The Future Project

7: Departure

There were only two days left. If they did not succeed in two days, Jenna would not know if the Ridhel were defeated for another ten years. Ten years was too long to wait. The trio was trudging through the early morning mist and the wreckage around them. There were no aliens around, so they stayed i the open. Dylan was a ball of chatter. They learned, without asking, that the mothership was across town and landed where city hall had been before it was attacked. Thankfully they were in one of the smaller canadian cities and therefore they could get there in a few hours if there were no disturbances in their path. Of course that was very unlikely. 

They ran into three small groups of Ridhel.

The first one was a team of four. They blended into their surroundings of rubble, and had Dylan not been throwing rocks to stay occupied, they would not have noticed them in the pile of shrapnel from a building. they had to play dead for an hour before they could quietly creep past the troupe. They each had a weapon with them, one had a small curved knife, which Dylan snatched.  They kept it in case they needed it. Jenna and Eric stood silently watching as Dylan then knocked out two aliens with the knife handle while the other two panicked, then picked up the gun from the second one and smacked it against the heads of the other two. The guns three of the creatures carried were too bulky and heavy. Much to Dylan's dissapointment, they couldn't carry them along.

Next they came across a well armed pair. They wore helmets and were easier to spot than the last group, marching around the open. They each held two guns and stalked among the wreckage, clearly of a high rank in the alien army. The trio of humans each grabbed a chunk of metal from around them and held it up like a shield. They treaded carefully and slowly while the aliens had their heads turned, then hid behind them when their eyes were turned in their direction. Jenna lost her grip and her piece of shrapnel fell. While Jenna whispered apologies, Dylan and Eric pulled their pieces of shrapnel against themselves, sandwiched Jenna between them and drew back to lean against the pile of rubble behind them.

"Oh goodness! I'm so sorry you guys I just slipped and-" Jenna whispered.

"Shhhhhhhhh!" Dylan and Eric shushed her in unision as the aliens searched for the source of the crashing metal. It took another half hour for these extra-terrestrial soldiers to give up and move on.

The third encounter was one with five Ridhel. Each was armed with a gun, and each was searching for humans.

"Are you good at throwing things?" Dylan asked while peeking around the mostly demolished building they were hidden behind.

"Ya I play fun baseball with my friends. well, played," Eric whispered in reply. 

"Alright, what I want you to do is throw this knife at the furthest Ridhel from us. These ones are communicating amongst themselves, they care about each other. If you get one down the rest will go to that one and we can get the heck outta here."

Eric was unhappy with the idea of harming a living creature, but he didn't want to be left out of the action anymore. He hefted the knife in one hand, drew back, and flung the curved blade in a swift motion. The weapon twisted in the air, moving towards it's target. It was inches away from the alien, until the creature foolishly took two steps towards the trajectory of the throw. The knife hit it in the arm and it went down in a flailing, wailing mess. Two went over to tend to it.

Dylan cursed under her breath. "We only had one knife! How do we get rid of the other two?"

One of the two that had gone to see the injured Ridhel turned towards the others. It made a series of clicks, growls, and whistles. The other two went over to them, then the groupe as a whole went in the other direction.

Dylan translated: "They say that one was injured too badly, and they needed to take him back to their ship. They need all of them to fly the ship to safety."

Once they were sure the aliens were good and gone, they continued on. They had only just left a couple of hours ago, and they'd gotten themselves into this much trouble, it was already nine in the morning. They were nowhere near their destination. It became apparant that their mission would be a very wild ride.