The Bone Skulls Chapter Notes: As I’ve said before, sometimes the story will jump to different places in the timeline. Narrative: Seven years later… “Alert..Alert..Alert..” the voice broadcasted to all squadrons. “Enemy fighters in-bound.. Course heading.. Corel City.. All fighters.. Clear to intercept.. Weapons free.. Repeat.. Weapons free.” Zan listened to the broadcast. This is it, Zan thought, and about time, we’ve been flying in circles for hours. The enemy is making their push on Amphi Prime’s capitol city. The enemy was a new species that had dropped out of light speed eight months earlier with a massive fleet and began attacking the Alliance of Worlds’ planets without warning. They had hit hard and with utter brutality. Dara Prime had fallen within a few hours. The Alliance’s Fleet had not had enough time to come to the Darans frantic calls for help. There had been images transmitted during the first hour of the attack. Horrifying weapons of mass destruction were being used against defenseless cities; the Daran planetary defense fleet had been destroyed and there had been no further transmissions from Dara Prime since those early hours of the invasion. Dara Prime’s population had been 6 billion. The Alliance mobilized its forces; rivalries between The Great Houses forgotten and centuries old blood feuds forgiven. Every ship available within the Alliance had been pressed into Fleet service. Zan himself had been attending the University at Demonia City and had reported for duty as a fighter pilot. He had received an immediate commission to captain. There had been some argument that Prince Malice and Prince Mischief should not be risked in direct combat. Zan had given a speech in front of the Senate that ended with a standing ovation and the Demon army had grown to include nearly the entire population of Demonia. The Demon army would be remembered and legends would grow, good or bad, about the Demons that had stood and faught. “I am Prince Malice, Flame of Demonia,” Zan had told the Senate. “This is the moment that every lord of every House, great and minor, must unite. No lord or common Demonian may avoid this moment of truth. The very existence of our world now rests in the honor of every Demon to rise up against the invaders. I am Prince Malice, and this is the Age of Malice. We will bring the full wrath of malice down upon the invaders until they are crushed from existence. I declare the ban on the forbidden flame lifted. Light the Flames of Demonia. We march to war!” Zan had stepped out from around the podium he had been speaking so that all the senate and news cameras could see him and lit his forbidden flame. The flames engulfed his body and roared in anger. Every member of the senate rose to their feet cheering and lit their forbidden flames. Across Demonia Prime and Demonia Minor, in every city and every outpost, as well as Demonians aboard Fleet ships had, to their Captains and comrade’s of other species horror, lit their forbidden flames as well. Prince Mischief had given a similar speech to the Kitsune senate and mobilized Kitsune Prime as well. The princes and lords of other alliance worlds had followed the example and mobilized their worlds. The Alliance of Worlds was striking back against the invaders. Zan now led a squadron of Demonia Dart fighters with the Admiral’s Carrier Fleet. Prince Mischief, also commissioned as a Captain, led an elite ground force of Kitsune Special Forces infantry. Zan didn’t know where his twin brother was exactly, but he had heard that Prince Mischief was behind enemy lines on one of the occupied worlds. “Bone Skull leader,” Zan’s personal channel had flipped on. He recognized the voice. It was Admiral Reox. “This is Fox Castle, over.” “Bone Skull leader here,” Zan responded. Zan had named his squadron after his foster brothers favorite insult they had used on each other as children. Zan had painted a flaming horned demon skull on the nose of his Dart. The other pilots had similar designs painted on theirs as well. “Prince Malice,” the Admiral paused, “Zan,” the Admiral corrected to the more personal name Zan preferred. “You have to stop them. If we lose this world then we lose all hydrogen fuel production and the Alliance will use up its reserves within six months.” “Understood Admiral,” Zan responded and broke the transmission. He didn’t have time for that nonsense. He had an enemy Destroyer to blow up. The plan he intended had not been approved by the Admiral and Zan didn’t want to give the Admiral a chance to question him and say no. Zan switched to the squadron frequency. “Alright you bunch of Bone Skulls, on me and keep the chatter going. I want everyone knowing where and what you are doing.” Zan knew this was opposite of what the instructors at fighter school taught. The instructors can drink a lava flow, thought Zan to himself. He