Chapter 228: (Hesstla)

The inside of the house was cold, the lights off, only the Tri-Vee flickering in one corner, showing a female Hesstlin, dressed in professional clothing, silently speaking. She looked exhausted, the chiron below her was scrolling by addresses, datalink hyperlinks, com-numbers, and warnings not to approach ongoing fighting.

Dambree glanced at it and dismissed it. She'd lost her datapad and now was just carrying a hacked on she'd stolen from a charging and convenience store. She padded through the front room, looking around carefully. The front room was empty, the dining room was quiet, but the windows were broken. She went around the table and saw the body of a male Hesstlin, not much older than her, the top of his head gone and the interior of his skull thick with insects.

She turned away, gagging, to stare at the table, breathing heavy and trying to keep herself from vomiting. She focused on the table, with the knocked over chairs around it. There were dishes with cold food, a few insects crawling on it, on the table, with a knocked over glass of juice. She moved to the kitchen and found left overs still on the stove and the dishwasher was open. By the broken open back door was a female Hesstlin that was her age, half out the door, with a pool of dried blood around the flattened top of her head.

Dambree turned away, opening the fridge door, trying not to think about how easily it could have been her.

The fridge door squeaked when she opened it. There was food and bottles of alcohol.

She grabbed one and opened it, taking a long drink off of it. It was sharp, bitter, and soothed her aching throat.

She moved back into the front room and slowly up the stairs, the bottle in one hand and the heavy pistol in the other. She still couldn't believe she had shot that man, more, she couldn't believe the way he'd just exploded into chunks. Dambree glanced down at the pistol and saw the light was burning green. The digital display on the side, that she hadn't noticed before, had several numbers on it and the letters LOW-V APERS on it. She had no idea what it meant and went back to paying attention to slowly moving up the stairs.

At the top she found an adult male Hesstlin. He had a rifle in his hands, but it hadn't helped and the top of his head was missing. Dambree carefully stepped over him, for some reason afraid of touching the dead man.

She opened each door, peeking in.

Her brain edited out the crib in one room where the window was broken next to it.

She started to close the door on one room, then opened it back up. There were posters on the walls that she recognized, all new stuff from the time Terrans had arrived. The same kind of music she liked.

Dambree moved into the room quietly, looking around.

It felt wrong. Like she was stealing as she opened the dresser drawers. She started pulling out clothing, heavier than the light and soft stuff she usually wore. The dead girl's chest wasn't the same so Dambree settled for just a shirt. Then a pair of pants, good heavy tough cloth. Dambree usually wore comfortable shoes that didn't need socks, but she took a pair of socks anyway and slowly rolled them onto her feet. In one of the pictures the dead girl, who still had a brain in the pictures, was wearing a checkered shirt on top of the shirt, the front unbuttoned. Dambree looked around, found a brown and gray one, and put it on, rolling up the sleeves slightly.

Looking in the mirror she felt stupid.

The girl's feet were smaller than Dambree's, so she checked the other room and found that one of the pair of boots worn by the boy her age fit. Part of her wanted to wear the soft shoes he had, but instead, remembering the last night, chose the heavy boots with the dirt on them.

She found the adult female in the bathroom, half pulled through a hole in the wall.

Sighing, she got blankets off the beds and moved through the house, covering the dead with the blankets, trying to be as quiet as possible.

Once that was done she went back out to the car. She woke up her siblings, the baby only biting her twice, and brought them inside, Mewmew following them. She moved her sister and brother over the couch, where they gratefully sat down then laid on their sides. She changed the baby's swaddling then fed her, holding her and using the slow rocking back and forth to help ease her own anxiety.

Dambree wanted to tell Mewmew to stay out from under the sheets and blankets, but was just too tired. Mewmew would move under the sheet, be under there for a few minutes, then come back out.

She realized she had dozed off when she heard the roar of aircraft going by overhead. First the sputtering thrusters of the fliers, then the roar of Terran aircraft's engines and the thunder of their guns.

Dambree sat up and looked around. The sun was high and the grain was quietly waving outside. The car was sitting near the front porch, covered in dust, and her siblings were still asleep.

She ached, her elbow, wrist, and shoulder ached and when she cried out in pain moving her arm Mewmew moved over and started rubbing against her.

The pain in her arms eased.

She stood up and yawned, then picked up the bottle of beer, taking a long drink off of it and looking around.

When she remembered that her mother would disapprove of her drinking alcohol she remembered what had happened to her mother, went out on the front porch, sat on the steps, and quietly cried. Mewmew curled up next to her, purring, as she cried for her twice killed mother.

Dambree hoped her father was dead, not powering some Slorpy robot. She closed her eyes and wished real hard that the Terran soldiers had killed the robot that had sucked out her father's brain.

