The invaders rolled through Benzo’s neighbourhood like it was nothing; Archie said most of those boys were dead, side of the road, toasted, flesh blasted out on the stone. They were in Rikkon’s hood now, just strolling through. Sine could hear them fighting, could hear the aliens wasting lifetime enemies like they were pest control to cockroaches. Hell of a thing - hating someone all your life, imagining gutting them with a rusty knife before you go to sleep each night, and then hearing their screams when an unstoppable force rolls in and makes the whole damn struggle irrelevant. This wasn’t the same war; this wasn’t the war he’d been fighting all his life. This wasn’t the back alley stabbings and marketplace shootings. This was the kind of shit that bigger men stepped in. But fuck it; you defend your turf, no matter who comes knocking. Today it just so happened that God called their bluff and sent the fucking devil with a lawn mower to their humble turf war.

  In the alleyway, The Shovel Street Boys were jumping around like nuts in a frying pan. They were all brothers, despite not sharing blood - this patch of Primary was their home. Anyone who lived here was a member and everyone in this alleyway he had grown up with. Sayiid and six of his fighters had come over from the east, too, wanting to help stop the alien invasion. Sine thought more the merrier. So far, the whole of Primary hadn’t been able to scratch the fuckers, but who knew when some lead would slip through. Everyone wanted to be the guy that killed a Jar’ron; who wouldn’t? An opportunity like this was never gonna come up again.

  Anger boiled away as more women and children came running down the alleyways parallel to Main street. They told stories of families being targeted like soldiers. Some were shot themselves, others clutched children who flopped around in their arms. Instead of screaming or writhing in pain, they bounced away to the beat of footsteps in their mother’s arms like pale ragdolls. Sine caught their absent stares and part of his soul would break away.

  The bravado took a nose dive when Rikkon himself came running down the street without an arm and a face half charcoal, screaming about his family being butchered. No one helped him. He only made it another twenty meters before tripping on a stone, falling into the dust and not getting up.

  Sine and half the others had piled into Jacksons, the bar on the corner of Main and Shovel Street, where the mums had been busy reinforcing the walls with scrap metal. The other lads were just across the road in the Clubhouse. Sine peered out of the small shooting slits down Main Street, where the aliens were approaching. All around them, fighters from every neighbourhood fought and died: on the rooftops, in blown-out houses, all ending up covered in dust and blood. It was a slaughter; despite being outnumbered by a factor of ten, the Jar’ron were relentless. Sine would be happy if they killed one. That would be a victory.

  The group of invaders were nearing the edge of Rikkon’s turf now, and the pace of gunfire had slackened, presumably because all of Rikkon’s fighters were now dead. That was when Mother B appeared. She just stepped out of an alleyway, right into the path of the Jar’ron, one hand on her very pregnant belly and another stretched out as if she was commanding the seas to part. Sine and every other man watching froze, felt their stomach tighten and their breath catch. Such vulnerability had no place at the front of a storm; it had no reason to share ground with such lethal things. Sine felt his instincts pound on the gates of his mind like screaming animals. Protect.

  Mother B was Rikkon’s woman, the one with the real power and the womb that all the other mothers in the neighbourhood were envious of. Eight children and no miscarriages, no stillbirths, no syndromes. Mother B was the object of both hate and wonder. She was precious. She was a neighbourhood treasure. Despite that, the Shovel Street Boys kept still.

  Mother B was talking, but the Jar’ron kept approaching. The foremost warrior, a gargantuan brute with scarred armour and a fright mask reminiscent of Asianic demons, was reloading its rifle, but Mother B held its attention. It looked down on the pregnant woman as it approached. The two figures were on a direct collision course, and if one were to be on the street behind Mother B, it would appear as if the walking fortress of the Jar’ron was growing, its figure encompassing the smaller woman as its fright mask bobbed above.

  They collided - like a boulder to a stone.

  The Jar’ron backhanded Mother B with a closed fist, and at the behest of a cruel puppet master, the encumbered matriarch was tossed across the street, whereupon she collided with the corrugated iron door of a hovel. The strings were cut, and she slumped into the dust. Someone in Jackson’s cried out in disbelief. Mother B’s attendees screamed and ran out of the alleyway, wailing, arms stretched out towards their mistress – but the Jar’ron was finished reloading.

  The three women staggered backwards in shuddering skips as their blood sprayed the stone around them. A grenade collapsed the whole alleyway a second later, and the Jar’ron continued their march.

  Sine grabbed his closest brother, Argo, by the torn collar of his shirt. The dishevelled boy of eighteen turned, flashing eyes like a cornered animal.

  “Go, this ain't going to end well. I'll cover for you.”

  What the others didn’t know was that Argo had knocked up a girl from Rikkon’s hood, a sixteen-year-old without a family. She was half blind, and she needed a man to protect her, guide her through womanhood and shelter the child. She needed Argo more than anyone else.

  They shared a look of understanding as the rest of the Shovel Street Boys began shouting and hollering, preparing their souls for martyrdom. The aliens were about to enter their turf.

