Original Design

by William Latoria

  “BILL!” she screamed, terrified, “DO SOMETHING!”

  He reached for his weapon. It had never felt so light or so right in his hands before. He looked up at the enemies that were coming through the hole. Men and women in black clothing and piecemeal armor made from sporting equipment were cautiously making their way through the bodies and debris. He looked behind him and saw Sergeant Wagner with the one surviving Air Soldier holding up their hands. They had run out of ammo and surrendered. Blackshade noted the look of fury that was plain on Sergeant Wagner’s face. Laughter brought his attention back around to the black clad figures making their way towards them. They were less than ten feet from him, but if they had seen him, they gave no sign. Even though they wore masks, he could tell that they were grinning, and it was that smug look he saw in their eyes, their look of pride and arrogance at the death they had caused, that finally pushed him over his boiling point. His vision became crystal clear, his body stopped shaking, and a pure, righteous hatred filled him.

  “Fuck it.” he growled, as he burst over the barricade and charged at the over-confident insurgents in front of him.

  Before any of them could so much as register he was coming toward them, he was firing his weapon. Four of his enemies went down screaming as his SMM rounds tore huge chunks of their flesh off in small red explosions. Their pathetic sports armor and cheap clothing offered no protection against the shaped molten metal. A few of the quicker ones shouted warnings as they were showered with their allies’ gore, but it was all for nothing. By the time they began to raise their weapons, he was on them, his rage and optimized body giving him all the strength he needed to bring ruin and pain to these vicious fools.

  As his first victims’ bodies hit the ground, Blackshade reached his closest enemy. His first punch landed dead center in a woman’s face. She couldn’t have been a very old woman, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three, but she would never see twenty-four. He felt his fist crumple her skull, and as he followed through her suddenly limp body went flying into a young man behind her. Her corpse slammed into the man, and they both tumbled into the jagged bits of wall left from the explosion. Neither of them moved when they finally stopped, but by then, Blackshade was on to his next target. He marveled at how slow these people moved, almost as if they were on a ten second delay. To a part of him, this fight felt unfair, but that was fine; he wasn’t looking for a fair fight. He was looking to slaughter them all.

  He fired three rounds into a trio of men coming at a run through the hole in the wall. His shots caught all of them in their torsos and took them off their feet. When their broken husks hit the ground, they lay perfectly still, smoke lazily wafting into the air from their ruined forms. Movement to his left caught his attention, and he threw himself towards it. This time, his target was an older man that had painted his face to resemble a human skull. Blackshade punched the man in his chest hard, causing him to gasp dryly as he clutched at his heart. Without hesitation, Blackshade grabbed the stunned man by the back of his head and used his superior strength to slam his face into a chunk of jagged wall. The man’s skull stuck in the concrete, and Blackshade left him there to die as he moved on to his next target. There were only a few of the enemy left inside the perimeter, and they were all frozen in fear by the slaughter he had unleashed on their comrades. Part of him knew he should demand that they lower their weapons and surrender, but a bigger part of him craved their deaths. The memory of their smug grins was all he needed to justify his decision not to be merciful. He shot two of the remaining enemies with his 2057 and charged at the third. The man saw him coming and tried to run away, but he was laughably slow. Blackshade drove his shoulder into the man’s back and sent him sprawling across the broken ground. The man rag dolled for ten yards, the sounds of breaking bones filling the air. The man shuddered once when he finally stopped and then went still. Blackshade’s momentum took him outside the wall and into the open area beyond. He stalked around the barren vicinity, searching for more enemies. Never in his life had he felt this powerful, and he wasn’t ready for it to go away. Movement caught his attention, and he looked up at the trees. He saw a flash and felt something hit him in his chest. He looked down and saw a flattened bullet stuck in his armor. He heard two more ‘bangs’ and watched as two more projectiles slammed into his chest armor and flatten. Usually, when projectile weapons hit OGTS’s, the wearer lived, but felt like he had been hit by a baseball bat, yet this barely registered as pressure. He looked up at the trees and growled a laugh, mocking the would-be assassins. Two more loud cracks answered his laughter, and he felt something hot smack into his cheekbone. He knew he had just been shot in the face, but the feeling wasn’t nearly as bad as he would have expected it to be. Warm blood began to run down his face, as faint pain radiated from his cheek. He reached up and wiped away the blood, not sure how bad the wound was. The swipe was all he needed in order to know it was just a flesh wound, the small caliber projectile must have been deflected by his cheekbone turning what could have been a lethal shot into nothing more than a future scar. He cursed himself for forgetting his helmet, as the realization of how close he had come to being killed dawned on him.

