Three days later found them nearing the northern most portion of Lake Michigan. Malachi was astounded that they hadn't passed out of the urban area yet. The city seemed to go on forever.
"How far does this city go? We've got to have passed out of Chicago by now." He could have pulled up an orbital feed of the landscape but he wanted to ask Tamar, that way she'd feel useful and not just a tag along.
"We passed out of Chicago five days ago. Then we entered Waukegan, then Milwaukee. Now we're almost north of Greenbay. All of these cities merged almost a hundred and fifty years ago. We won't get out of this city for another day at the soonest." Malachi shock his head and just kept trudging along.
The rumbling didn't attract their attention until it began to grow closer. By the time they were running for cover, whatever it was, was right on top of them. With a massive fuselage and short wings, it came to hover over the very spot. Malachi and Tamar were busy hiding inside an abandoned store.
"How did they find us?" Tamar hissed.
"I have no idea. Maybe a random patrol or something. I've had my jamming field up at all times. They should not have been able to pick us up on any of their scans."
"If they identify us, we're in big trouble. They won't just attack us, they send for reinforcements, and there're millions of them.
"Then we'll have to do this real quiet like." Malachi recited the line in his best Harrison Ford voice, expecting a response from Tamar.
She just looked at him, expecting him to say more.
"Unpopcultured swine." He grumbled.
From within their hiding place, where they both laid prone on the floor, each of them heard as many as felt sixteen individual impacts.
"There's sixteen of them, standard search grouping. If that's one of their troop carriers, they'll be an additional fifty four still in the drop bay." Tamar whispered, pointing upward.
"You stay here. I'll handle this."
"How? There's sixteen of those things, they're no way you can take out that many of them." Tamar motioned for him to get down when he went to push himself off the floor.
"Oh ye of little faith. I am not going to let them get anywhere near you okay, end of discussion." Tamar shock her head. It was his funeral. Her disdain changed to wonder in a blink of an eye as he disappeared from her sight. One second he was there, the next, nothing.
How could he do that? She'd seen cloaking tech before, even used some herself. But this was different. He had faded from her view without a trace, no shimmer, one distortion of any kind to mark his passing. It was as if he completely vanished before her eyes.
"Stay here. I'll be back in a bit." Malachi's disembodied voice drifted to her, and she felt something pat the top of her head.
"That's not," she swatted above her head, connecting with nothing. "Funny."
"Oh, come on, it's a little funny." Then he was gone.
What in the world is he going to do against all of that? She thought, peaking her head over the window sill.
Outside she could see seven of the sixteen Saltek. They were marching down the street, line abreast, blades out and ready. One of them held what to Tamar could only have been a scanner of some type. They were searching for something, or someone, so she decided to give Malachi another three minutes. If he didn't do anything, she'd do something herself. There was no way she was going to let these things catch her without a fight.
Tamar's eyes widened in disbelief when one of the Saltek on the sidewalk closest to her folded in on itself. Its head sank into its neck until the massive spine could no longer handle the pressure and snapped in half. Bone and bits of bones knifed out the creature's chest and a split second later the mangled remains landed on the concrete with a sickening splat.
Every one the remaining fifteen heads turned towards their comrades in shock and horror, only to watch the head of the one beside the crumpled body leap from its shoulders in an explosion of blood. The spray came hard, and it came fast, so fast the Malachi couldn't get out from its range and a few droplets fell onto him. With his cloak foiled, he dropped it with a thought and amped up his reflexes and speed.
Tamar's head poked above the window sill in time to watch Malachi wade into the remaining fourteen alien warriors. Could this be the same man? She thought with cynical detachment. He was everywhere, the two blades in hand caught every attack sent his way. His counterattacks were devastating, limbs were severed, bodies cut in half, he was like a one man food processor, only the food fed to him was alien flesh.
Tamar couldn't understand what she was seeing. Her mind refused to comprehend how this man, one second he seemed to be kind and considerate of her and her well being, could the next second be utterly ruthless and bloodthirsty. She'd never seen anything like this before and she'd been around plenty of people that loved to kill and were very good at it. But what she was seeing before her this day made what those people did seem like a five-year-olds school yard scuffle when compared to martial arts masters.
Before her eyes she watched Malachi destroy, no obliterate, fourteen of the most powerful, the most dangerous beings that earth had ever encountered. His clinical precision, his sharp and calculated movements made her think of the way a cat stalks a mouse. No movement was wasted, every attack lethal.
Then all at once, a thought came to her. A memory of something he'd said.
"I will not let them get anywhere near you, okay."
He'd told her that moments before he'd vanished from sight. At the time, she'd not believed him. What was he going to do against everything arrayed against him? Now she knew.
Stepping onto the sidewalk, Tamar looked skyward. Squinting into the afternoon sun, she watched as the Rougarian troop carrier settled over their position. A snarl of fury off to her left presaged Malachi's leap into the air. Tamar watched him bound onto the side of a building thirty stories up, then leap into the open air. With his wings catching great volumes of air, he shot skyward.
It took Tamar a few seconds to see what he was going after. High in the sky, well over a mile from the ground, she saw multiple tiny dots detach from the troop carrier and begin to fall. From her distance, they looked like tiny fleas. As they fell, she realized they weren't fleas, and they weren't tiny, she realized they were Saltek.
"That thing just dumped its entire load!" She yelped before leaping back through the store front and running for the back of the building.
Reaching the building's rear exit, she flung the door open, ran through and towards the street. She emerged into the sunlight and was struck dumb with awe. An intricate lattice of red was being woven in the sky above her head. The threads stretched from one Saltek to the next, then to the next, and the next. Malachi was picking off every alien warrior as it fell, making good on his promise to let none near her. Soon the afternoon sky was filled with lines the color of blood, the more he killed the deeper the shade of red and more pronounced the line he left, until he was bouncing off his targets so fast only her distance from him made it possible for Tamar to keep track of him.
Yet, as fast as he was, he couldn't be everywhere at once. Half a dozen Saltek made it through, dropping almost atop Tamar's position. The closest of them made visual contact the instant it hit the ground. Tamar ducked back into the alley a second too late and with a howl it charged towards her. Knowing she had limited options, Tamar ran for the elevator shaft, even though the building was only six stories high, every structure with more than three levels was required by law to have an elevator, so she knew this one had one to. After a few moments of frantic searching with a lumbering monster on her back, she found the double doors. With strength bore of adrenaline, she pried them open and bounded onto the opposite wall. Spinning, she leaped up and towards the wall that a split second before was at her back. In mid flight, she completed her spin and landed against the other wall. Leaping back and forth between the walls, she was bursting out onto the fifth floor in less than a minute. Ten seconds after that, she was running through the door and out onto the roof.
"Come on you idiot, I've set them up for you so you'd better not be late." Tamar backed towards the far edge of the roof, all the while watching the six Saltek emerge from the same door she'd used to get onto the roof.
They spread into a semi circle, cutting off her escape routes, then began to advance.
"You better not make me jump off this roof!" She screamed at the sky.
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