had a tendency to invent his own rules about how things should work. Zan accelerated the Dart to mach 8. This was, of course, too fast for an aerial battle, but he needed a buffer zone to engage the enemy as far from the city as possible. “Enemy fighters dropping through the atmosphere,” his wing man, Whip Tail, informed the squadron. Zan squinted up through his angled cockpit and pulled the Dart into a steep climb. His squadron was at a disadvantage being below the enemy fighters. That didn’t matter; he would even the odds in a moment. The Bone Skull Squadron followed Zan into the climb and closed the distance to the enemy fighters. He watched as the enemy released a barrage of missiles at his squadron. The Bone Skulls did not fire back, but instead continued to close the distance. “Now Darts!” Zan yelled the command and let go of the controls. The pilots of the other ships in his squadron also released the controls of their Dart ships. The Darts had already calculated the maneuver that Zan had secretly planned before they had taken off from the Carrier that was submerged far beneath the waves of the Amphi Prime ocean world. The plan required a precision that only the ships could perform. The Darts were in charge right now. The pilots would be needed again when intuition and instinct were required. The Darts accelerated to 2.873 light speed for 12.2 seconds, passing harmlessly by the incoming ordinance. The missiles would, without targets, fall into the ocean. The Darts dropped out of light speed and fired braking thrusters, coming to stop directly on top the enemy destroyer, only a few feet from it’s hull. The Darts then released half their payload of nuclear tipped weapons to rest on the hull of the enemy’s Destroyer. The sudden acceleration and deceleration had taken it’s toll on the pilots. All the pilots had lost consciousness, but that was not a concern. The Darts could wake their pilots when it was time. The Darts, having delivered their lethal payload, fired their maneuvering thrusters, turned back toward the planet, and went to light speed. The Destroyer did not even have time to use the close defense guns. This was not a tactic they had expected. The Darts dropped out of light speed behind the enemy fighters and manually detonated the nuclear weapons they had left behind on the Destroyer’s hull. A flash of light in the sky was the only indication of the destruction of the enemy Destroyer; it had broken in to four sections. The Darts quickly turned their attention to the pilots and injected them with a stimulant to wake them. The stimulant was strong and snapped the pilots awake, but wasn’t without side effects. They would all suffer terrible headaches and would need to sleep soon. “Now Pilots!” The Dart ships yelled as one. Zan shook his head, it was throbbing. He grabbed the controls, checked the position of each of his squadrons Darts and rolled to line himself up behind an enemy fighter. The fighters were almost within range of the Capitol that had been built on one of the few land masses on this horrible forsaken world of endless water. There could be no mistakes. Zan heard the distinct locking tone from his targeting computer, he had target lock. Zan squeezed the trigger on the controls to release a missile. “Fox one.” Zan yelled as a missile under the wing of his Dart dropped away, lit it’s rockets, and accelerated to mach 6. The missile chased after the target. “Fox one,” yelled Whip Tail, and a missile left his Dart after another target. “Fox one,” Imp and Beast shouted almost at the same time. “Fox one,” Rogue was the last to fire. “I saw that, Rogue,” Imp said, “You fired last, you have to buy dinner tonight.” The battle lasted for another eight minutes, but the surprise attack from behind had broken the enemy’s advantage and when two squadrons of Comet ships arrived to back up the Bone Skulls, the remaining enemy fighters were quickly destroyed. “Well, that was easy,” Imp transmitted to the squadron sarcastically. “My head is splitting,” Rogue complained. “Yea, lets not do that again anytime soon,” Beast added. “I threw up on the control panel when we accelerated that quickly.” “Let’s head back to the Carrier,” Zan commanded. His own head felt like someone had been beating on it with a hammer and he kept sniffling. I must be getting a cold, Zan thought and laughed out loud; a demon with a cold, that’s wonderful. The Bone Skulls dived their ships into the ocean to meet up with the Carrier. Zan’s squadron was all demons and purposely diving into an ocean was about the most unnatural thing they could ever do. Despite the Darts being pressurized and sealed, there was always a leak somewhere. Whip Tail was desperately hugging one side of his cock pit to avoid a drip that kept threatening him and Rogue had his feet up on his seat to try to avoid the water that was