  Summoning all of his newfound agility, Blackshade sprinted towards the trees zigging and zagging erratically, in order to make himself a more difficult target. Small caliber rounds zipped past him with one or two finding their mark and striking him in his arms and chest. None of their impacts so much as slowed him, but he knew if they got a lucky shot on his head it could all be over. When he could, he shot randomly at the trees where he thought the snipers were set up. Only once during his mad dash into the woods did he score a direct hit and have the satisfaction of seeing a black clad figure fall to the ground. As he made it into the tree line, he pressed himself up against a large tree and waited. As he expected, a volley of small arms fire raked the tree on the opposite side he had taken cover. He heard five distinct different weapons making up the volley, and he thought he had a rough idea where in the trees his enemy hid. He was about to make his move, when he heard the distinct sound of a large caliber SMM weapon expending a charge. He dove away from his tree a moment before it exploded, as the large caliber SMM round flash boiled the moisture inside the living tree, causing it to explode as violently as the wall had. He scrambled up against another tree as a second volley of small arms fire was shot at him. One of the rounds hit him in the arm, and he flicked the smashed bullet off disgustedly. If he had remembered his helmet, he would have been all but immune to their weapons. He cursed himself for his arrogance and complacency. He listened for the sound of the SMM weapon, and after a moment he wasn’t disappointed. Since he was ready for it this time, he had ample time to throw himself toward another tree. He used his momentum to sling himself around the tree, and fire into the canopy in the rough direction he thought the snipers might be hiding. To his relief, and joy, two more enemies fell limply from their perches and hit the ground hard. Blackshade took cover against another tree before the remaining snipers could recover and shoot at him again. As he leaned against the tree and waited for another volley of small arms fire to riddle his tree, he was surprised when it didn’t come. He knew he hadn’t killed them all so they were either trying to escape, or planning something. Since he wasn’t sure if the snipers he had gotten were the ones that had the SMM weapon, he refused to break cover. After a few minutes, it became apparent they were at a stalemate. They were unable to kill him, and he didn’t want to keep taking the risk of giving them a chance to kill him. As he frantically tried to figure out how he was going to get out of this situation, he felt his arm vibrate in a very familiar way. Frustrated and confused that she would try and call him now, he slapped at his inputs.

  “What is it, Zahera?!” he hissed at his arm.

  “Shut up and duck!” was all she replied. Her tone left no room for argument, so he hit the deck, hard.

  No sooner had his face hit the dirt that he heard a fully automatic SMM weapon spin up and lay waste to the w
ooded canopy. He covered the back of his head with his arms and buried his face in the soil as branches, leaves, sticks, rocks, and God only knew what else fell all over him. At one point, something heavy hit the back of his leg, and he kicked it away in surprise and anger. In was soft and gave when he kicked it, so he assumed it must have been part of one of the snipers, or an extremely unlucky animal. The gunfire only lasted about twenty seconds, but when it was over, Blackshade raised his head slowly to see that the tree line, which had been reasonably thick, given the climate of Roswell, was now mostly gone. The remaining tree limbs that were left were heavily scarred or smoldering. Of the snipers, there was no sign.

  Blackshade stood up, causing a small avalanche of debris to fall away from him, retrieved his weapon, and walked towards the military conveyance that was speeding towards him. As it got closer, Blackshade saw Sergeant Wagner in the driver seat and Zahera on the turret. It was an eighty caliber, dual rotating, fully automatic, SMM chain machine gun and its barrels were still slightly glowing from Zahera’s onslaught. She reached down to open the passenger side door for him as they pulled up.

  “Get in, Bill, we still have a fight on our hands!” she ordered him, confident as ever. As Blackshade looked up at her, the sun highlighting her face, he thought he could never be more in love with her than he was right at that moment. He wanted to tell her that, he wanted to marry her and make babies with her right then and there. The feeling only intensified when he saw the word, ‘Love’, appear on her forehead as she looked down at him. But this wasn’t the time or place for that, and he knew it all too well. People were fighting and dying, their people, and it was time to make their enemies pay for that.

  “Yes, Ma’am.” was all he allowed himself to say in response. He promised himself he would make it up to her later.