  Argo was torn, and it showed on his face.

  “Just go” Sine pulled at his shirt.

  There was a series of crunches, snaps and fizzes, and the twang of ricochet mixed with the sudden odour of stone dust and hot metal. Holes appeared in the roof, and Sine looked up. His hearing disappeared when another hole, larger than the others, appeared above him, showering him with dust. Argo was wrenched from his grip.

  He looked down and found the boy slumped against the wall with his head hanging by the meat of his spine, nothing else. Blood fountained up from the well of his body. The boy moaned from his neck with his mouth agape and noiseless.

  Sine looked about and found the rest of the boys dead or dying in messy ways. Meanwhile, the invaders were only twenty meters down the street. He looked up, out of the holes in the roof and found something lurking above, like a manta ray in a storm.

  ___

  -Predator Autonomous Gunship entering the area of operations.

  -Parameters updated > Commander Marneka.

  -Target designation: Liberal.

  -Hostiles: Armed individuals, individuals in combat, and individuals assisting combatants.

  -Exceptions: Target Designated: Arker. Target Designated: Gop. Profiles loaded and exceptions acknowledged.

  -Weapons activation: no response from The Herald of Oblivion. Parameters permit autonomous activation.

  -Weapons activating…

  -Weapons armed; Light: 2 x plasma fixture – active. Antipersonnel Laser Battery – charged.

  -Weapons armed(1); Anti-armour/Anti-vehicular: Burst Railgun System - active, Micro-Missile Launch systems - armed.

  -Weapons armed(2); Support and Light Ordinance: Swarm Mines - armed, Harpoon Battery - active, Ammo pod launch systems - active.

  -Weapons activation: Requesting update from The Herald of Oblivion… No response

  -Continuous signal-check initiated.

  -Kinetic barriers active, broad-spectrum shielding oscillating at 90%

  -Decreasing altitude and acquiring targets: Prioritising targets according to proximity to Jar’ron Military Personnel

  -Four targets in range, monitoring, weapons lock. 30 point Plasma fixtures active, set sequential engagement.

  -Firing…1, 2, 3, 4.

  -Three targets eliminated.

  -Weapons functional and heat stable.

  -Two targets in range, monitoring, weapons lock. 30 point Plasma Fixtures active, set simultaneous engagement.

  -Firing…1

  -Two targets eliminated.

  -Kinetic barriers registering small arms fire, holding.

  -Locating targets, monitoring, weapons lock. Two semi-hardened targets. Burst Railgun System active, set sequential engagement.

  -Firing…1,2.

  -Two targets eliminated. Cover destroyed.

  - Locating targets…

  -Parameters updated> Marnek Rockbreach.

  -Moving to support.

  ___

  Gop stood by Arker’s side as he wiped his mouth, leaning against a stone wall.

  Arker groaned, “Ahh, Fuck”

  He avoided looking at the ground for fear of catching another glimpse of the butchered family.

  Without his faceplate down, particulates and odors buffeted him in an overwhelming sensory assault, almost bad enough to fire his gag reflex again. Sulphur and hot metal mixed with the chalky smell of dust and stone. Then there was rubbish, that old stench of decay, underlined by the taste of his own sick. He let the face plate snap back into place, and soon, the saturated atmosphere of Raysor was blown away, filtered and replaced with an air-conditioned sigh; what remained of the experience existed as just an uncomfortable memory on his tongue.

  He took stock of his situation, struggling to find the zen state of escapism. His nerves frayed instead, sending tremors through his muscles and causing his belly to hollow out, ready to collapse.

  The Jar’ron were still moving forward amid the cacophony of war. They fought still, caught in the middle of a bullet storm, killing indiscriminately and efficiently despite their losses. The golden figure was nowhere to be seen.

  Gop pointed upwards. “That’s new.”

  A military flyer, or gunship, had appeared in the hazy atmosphere, spearing through the black columns of smoke and drifting dust clouds. It had a sleek, functional shape and a fuselage painted dull grey. Arker thought it looked like the mechanical amalgam of a shark and a manta ray. Weapons at its nose and peripheries strobed without warning, effecting more destruction below; Arker could feel it striking the earth through his feet.

  Then, his attention was whisked away when he heard shouting behind him - a collective exclamation of horror, disbelief and anger. He turned to find a loose crowd of locals approaching from where he and the Jar’ron had come. They ignored the dead but tended to the wounded, shook their hands, and pointed to the sky. They were also shouting at Arker.

  The Gunship turned on its cushion of gravity and sky, spinning on its axis as if held on a string. The manifest face of a Death gazed upon the crowd. Arker held his breath.

  People screamed and turned to run.

  The sky flickered between the gunship and the crowd as unfathomable energy cleaved the atmosphere.

