Empyrean Iris Story Collection

The Promise

She could hear the sound of jets overhead, a distant roaring that turned into a scream and then back to a roar as the sleek alien crafts cut overhead. She had landed by shuttle with a group of marines not a few minutes ago, and had already taken over command. As chief weapons officer aboard ship she saw it as her duty to prepare them for battle.

Off the books she was also an unofficial officer, but in charge of the Delta units (Drev) and the marines. Out of everyone on the ship she may have been second in line , behind her brother, regarding combat experience, but she did know more about human/other relations and their equipment.

Even so, she brought Cannon with her to supervise and give his advice as they went along. His mechanical leg brace clicked and hissed as they hurried through their makeshift FOB. They were about half a mile outside the city, with Rundi, Tesraki, and Humans landing continuously to augment their troops. The fighting in orbit had drawn to a close with the Gromm retreating to the edge of the system.

Their job wasn't to cripple the GA fleet though. Their job had been to simply breach the nexus and get one or two ships down onto the home planet where they would be in range of the Gromm capital City. They had done what they had come to do and so withdrew, it wouldn't matter if they managed to cripple the fleet, if they could just appear wherever they wanted without intervention by any other species.

On the ground, the Gromm forces had been mobilized, but looking over the state of their troops, sunny had to admit that she was not particularly impressed. Their understanding of war was rudimentary at best, and their physical constitutions were hardly conducive to war. The Gromm were a sort of gelatinous slime-covered species that required a lot of water to maintain their homeostasis, so their ability for drawn-out conflicts was sketchy.

The roaring of another jet thundered overhead, and Sunny lifted her head towards the sky. The F-90 darkfire roared past them low and on the right. The pilot was taking it risky and cutting very low along the ground, less than a hundred feet, but as they did gunfire and missiles streaked away and forward completely annihilating an entire row of advancing burg forces, just let loose from the amber dome that now covered their original ship.

The jet banked low and to the left, cutting around the side, chased by drones on at least two sides as it tried to find a weakness in the outer shell of the dome. A single missile was fired, and Sunny watched in great interest as the projectile shot forward and then rammed into the shield.

A bright, amber circle erupted from the point of impact causing waves of power to pulse out in ripples.

The missile itself exploded on impact sending shrapnel out and away from the dome giving the pilot just moments for a tight roll.

The maneuver was so fast, that the following burg drones either didn't have the time or the skill to respond, and both fell to the ground in wave of crashing heat.

Sunny smiled to herself, as much as a Drev could smile.

Despite being a human she was pretty sure that Adam had been born to fly. Perhaps whatever deity or spirit had made him hadn't given him wings knowing specifically what kind of power he would possess if that was the case.

The jet pulled in a slow parabola around the opposite side of the dome and then came shooting back towards them.

Anti Air artillery took out any of the burg ships that dare venture to far into the friendly zone, and so the commander made it away scott free from harm.

How did she know it was Adam?

She could just feel it.

Also 110% because he was totally the best pilot up there, and the maneuvers he had pulled made that pretty clear. The jet circled once, then twice before slowing, landing deftly on a major piece of infrastructure, now abandoned by all nonessential gromm travelers. Sunny and Cannon jogged across their little base and approached the slowly rolling jet.