Covenant Invasion of Earth Series 2: Stripped

The Covenant Super-Carrier that was currently hovering over Newton Abbot had been launching ground assaults for forty eight hours following Tom’s detonation of the other ships in the fleet, and the English military were struggling to keep the drop pods and ships contained. The Covenant knew this and began sending down extremely dangerous fighters along with empty drop-ships in order to distract them long enough to render them useless.

However, the Protectors had spent a whole day planning and preparing for an assault on the carrier in the hope of bringing it crashing to the ground…well not literally because that would destroy the town as well…but you get the idea.

Tom and Naomi had infiltrated the ship covertly while Emily, Darren, Jack and Erin waited in a small room within the ship until they were given the location of the prison block where Connor was being held. Emma and Sam had been tasked with what was probably the hardest task of them all: Get into the engine room and prime the bomb that was to be placed just outside the fuel canisters for the device.

Tom had never been more glad for random pillars in the middle of the room that could act as makeshift cover. Tom and Naomi were trapped at the end of a scarily short corridor after the door that they had entered through had shut and locked, leaving them at the mercy of the aliens that were currently pelting them as much plasma fire as possible.

            “I can’t do anything,” Naomi warned. “I can’t see them.”

            “Then what are we going to do?” Tom questioned out-loud, scanning around the small amount of space around him trying to find something that would help. “They’ll get bored eventually…right?”

            “What? Of firing continuously down a corridor and not actually achieving anything?” Naomi asked. “I think they’ll run out of ammo first…”

            “Can you hear that?” Tom asked.

            “No. What can you hear?” she questioned, tilting her head to the side to signify her confusion.

            “Exactly,” Tom responded cautiously. “They stopped shooting…”

            “That is either really good and really, really bad,” Naomi replied, attempting to control her nerves.

Tom turned around and began to slow bring his head around the pillar where he saw a blonde boy arguing with himself where the aliens once stood. “Come on,” Tom sighed, standing up and offering a hand to Naomi, who took it and used it to pull herself up.

They walked up the corridor to the Bridge, and Cameron who had managed to sneak onto the ship while still debating with his hallucination of Flavio on whose fault their previous mission’s failure was.

            “I told you to stay behind,” Tom snapped. “You are not in any fit state to be attacking an alien super-carrier.”

            “I may be talking to a hallucination, but I’m still a brilliant fighter, as you can see,” Cameron replied smugly, gesturing to the dead aliens that were spread across the room. “They were about ready to destroy you with that plasma cannon.”

            “We need to find where Connor is before they kill him,” Naomi reminded and ran over to the control consoles and began her hack attempt into the ship’s schematics. “Emily? You there?” she asked into the communication device in her ear.

            “Yeah we’re here,” she confirmed. “Where is the prison?”

            “You’ll have to go the long way, head out the door and go right,” Naomi started.

            “Why not left?” Erin questioned.

            “Because of the rather large amount of aliens that are waiting around the corner to the left,” Naomi explained as she expanded the schematics to encompass the entire bridge, as well as a small red dot that was tracking Emily’s comms.

*****

Emma and Sam had managed to bypass the majority of the alien combat teams who were attempting to locate Emily’s team of four somewhere else in the ship, which confused both of them greatly as they were currently on a super-carrier with more aliens on board than there were humans in Devon, as such it should have been entirely possible for some of them to remain behind and ensure that there were no humans currently trying to access the engine room like they had done on all of the other ships.

As Emma began to arm the bomb that they had brought with them, she began to slowly feel as if her power was being drained out of her, slowly. She however put the thought out of her mind while she set to work on getting the bomb ready to destroy the ship’s engines and fuel canisters.

Suddenly, one of the doors blew open and about ten elites rushed in, each holding alien rocket launchers. “The bomb’s ready Sam!” Emma called as she clicked the final button. “We’ve got to go.”

            “You go, I’ll hold them off,” Sam ordered as he shot two fireballs at the aliens, causing two of them to suddenly erupt into flames.

Emma took the advice and ran for one of the back exits while trying to manipulate the air around the aliens in order to save Sam from probable death. But then it hit her. She was feeling like she was getting weaker and weaker because her powers were fading.

            “Sam! Run!” she turned and called; what she saw scarred her as Sam watched in horror as his fireballs dissipated harmlessly, he looked up briefly to see his death approaching as all but one of the remaining aliens simultaneously launched their plasma rockets at Sam.

The final alien launched its rocket at Emma giving her enough time to jump through the door, although the resulting explosion hit the ground behind while she was in the air, as such it increased her velocity to the point that she crashed painfully into the wall, before falling to the floor as her arm bent the wrong way.

*****

Simultaneously with Emma’s and Sam’s bomb placement in the engine room, Emily and her team left their hiding place and followed Naomi’s instructions to the letter. Until Naomi’s instructions suddenly stopped being relayed through the comms.

            “Um…” Emily stated uneasily. “Naomi? Which way?” Half a minute pasted: “Naomi? You there…”

            “Go left!” Naomi screamed as she was slammed down upon console. “Get Connor out.”

            “And after we go left?” Emily questioned. No answer. “Naomi?”

            “We arrive at our destination,” Darren announced as he peered around the corner.

Jack quickly stepped forwards so that he could see into the room and began altering the light coming out of the lamps in the room to the point that it blinded his opponents; he also protected his friends’ eyes so that they could still see while inside the blinding light.

And then the team quickly swept into the room and took out the guards before freeing their friends.

Suddenly the alarm sounded and Emily realised that they had no way out of the prison…