  ………………………………………………………………………………………………………

  They stood over the bodies of their friends. Kara was in the middle, covered respectfully with a blanket someone had gotten out of one of the destroyed TDH’s. There were seven other bodies that accompanied her on the ground, each covered with a standard issue blanket. A few of the blankets, Kara’s included, were stained with blood. Zahera knelt over her body and spoke quietly to her friend. Tears dripped down her face and fell on the blanket covering her, dampening the cloth. In total, eight were dead and twenty-four injured. The injuries were all minor, thankfully, and everyone would recover, but the fact that they had been taken so completely by surprise by the attack sickened him. Their enemy had been a mixed group of anti-government extremists; religious zealots believing that what the Omegas were doing here was a blasphemy against their gods, and a few of their own Air Soldiers. There had been forty attackers, split into three separate groups, armed and outfitted with hunting rifles, personal small arms, and protective armor usually used for sports. The thirteen prisoners they had taken had been forthcoming enough with that information. As it turned out, the woman he had killed by punching through her face had been an Air Soldier I that was also a devout religious member. She had been the one who had stolen the drone codes, which allowed the enemy to reroute the machines and misrepresent their location. One of the prisoners was the enemy tech, and Zahera had almost shot him on the spot when he was discovered. It had taken two men to restrain her, but before she was pulled away, she had kicked the man so hard in his groin that he had passed out from the pain. Blackshade thought the man should consider himself lucky; he distinctly remembered Zahera vowing to cut his balls off and feed them to him. Of the enemy, twenty-seven had been killed and were still being piled onto transport conveyances to be disposed of as soon as possible. There would be no returning these deplorable people to their families for proper burials or last rights. By his own orders, he had instructed that their bodies be searched for Intel, and then thrown into a mass grave well outside the resurrection zone. It wasn’t usual protocol, but it wasn’t illegal either, and if their next of kin wanted to give them proper burials or last rights, they could come dig the rotten bastards up themselves. As far as he was concerned, the sooner those animals were dirt, the better. The Air Soldiers inside the encampment were unified in their hatred for the enemy that had attacked and killed eight of their comrades. He doubted anyone would so much as file a complaint.

  As much as he hated to do it, there was still the resurrection to focus on, so he went to Zahera and gently put his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him when she registered his touch, and when she recognized him, fresh tears fell from her eyes.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to tell Matt.” she told him brokenly. She was referring to Kara’s husband. A large man whose only feature bigger than his stomach was his heart. He had met Matt a few times when he was still just a Commander out of Barksdale and liked the man very much. He was a devoted husband, and loving father, that took great care of his family and his household. He was also one of the best cooks Blackshade had ever met. He recalled how much he looked forward to Squadron functions where Kara would bring food prepared by her husband. The news of her death would devastate the man, and his heart broke at the thought.

  “I’ll go to Matt.” he said gently, “I’ll tell him what happened. Maybe he’ll take some comfort in the fact that she’s been avenged.”

  Zahera only nodded in response, her grief finally overcoming her. Something nagged at him in the back of his mind, but he ignored it. Instead, he dutifully kept his hand on Zahera’s shoulder while she cried over her friend, her body shuddering with each new wave of grief. He could think of no other way to help her. Some of the other Air Solders were around them now, kneeling at the sides of their fallen friends. Some were openly crying like Zahera; others wore only a grim look on their faces with a vengeful look in their eyes. On their foreheads Blackshade saw the words, ‘Revenge’, ‘Anger, and ‘Sad’, appear, and understood all too well what they felt. The pain at the loss of these Air Soldiers was all the more keen with the knowledge that traitors in their own camp had been the reason the attack had been successful at all. It was their own troops that had provided the drone codes, explosives, and SMM weaponry to the extremists, and it was their knowledge of the camp that allowed them to attack with any kind of efficiency. Part of him was glad none of the military traitors had survived, but another part of him was furious there was no one to vent his frustrations on. There would be an investigation to be sure, but if anyone else was found to have helped the defectors that supported this attack, he hoped they would die a slow, public death. He stood from where he knelt at Zahera’s side and looked at the deceased South Americans that still hung in their bags. The attack had never gotten past the first ECP, thanks largely in part to the overwhelming response of Zahera’s Air Soldiers.

  The left flank breech had been shut down, almost before it had started, with over fifty troops laying down an overwhelming stream of SMM fire. The attackers had no sniper support and were cut down to a man within minutes of their initial attack. Most of the wounded Air Soldiers had come from that attack due to small arms fire. Not one troop at that location had been killed though, and that was a huge relief.