  The ground erupted in the centre of the crowd as stone and silicates boiled and exploded outwards. Bodies vaporised or were smashed apart by pressure waves and debris. The laser strobed and zigzagged down the street, capturing most of the crowd. Arker could only watch in horror as the street turned to the surface of hell. When the gunship had finished, turning once again back to its masters, the street was a glowing mess of glass and molten rock. The hovels on either side of the street were mostly collapsed, and the people, when visible at all, were fresh victims of an unnatural Pompei-style destruction. Smoke and dust billowed away from the area as the hot air raced towards the heavens, presumably carrying the souls of the recently massacred with it. Dust and grit tinkled against Arker’s faceplate.

  “Let's get out of here, Gop.”

  He turned down an alleyway and ran.

  ____

  This Jar’ron had fallen behind its comrades for whatever reason. But its weapon had stopped working, too, or at least it seemed that way. It slowly walked down the street, hunched over its rifle, tyring to coax the machinery back to life. The behaviour was surprisingly human, and it was enough for a boy of eight to forget the other things he had seen. Rimmy was a street son; his dad was homeless. They lived on the corner of Riker Square, only fifty meters from where he crouched, watching the flagging Jar’ron. He was hunkered down on the rooftop of a hovel one block away from the street. His dad had tried to stop him from coming to investigate, but his dad’s legs didn’t work, so the broken man couldn’t really stop him.

  Smoke temporarily disturbed his view of the alien, and he caught the scent of burning flesh on the oily breeze. It was coming from the laser strike; August said she saw a whole crowd get slagged by the Jar’ron gunship. He hadn’t seen the laser hit, but he had heard the crowd, now silent, so he believed her.

  Excited fighters were hurrying down an alleyway beside the hovel, heading towards the defenceless Jar’ron. Rimmy settled lower; he was smart and knew the gunship would see that group as a target.

  The first fighter presented himself and sprayed the Jar’ron with automatic fire. The Jar’ron glanced to the right, and extended an arm towards the man. There was an almighty bang and the fighter, and the shopping cart behind him, disintegrated and were blown away in a pink mist of shrapnel and flesh.

  The group of fighters shrieked and rethought their strategy.

  One of the other fighters, a man who looked like August’s grandpa, all shaggy, bearded and wrinkled, climbed onto a hovel next to Rimmy’s and tossed an improvised explosive down at the Alien. RImmy cringed.

  The bomb slapped the stone around him and sent showering stone fragments and dust tinkling past him. He peeped back up and saw the Jar’ron stumbling, reeling after the detonation. It shook its head and tossed away its gun. Then shrieked. It ran into the alleyway, and he heard human screams of surprise and fear. He heard a struggle. Thuds and scrapping, men in extraordinary pain. Moans and frightened squealing. Rimmy shuffled over the edge to get a better look.

  He peered over the stone retaining wall.

  The Jar’ron was ripping one of the fighter’s arms out of the socket; the rest of the gang were dead, looking as if they had been in a flyer crash. When the last man died, the Jar’ron looked about itself. Then it saw Rimmy, its fright mask covered in blood. Rimmy couldn’t look away. The Jar’ron exuded the malice of a snake or a rock spider, accompanied by a majesty of technological splendour and the personalised fear of a nightmare. It started climbing up the refuse towards him.

  Rimmy went wide-eyed and pale.

  There was a thud, like a flyer hitting the dirt, and Rimmy looked to the left and back towards the street. The Gold One stood on the street, prismatic angel’s wings outstretched and biting the air. The Jar’ron stopped climbing and shrieked at the Gold One before charging down the alleyway towards the battlesuited figure.

  The golden warrior stepped around the charging Jar’ron, swift as a matador and grabbed it by the head. With one quick maneuver, it pulled the Jar’ron’s face plate off as the rest of the Jar’ron’s body stumbled forward. It howled and clutched at its face. Some of its jaw had been pulled off too.

  The Gold One stepped forward and shoved the bulky alien onto the stone wall behind it. Without a faceplate, the armoured figure crunched against the stone and then made as if to leap back the Golden figure. But the golden warrior was too quick. It darted forward and punched its golden fist straight through the Jar’ron’s face, its helmet, and the stone wall behind it. It paused at the end of its jab, elbow buried in the alien’s skull. Then it withdrew its arm and brought the alien’s heavy corpse with it, which slapped to the ground, its head mostly gone and helmet unrecognisable.

  The Gold One looked up at Rimmy.

  A crowd surged out of the shadows and the cracks, screaming in the ecstasy of revenge - elation and hatred plastered on their faces. They swarmed towards the corpse and began tearing at it, stomping on it and trying to pry off anything that could be brandished as a trophy. They stayed away from the Gold One.

  RImmy held the black stare of the enormous gold figure, head and shoulders above the crowd, like a different breed of human; greater, stronger, prideful and able to kill aliens whilst the rest of his fellow man died like animals. Its posture spoke of victory and hope, but its eyes communicated resignation and hatred. RImmy failed to put it together; the two impressions were juxtaposed and irreconcilable. It broke eye contact and walked away from the crowd before launching into the air and darting into the tainted atmosphere like nothing Rimmy had ever seen before.

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