sloshing around on the floor. Imp had completely given up and was allowing his Dart to fly itself while he was trying to get into his emergency water suit. He was certain the ocean would come crashing in at any moment. The Darts navigated under the Carrier and up through the water-lock where a crane would lift them out of the water to the maintenance deck. The moment the crane had set his ship down, Zan pressed the hatch release lock. The hatch didn’t open. He tried again but the hatch remained locked. Zan looked at the optic sensor on the control dash in front of him. “Open the hatch,” Zan demanded. “No,” Dart replied. Zan’s eyes narrowed. “I know what you are doing Dart. I’m not a little kid anymore and I don’t need a babysitter.” “No,” Dart repeated. Zan looked out at the four Darts of his squadron. His foster brothers cockpit hatches remained closed as well. He knew they were having similar conversations with their ships. He knew he couldn’t order Dart to open the hatch. Dart wasn’t an A.I., she had achieved sentience countless eons before Zan had even been born. Dart had, at some point, decided she was his mother, probably before Zan had even completed repairing the Dart ship years before as a boy. Zan knew she wasn’t going to give in. “Okay, fine,” Zan said. “three hours.” “I’m not negotiating,” said Dart. “Four hours,” Zan continued to try to negotiate with the stubborn T-339 Terraformer that Zan had found on a remote world and unknowingly rescued when he had taken the star crystal containing the robots consciousness. The Terraformer had transferred it’s consciousness into the star crystal moments before the massive robot body had finally failed after 5 million years of terraforming worlds for a race it called the Builders. In those final moments of life the A.I. had achieved awareness and had sought a way to save itself. The star crystal had rested, dormant and protected, inside the rusted remains of the robot for over a million years before Zan had found it. Zan later discovered the true purpose of the star crystal when he had tried to use the star crystal as a power source for the Dart. He had given T339 the Dart ship to have as her body, but T339 had proposed a symbiotic relationship. Zan had given T339 her new name and he and Dart had been together since. Zan had then gotten the idea to search for other Terraformer units. Zan, his foster brothers, and Dart had searched and found the remains of four more Terraformers. They had discovered that each Terraformer, at the moment of death had achieved awareness and sought to save themselves. The brothers had wanted to search for more Terraformers, but the war had started and their plans had been put on hold. “I’m not negotiating,” Dart repeated patiently. “How long?” Zan gave in and asked. “Six hours,” Dart replied. “This is ridiculous,” Zan said, frustrated. “You can either get in your bunk or I can sedate you where you sit.” Dart threatened. “Fine, I’m going,” Zan mumbled as he folded the pilot seat back and used the hand rungs to pull himself back into the coffin. The coffin was an 8 by 5 foot compartment behind the pilot seat that consisted of a bunk, waste recycle unit, food and water storage and several other small storage compartments. Most Dart pilots lived in their ships. Zan had moved into his Dart the day he had gotten the old broken ship and never moved out of it again. It had become his room during his childhood on Demonia. He crawled into his bunk and rolled over on his side facing the bulk head. Dart had already released the sedative into the air to ensure that Zan would sleep deeply during the forced sleep period. He needed it. Dart had performed a medical scan and found evidence of acceleration damage to several of his internal organs that would heal easily enough if he would only sleep and give his resilient and virtually indestructible demon body a chance to heal. The medical scan also revealed a cold virus in his blood stream. Dart added a virus antibiotic as well. Water was the one weakness Demons had, they required very little water and being on a water world was hazardous to their physiology. “Just don’t start playing the…” Zan started to say too late. Dart started to hum that stupid lullaby to him. Zan pulled his pillow over his head. “I’m nineteen!” Zam mumbled almost asleep now, “Stop it.” Admiral Reox stood in the command center of the Carrier starring at the messenger in disbelief, “Who won’t let them come out?” “Their Dart ships, sir,” the messenger replied. “The ships just keep saying, ‘no, they need a nap.” “Well, I guess we will just have to put the war on hold while we all take nap time,” the Admiral threw his hands up. “Sentient ships that think they are those boys’s mother, what will Zan invent next?” “Someone let me know when the Bone Skulls decide to get up from nappy time,” the Admiral ordered.