Jacks

Part 1

          

Plasma hissed overhead; the air stank of ozone. It seemed as though all of Phalanx shook with detonations that showered the defenders with dirt and rock. Jonas held his blaster in a white knuckled grip, shivering as he pressed against the cold synthcrete barrier behind which he'd taken cover. He told himself that he shivered from the cold, but he didn't believe that.

He was terrified.

He could hear thousands of root-like feet crunching across the city's open square as the Jacks, an alien race with tree-like bodies and heads like the Jack-o-Lanterns that were once set out for Halloween on Old Earth, marched relentlessly toward the Militia's position. Flames licked from their eyes as they howled into the dark, fall sky. The Jacks' taste for human flesh forced the two races into a conflict that had boiled across the galaxy for the last twenty standard years.

Billions of lives were lost on both sides.

The Jacks pushed forward, firing their reapers, long-barreled blasters with a wickedly curved scythe bayonet, from the hip as they came. Jonas closed his eyes and tried to steady his ragged breathing. The fighting had been fierce and brutal. The walls had been breached in an hour and the slaughter had been horrific. It seemed that three Militiamen fell for every Jack brought down.

The final battle of Phalanx would be held in the city's center. The Square, usually the gathering place for Trick-or-Treaters at this time of year, was now a smoking ruin. Every surface was burned or pockmarked. Jonas flinched as a body thudded into the rubble at his feet. The rattle of machinegun fire came from the East.

That was good. That meant that he wasn't alone.