Planetarium Guardian

Alarms were ringing in the military factory. People were rushing back and forth as the alarms grew louder in pitch and volume.

‘Cut the crap!’ The commander shouted as he and his fellow officers walked into the control room.

He pointed gestured towards his secretary to come over and explain the situation.

‘Sir!’ she said, standing at attention, raising her hand in salute.

‘What’s the situation, Dramily?’ he barked.

‘We are not certain for sure sir’ She quickly responded. ‘We are however sure that it is a large object travelling at three hundred kilometres per hour.

Some of them officers standing behind him whistled and he turned to them angrily.

‘Be quiet!’ he roared and instantly their smiles vanished.

Turning back to his secretary, he prompted roughly ‘And?’

She took a deep breath and then said evenly ‘It’s going to hit the ocean in less than three minutes, sir.’

Nodding in satisfaction, he turned to his lieutenant and said ‘Get four of your girls to head over to the spot.’

While he was addressing the lieutenant, she had gone off to the charter to get the location of landing. Now, as he turned to her again, she quickly said ‘Currently, we are pointing towards south. The object will land two hundred meters, south east from here.’

Nodding in reply, the lieutenant hurried away from the room. The commander sat down in his chair and sighed deeply. The other officers knew why he was so exhausted. For the past three days they had been fighting off fifteen attacks from the aliens.

‘Wish those damned things just give up already.’ He muttered.

Few minutes later, they heard loud ringing of bells announcing the launch of four Planetariums.

‘Why do we have to do out today?’ a girl with blonde hair grumbled, putting on her combat suit as the women around her shuffled around, carrying weapons and gear for them to wear.

‘Don’t complain.’ Another girl with sandy hair and blue eyes said gruffly as she placed the head gear over her head. ‘This means that we would certainly get bonus.’

‘Some bonus!’ The third girl with blond hair and blue eyes snorted, now adjusting her controls of her machine.

‘Get a grip you three.’ The last girl said with authority in her voice. ‘This might get ugly. So get serious.’

Nodding in agreement, they put their buckles on and sat back to wait for the launch order. Outside, men and women ran clear of the launching ground and into the shelter of the buildings.

‘May the sun shine the light through the darkness!’

With that, they heard the loud bang of the order and they pressed the buttons on their controls for launch. Their machines rose higher and higher into the open air. As the latch over their head opened, the clear light of the sun hit them hard in the eyes and they blinked several times to get adjusted to it.

‘Good sun.’ one of them muttered.

As they stopped, their machines stood upright facing towards the open ocean. Now they waited for the order for each of them to launch at different intervals.

‘Number two, launch!’

Instantly, the girl pressed her blue button in her controls and fell back into her seat as her machine went speeding towards the end of the ship. At the edge of the ship, she pressed her foot down onto the pedals at her feet. At the moment of contact, the machine knelt down the last few meters and as she released, the machine jumped high into the air. After soaring into the air for a few meters, the machine started to drop but as she pressed another button, jets fired up right behind it, making it fly.

The other machines did the same and together, they flew towards the designated coordinates now streaming to them with their connection to the control room. For two meters they remained in silent but that was suddenly broken when one of them shouted and then too saw what had startled her.

About fifteen meters from them, the object was flying towards them at a breakneck speed. They scattered as it whooshed past them and struck the island hard. The impact caused the island to crack into pieces and bits were scattered by the huge surge of waged caused by the crash.

‘Oh my God…’ one of them muttered in astonishment at the spectacle.

‘That’s…’ another one said in wonderment.

‘Let’s go take a closer look.’ The fourth girl said with authority in her voice again.

Without arguments, they soared lower and lower towards the site of the crash. As the fog of dust cleared, they saw that the object was a pod; a life pod that they had never seen before. It was smoking from crash but looked very strong. A long line that looked like it was dug up was drawn to show its landing path.

‘Bianca.’ Corla said. ‘You should feed this straight to the headquarters.’

Bianca nodded in agreement. Then she started to type commands into the screen displayed in front of her. She heard a click and knew she was connected to the headquarters.

‘Sir, Bianca, number four reporting.’ She said, saluting orderly.

‘What is it?’ the voice asked crisply.

Immediately she clicked a button and she started to feed the live stream to her. She and her other companions heard the control room go silent in shock. Then they saw the latch of the pod open. The door opened and for a moment nothing happened.

A boy fell out of the hole and landed on the hard ground. He lay there, quite still and unmoving. For a moment they thought he had died when he tried to get back to his feet but his lack of energy failed him and he fell back.

‘You girls go and pick him up and brink him back to the base.’ Their commander barked at them.

‘Yes sir!’ they replied back.

‘Who do you think he is?’ Ronnie asked as Bianca lowered her machine to the ground and picked up the limp body.

‘We’ll find out soon enough.’ Bianca replied.

As they soared back to the base, she turned to look at the boy. He had jet black hair and it seemed to her that he was very tall. Judging from his youthful face, she guessed that he would be around her age. Then she wasn’t sure if she imagined it or not but she was sure that the boy had made some kind of gesture towards her.