The dataslate in her pocket pinged and she slowly pulled it out.

Another medical update. Minor exhaustion had been added as well as severe anxiety. Mewmew recommended more sleep.

"Thank you, Mewmew," she said, petting the robot, which made it produce that low rumble.

She yawned and went back in, laying back down with her siblings, and closed her eyes.

"Bree, wake up. Bree," Tru said, shaking her, her voice pitched low.

Dambree woke up with a jerk, the pleasant dream of sitting in class with nothing exciting happening dissolving.

"hwa?" Dambree slurred, then wiped her eyes and mouth. "What?"

"Shh," Tru said. She was crouching and pointed outside to where the sunshine had paled and rain was drifting down. "There's things out there."

"What?" Dambree asked, picking the pistol up off the floor.

She grabbed the bottle and took a drink off of it to ease her sore throat.

"They look like big bugs. Like, up to my knee," Tru whispered. She looked around, "Mewmew went out to see them and I think they did something to him."

"Why?" Dambree got down on her hands and knees, wincing at the pain and stiffness in her joints, and started crawling to the broken from window.

"There's like two of the big black bugs just standing there, they have lights flashing over their heads," Tru said. She peeked up. "See, over by the car. They were doing stuff to the car."

Dambree looked over the windowsill. The rain was coming down hard, the clouds low and heavy. She stared at them for a second, having never seen purple clouds before. The lightning in the clouds was green and orange, flickered up in the clouds, not coming down to earth. She could see flares of light in the clouds that for some reason she doubted were lightning.

Dambree looked at the car and frowned. The hood over the engine was raised up and the engine shroud had been flipped up.

"Behind the car a little bit," Tru whispered.

Dambree could see Mewmew. The little robot was still, in between what looked like foot tall insects that had four legs, arms, and pointy arms. The insects were all in black and she squinted at them. It didn't look right and it took her a moment to realize the insects were wearing black armor and carrying tiny rifles and tubes the size of her finger.

"See, there's some in the car," Tru whispered.

Dambree looked back at the car in time to see two climb out of the engine, one of them pulling a wire with it. The two insects quickly attached the wire, tugging on it to make sure it was affixed correctly.

"What are they doing?" Tru asked.

"I'm not sure," Dambree admitted.

Mewmew suddenly turned around, trotting back to the house. The insects scurried away, off to the side, and Dambree wondered where they were going. The mewmew jumped in through the window, saw that Dambree and Tru weren't on the couch, and reoriented. When it saw them it made noises that sounded like "murr-row" and "me-ow" as it moved over.

Dambree's dataslate pinged and she pulled it out of her pocket. The picture on the dataslate was of the mewmew and the big bugs all dancing and waving pompoms with cartoon hearts for eyes.

"You know them?" Dambree asked.

The picture changed to the mewmew and the insects standing under a waving flag with the hand crushing a planet of the Terran Space Force.

"You're both Space Force? What do the bugs do?" Dambree asked. Tru kept pushing against her, trying to see the dataslate. The picture changed to show a cartoon car looking all sad. One of the insects, green and more delicate looking than the ones she had seen, scurried up holding a wrench. The insect flashed a happy face icon over its head, tapped the car with the wrench, and the car suddenly was gleaming and new looking and looked happy. The insect scurried away.

"They fix things? Cars and stuff?" Dambree asked.

The cartoon mewmew reappeared and sparkles shot out around it.

"Should we..." Dambree started to saw.

Mewmew hissed, turning to face the window. On the dataslate there was a pictures of Dambree, Tru, Elu, Punee, and the mewmew moving low across the floor on their fingers and toes to hide.

"Let's go," Dambree said. She hurried over to the couch, grabbing Elu, who woke up with a startled outcry but shut his mouth when Tru hushed him. She scooped up Punee, who was asleep still, and hurried upstairs.

She led them past the room with the empty crib.

"Hide in the closet," Dambree ordered. Another shock was that the her siblings didn't argue, just took Punee and hid in the closet, giving her a bottle of milky that Dambree had pulled the tab on. Dambree laid down by the bed, setting the dataslate next to her, holding the pistol with both hands.

She could hear the sounds of fliers, the thrusters stuttering. She had gotten a peek out of the window and seen stilters out in the grain, slowly approaching. She peeked over the bed and gasped.

There was dozens, maybe even hundreds, of stilters slowly moving toward the house, through the grain. Most of them had all of the their globes lit up blue, very few of them looked damaged. There were fliers moving in with them, most of their globes were blue too. There were other ones too, smaller, with only a single globe, that floated along on a single sputtering thruster.

put it right against the temple, she thought to herself, looking down at the pistol in her hand.

