Victar. The civilians watched the dropship crash and lowered
their heads in despair.

"We're going after them," Sha'Keth stated, her finger pointing across the
miles of no- man's land.

The pilot shook her head. "It's anti-air the whole way. They're lost. We're
under strict orders to pick up our own team and get the hell out. This
planet's toast in five minutes."

"We're not leaving them here," Sha'Keth stated.

The woman turned her head and looked over her shoulder at Sha'Keth with
respect. "Yes ma'am," she said. "Now sit down and shut up."

Sha'Keth strapped herself in to the over-sized warrior chair in the pilot's
compartment and watched the pilot and co-pilot. Their movements were quick and
sure, fully coordinated, telepathy guiding their actions so not a movement was
wasted. Their faces were strained. Telepathic coordination was extremely
difficult, which was why it was almost never practical on the battlefield. For
pilots, though, it was often the only thing that kept them alive.

The dropship lurched into the air, accelerating to curve out over the rocky
terrain. It kept low and erratic, its motions far more unpredictable than one
mind alone could have made it. Mortar and anti-air fire streaked past the
ship, occasionally clipping it on a wing or its armored belly. The two pilots
were strained, sweat streaming down their faces, concentrating hard on flying
between rocky ledges without crashing. The dropship jerked and lurched, forced
to perform maneuvers better left to fighters.

The dropship crashed more than landed near the stranded group of Subat. The
warriors formed a tight corridor to the ship, quickly funneling the civilians
through, then climbing on board themselves. Thrusters flared and the dropship
launched itself into the sky, making for orbit and the safety of a Subat
capitol ship.

Fighters swarmed to protect the fleeing passenger ships from the oncoming
Victar. Ship after ship of refugees disappeared in a flash of energy,
scattering their debris into orbit.

"How many?" Sha'Keth asked hollowly.

"Not quite half." The pilot's voice was grim. Over half the planet's
population of two billion were doomed.

Sha'Keth wept for her squad brothers and sisters, the dying Subat, and the
bleak world into which she was born. Horrel System was one of the last to fall
to the Victar before they reached Subat itself. It was Sha'Keth's first
battle. She was eighteen years old. In eight years her entire race would be
dead.

* * * * *

Ten thousand years later the only survivor of the most horrific crime in the
universe, genocide, woke in a bed thousands of light-years from the asteroid
field that was once her homeworld. Her genetically enhanced vision easily
picked out Tim's features in the darkness. He was crying.

"I apologize," she said softly. "You are not supposed to see my dreams. I will
try harder to shield my mind."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you," Tim said, wiping the tears from his
eyes. He had watched her dream and knew it was actually a memory. He felt
small and insignificant next to this alien warrior. The terrible things she
had seen and done, the death of her entire race. How could he hope to
comprehend such things?

The small device beeped again. Sha'Keth sat up, completely oblivious to the
effect her nudity had on Tim. He quickly turned away before he could see
anything. "Please hand me my communicator," she said to Tim. He fetched the
small black beeping object and gave it to Sha'Keth without looking at her. She
looked down at her large, full, thrusting breasts and naked bush and laughed
softly. "My clothing, too, if it will make you feel better." Relieved, he gave
her the jumpsuit. She dressed quickly.

He looked at her again. She had her huge fist wrapped tight around the
communicator. Her eyes were closed. Once in a while she murmured under her
breath.

"No," she whispered fiercely. Tim cocked his head at her. Her eyes squeezed
shut and she looked about to cry. "No!" Slowly her expression turned to
resignation. She opened her eyes and put the communicator down on the bed. A
small holographic image formed, showing a very regal-looking man with deep
sunken eyes and the expression of one who is holding a weight too terrible to
bear.

"Darisen," she whispered.

"Sha'Keth," the holographic figure said. The voice was deep, rich and
powerful, in keeping with the man's bearing. Tim was surprised he could
understand the man, then he realized that Sha'Keth must be translating the
speech for him.

"If you are watching this then you have escaped, as we hoped you would. We
tracked your damaged ship and sent it this message before you disappeared,
with the instruction that it show you this if and when you found a suitable
new home. It must be many thousands of years from the time I record this,
since your ship reported that its superlight engines would not function for
long.

"We are all long dead, but you live on. You are our messenger to the future."
The man's face softened into a warm paternal smile. "We are very proud of you,
Sha'Keth. I know you will keep the memory of our race an honorable one as long
as you live. You are the finest we have to offer. In your ship's cargo hold
are complete genetic manipulation facilities. With these you should be able to
mate with any humanoid species you encounter.

"The time of Subat has come and gone. We do not hope you will rebuild our
race, Sha'Keth. We hope you will build something better." The holograph froze
briefly, then disappeared.

Sha'Keth whispered something unintelligible. Tim looked over at her. Her head
was bowed and tears dripped onto the black fabric of her jumpsuit.

He didn't know how to react. He knew he just saw the final speech of a man who
had been dead for thousands of years. The last living member of an ancient
noble race wept beside him. He stood there, uncertain of whether he should
embrace the giant alien or leave her alone. Sha'Keth's mental guard was shaken
by Darisen's speech. He could sense her great pain but he had no idea what if
anything he could do to help her.

Silent as a cat despite her height and immense weight, Sha'Keth stood and left
the room, nearly bending over double to get through the door. Tim followed,
wondering what she was up to. She descended the stairs as quietly as she had
come up several hours before. Tim expected Harry to bark or at least growl at
her, but to his surprise the dog wagged his tail happily and trotted between
them. Harry was descended from herding dogs and liked to keep his pack
together; already he considered Sha'Keth part of the pack.

The fall morning air was cool and crisp, the sky pre-dawn gray. Tim jogged to
pull up alongside Sha'Keth and looked up at her. Her eyes were still dark and
sunken; she had slept for less than three hours, far less than even she
needed. The rest of her body, though, was sleek and powerful. Bulges of muscle
bubbled and subsided as she walked, every movement graceful, every muscle
perfectly controlled. Suddenly she stopped and gazed silently to the east,
where the sun was preparing to rise.

Tim stood next to Sha'Keth, dwarfed by her immense figure, and watched the
sunrise. Brilliant bands of red and orange burst over the horizon before the
bloated sun. He turned to the giant woman and saw Sha'Keth gazing with intense
concentration, absorbing the entire experience.

Eventually she spoke. Her voice was quiet, though still deep and melodious.
Tim decided he could listen to her speak for the rest of his life. "I have not
seen a sunrise in thousands of years," she said. "There is more red than in a
Subat dawn."

She draped one massive paw over Tim's shoulder and drew him close against her.
He rested his head against her warm side, her muscles steel-hard under the
jumpsuit. Her hand stroked his back. She was not conscious of it as she
watched the dawn. It was the protector instinct in her. Tim wrapped his arms
around her waist, amazed at the layers of dense muscle in her abdomen. He
rested his face against her side, closing his eyes and simply enjoying her
warmth.

End of Earth Encounter Part Two