Banshee

5. A Banshee's Wail

It was quiet on the bridge. Being the only one present there it seemed only natural. But even with most of my attention focussed on flying this ship through the night, the silence still invited in unwelcome thoughts.

I wanted to see them bleed. I wanted the murderers of my family to realize what crime they had committed before I would send them off to whatever afterlife they might believe in. Yet at the same time I knew that I had to think these things through. Being the captain of this ship, I was now responsible for more people other than my own self, not to mention I had to take care of Kayden, who, after all, was far from home and probably had no idea what to expect should she ever make it back there. As for Lana, she would be able to hold her own against most of the things we would be facing; she already knew what to expect, we were seeing it with our own eyes.

For the time being, we would strike at the enemy where it was responsible enough to do so. Hit and run actions, but nothing that would put the ship and all aboard at insurmountable risk. The other day, Lana had found some alien uniforms in the armory, about 20 of them. They were alien size, of course, which meant that it fit too big of most of us. I managed to fit into one without any problem, aside from being somewhat too wide for me it fit like a glove. And by the looks of it, these suits would offer more than enough protection from enemy fire.

Enemy fire...

For a moment, images of enemy rounds tearing through Jean shot through my mind... It hurt my head, everything hurt for a second. I had always looked somewhat sceptical at so-called heroes who were out for justice because they had lost someone they loved. In many cases, these people would go out on a bloody rampage until their lust for blood had been sated, and in the end they would turn out to have become the monsters they had hunted. Would this happen to me at some point? Would I survive long enough to even get to such a point?

I turned on the thing that passed for a radio among these aliens and managed to set it to scan earth frequencies. Suddenly a wail tore burst from the speaker...

"Alien attack... need help... won't last much longer..." then a loud noise like an explosion...
I could see a bright flash lighting up the night on the horizon. That had to be them...

Here goes nothing...

I switched to ship comms and shouted every crew member wide awake...

"Rise and shine and gear up!!! We got aliens terrorizing a town just up ahead!!! Get out of bed and show them what humanity is made of!!!"

They didn't need that said twice; within five minutes the ship was buzzing with life. A sudden increase in power told me that Kayden was working her magic on the engines, while Lana burst onto the bridge.

"Where are they?!!"

"Just up ahead," I answered. "By that bright light, I picked up their distress call on the alien radio thingy."

"Think we can make it in time?"

"We'll see when we get there."

I accelerated the ship, we could see the town lying just up ahead. Several houses were on fire, people were running everywhere, shots were fired all over the place...

"Lana take the throne! I'm going down there."

"But I can't fly this thing!" she objected.

"Do you know how to land and take off?"

"I think yeah..."

"Then take the throne..." I hurried off the bridge and to the armory, where I got into my suit and grabbed my alien gun... and for a moment was surprised that I had manage to hold on to it for as long as I had... with everything that had happened.