Hesstlin started exiting the grain, staggering, many of them weeping, trying to run but at the ragged edge of exhaustion.

There's no kids, Dambree realized.

The dataslate beeped and Dambree looked down at it. It showed a cartoon version of everyone getting in the car and driving away in a cloud of dust.

"Come on, we've gotta go," Dambree said, standing up. The crowd was a third of the way across the huge back yard, getting close to the tractors.

Which suddenly started, raising whirling blades and clattering cutters.

The people coming out of the grain field shrank back with a cry of dismay that Dambree could hear even though she was busy picking up Punee and trying to get bit. She didn't have time to flick the baby's nose to teach her not to bite, but instead just tucked Punee under her armpit like a purse and hurried toward the stares.

There was a small sounding 'brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt' outside, along with sharp whistling noises followed by cracks.

Whatever was going on, Dambree didn't know. She just knew she had to get to the car before the crowd did. Had to get her siblings in the car and get far away from the Slorpys and the crowd both.

They thundered down the stairs, not bothering with being sneaky, and ran for the car. A big bug had just shut the hood when it raised the tube, aiming it above Dambree's head. The tube belched fire and a streak went over Dambree's head.

Something behind her blew up as she whipped open the door and slid in, getting behind the steering wheel. She set the baby on the floor as her little brother and sister got in and Mewmew jumped onto the floor boards.

The car started up as Tru pulled the door shut.

The insect, Dambree could see the Space Force logo on its back now, cocked the tube and leveled it again. Dambree looked over and saw one of the single-globe things, much smaller, level out and extend out two thinner tentacles.

The insect jumped off the hood, scurrying to side, and firing the tube again. Others must have been hiding in the grass, because at least four more rockets hit it, sending it spinning and crashing to the ground. Before it could move two of the black insects jumped on it, slashing at it with blades that looked like they were made of solid energy.

Dambree missed it, having pressed the accelerator to the floor. The electric engine caught and slammed Dambree against the seat as the tires bit and the car leaped forward. A female Hesstlin came around the corner of the house and bounced off the front fender as Dambree went to turn, lost traction, then overcorrected before overcorrecting again.

"WATCH OUT!" Tru yelled as the car slid around the side of the house and shot forward.

The wrong way.

"I KNOW!" Dambree yelled back as the car sped toward the stilters and fliers and the crowd.

One of the farm machines had somehow acquired heavy guns that were firing at the fliers, yellow-ish orange fire erupting from the fliers.

"THE CROWD!" Elu shouted.

"I KNOW!" Dambree yelled back, turning the wheel. She turned to sharp and the car went sideways, sliding toward the crowd. It got close enough that two people reached out, tried to grab Dambree. One missed, the other grabbed on and was dragged for several feet before they suddenly vanished and the car bumped over something.

"THE TRACTOR!" Elu yelled as Dambree swerved wildly, fishtailing in the grass.

"I KNOW!"

The huge tractor had the spinning blades up, guns on the roof of the cab and on the fenders firing at the Slorpys. As they shot by Dambree saw two of the insects wave from inside the cab.

Tru waved back.

The car, seemingly able to go a lot faster, sped by the house and Dambree was more careful with the turn, even then the car went sideways until Dambree got it back under control and sped down the dirt road. No longer raising a small cloud and barely keeping ahead of it, but going so fast it made Dambree's eyes tear up. The rain flew in the cab, soaking her and her siblings.

"Bree, here," Elu said. When Dambree glanced over he was holding out a pair of sun blockers.

"Thanks," Dambree said, putting them on her face, over her eyes. It dimmed the day a little, but now the rain and wind wasn't hitting her in the eyes. "Hand me a bottle."

"Mamma wouldn't... oh..." Tru said as Elu handed over a bottle.

"Eat a nibble and drink a sippy," Dambree said, letting go of the wheel long enough to pop open the bottle. She took a long drink then put the bottle between her legs. She checked and breathed a sigh of relief when she felt the pistol still next to her.

Her siblings didn't argue, just dug into the supplies, coming back with sweet nibbles and sippies.

"Where are we going?" Elu asked.

"I don't know. Where the Slorpys aren't," Dambree answered.

"The fighting scares me," Tru said.

"I know," Dambree said.

"Mommy and Daddy aren't coming back," Elu said softly.

"I know," Dambree said, slowing down so she could weave around a large flier that was broken into at least three pieces.

"Are we going to die too?" Tru asked. Dambree glanced over as she took another drink of the fizzybrew and saw her sister was crying.

"We're going to try not to," Dambree said.

The four children and the purrboi raced down the road, outrunning their own dust and the battle.