  The right flank breech hadn’t fared quite as well. Some of the attackers on that side had improvised explosives and fire bombs that they had thrown at the Air Solders that came to stop them. Five of the dead and the rest of the wounded were caused by that attack. In the end, drone firepower and some strategic genius by a Sergeant I, that the troops affectionately referred to as ‘DELTA Miguez’ had stopped the enemy. The Sergeant I had rallied the troops and outflanked the insurgents by using the drones still under their control to swarm and batter the attackers. Once pushed out of their cover, taking them down had been child’s play, from what he had been told. All of the prisoners they had came from S-1 Miguez’s counter attack. He was yet to meet the man, but intended to do so before the day was over. From what he understood, S-1 Miguez had taken a shot to his knee and was inside a medical TDH receiving treatment
for the injury. According to his inquiry, there would be no permanent damage.

  “Zahera,” he began quietly, “we have to…” was as far as he got, because when he looked at the landing zone he saw it was bathed in a bright yellow glow. It was beginning! The resurrection! He looked down at Zahera to bring it to her attention when his gaze settled on Kara’s covered body. The nagging feeling in the back of his head became a shout, and he realized what it was trying to tell him. Taking a step back, Blackshade ripped the blankets off of their dead with a speed that bordered on super human. Of the eight dead, three had extensive head injuries that made him believe they couldn’t be revived. Before anyone could move to stop him, he grabbed Kara’s body and slung it over his shoulder. He grabbed the two Air Soldiers to either side of her, a man and a woman, one with a lethal wound to the neck, and the other who had died after being burned by a fire bomb. He felt their weight keenly, but his urgency didn’t allow him to dwell on it. With a grunt of effort, he began sprinting towards the landing site as fast as he could. He heard the collective gasp from the Air Soldiers that had been around him, and he heard Zahera scream at him.

  He shouted back at them, not bothering to turn around, “THE OMEGAS MIGHT REVIVE THEM TOO!”

  As he reached the gate of the first ECP, he launched a kick at it, putting all of his weight and momentum behind it. The gate gave quickly under his assault, which surprised and pleased him as he had expected it to resist more, and he sprinted as fast as he could towards the next one. The light that surrounded the landing zone was getting more intense, and he knew he was running out of time. The next ECP was a closed chain link fence. As he approached it, he fired his Siglock 2057 from the hip, melting the chain links and ruining the fence. Electricity sparked and spat at him as he flew through the opening, but even with as fast as he was going, the shock he received from the gate staggered him. It felt as if something had taken a massive nail and drove it through his body. He roared in pain, but did his best not to slow down, he hurt everywhere and could smell charred flesh, but he had to get these troops, one of which was a good friend, to the site in time. The third and final ECP was nothing more than a retractable bar that ran across the road. He went to jump over it, but with the damage he had suffered from the second gate, and the added weight of the three bodies he carried brought him up short. His feet caught the bar across his ankles, and caused him to go tumbling through the air. His only thought was to hold on to the fallen troops on his shoulders as he hit the ground. It hurt badly, but he did his best to ignore it and regain his feet. It only took a moment, and after quickly repositioning his burdens, he continued running toward the landing site. It was only a couple hundred yards away now, and he pressed himself hard to make it there in time. The light coming from the sky was now glowing golden in the midmorning sun, and something inside of him told him he had less than a minute to get his fallen Air Soldiers there. He was hurting, he was breathing heavily for the first time in weeks, and his heart was hammering inside his chest. After not suffering from fatigue for so long, its resurgence took him by surprise. He pushed himself forward, letting the frustration of his own weakness fuel him. When he was ten yards away from the light, he gave everything he had left into one final lunge where he half threw, half pushed the three bodies towards the resurrection site. He fell hard, landing on his chest a few yards short of the boundary line, but Kara and the two troops he had grabbed landed well inside of the zone. Their bodies careened into the racks holding the deceased South Americans in place and knocked half a dozen bags off their hooks. Panting hard, Blackshade rolled onto his back and looked up at the sky. He was elated that he had made it in time, but with his task done, the adrenalin was draining out of him, leaving only the pain and exhaustion from his exertion. As he weakened, the pain in his body became more pronounced and intense. He felt something warm on his side, and his stomach felt… scratchy? He was beginning to think the shock he got from the fence did more damage than he originally thought.