Jack Strong: Dark Matter

by Heys Wolfenden

  She had barely made it a hundred feet when she saw a group of Asvari soldiers stood before an open door. They were focused on something inside the room. She heard more sounds of struggle, then something collided with what sounded like a wall. What was going on in there? A riot?

  Still unnoticed, she peered through a gap in the cordon. Two shadows cavorted in the half light. One was Ren. The other was… Ros.

  They were fighting. What was happening? Why was no one intervening?

  Then Ros was suddenly lifted-up before her eyes and slammed repeatedly against the wall, snapping his spine once, twice, three times.

  He slumped to the floor, all blood and bones and straggly tissue. Ren stood over him like a big game hunter. He lunged in for the final kill.

  Vyleria was about to open fire with when Ren howled in pain, claws clasped to his forehead, before he was flung violently against the wall. Blood trickled from his ears, his mouth. He didn’t get up.

  The room became a blur of limbs and movement as Asvari soldiers rushed in to help Ren and Ros. In the chaos she saw Ros lift his hand and touch an Asvari’s head. He looked weak, feeble, a snake of black liquid was oozing out of one of his ears, puddling around his head on the floor. Was he going to be okay?

  BURN! BURN! THEY’RE ALL GOING TO BURN!

  Vyleria looked up to see Ren stagger drunkenly to his feet, before he fell face down to the floor, only to get up again. His face looked wild, like an animal’s. Black blood crept from his nose in little rivers, covering his lips and chin.

  BURN! BURN! He yelled, cackling like a hyena, black spittle flying from his mouth.

  SHE’S OUT! SHE’S OUT! THE WITCH IS OUT OF HER CELL! He shouted, spitting in her direction.

  Vyleria squeezed the trigger without realising it, taking the top off an Asvari’s head. He flopped down to the ground bonelessly, what looked like an oil slick masking his face.

  Then the room was a tsunami of action as a flurry of weapons began to fire. She took care of the two soldiers in front of her, their abdomens opening-up like little caves on a hillside, before spinning round to face the rest.

  She froze.

  A trio of laser rifles were pointed straight at her head.

  KILL HER! KILL HER! Ren yelled, spitting blood, bile. He sounded insane, deranged. EXTERMINATE THEM ALL! EVERY CITY! EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD! DEAD, DEAD, I WANT THEM ALL DEAD!

  Vyleria looked the soldiers in the eyes. An impossible choice. Their fingers slammed down towards the triggers. Here it comes…

  Just as they were about to fire an invisible force plucked them up and threw them against the far wall like a child’s rattle. They didn’t get back up. Black puddles formed at their feet.

  Vyleria span round immediately.

  The Asvari who had been stood over Ros was now directly in front of her. His face was dark, impassive, like the moon. He raised his right hand towards her. She prepared for the worst, looking at the two crushed bodies by the wall.

  “It’s okay,” he said in a voice that appeared in her mind. “I understand now, we all do.”

  “We?”

  NO! KILL THEM! KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL! BURN! BURN! THEY’VE GOT TO BURN!

  The Asvari suddenly collapsed to the ground like a disused apartment block, half his head missing.

  Vyleria turned around just in time to see Ren point a rifle at her, face contorted with anger, with rage. She took a step backwards, only to slip on something wet and squishy, losing her balance.

  A laser bolt thundered over her head, carving a hole in the wall behind her. She could smell smoke, fumes.

  Another crack of lightning jagged her way, cutting the Asvari in front of her in two.

  Then there was another and another and another. The corridor was on fire now, smoke belching like the angry mouth of a dragon. She began to cough, splutter. She couldn’t breathe. There was too much smoke.

  She picked herself up and half ran half stumbled down the corridor. She was almost at the control room when the air was carved open by several bursts of lightning. More fire. More smoke.

  She looked behind her to see a dim silhouette striding through the smoke. He was coming. He laughed and cackled wildly, firing in all directions, not caring at who he was firing at. BURN! BURN! YOU’RE GONNA BURN! OH YES, YES! More laughter, more chanting. Firing, firing, firing.

  Vyleria ran as quickly as she could, diving into the control room as a burst of laser fire singed her back.

  When she got to her feet a trio of laser rifles were pointed at her head, fingers hovering over the triggers like demented hummingbirds. Then there were several flashes of lightning, like a huge summer storm had unfurled around her. She expected her chest, stomach to explode, only for the Asvari in front of her to be pierced by lightning, body parts flying in all directions.

  FIRE! FIRE AND BLOOD! Ren yelled behind her, firing indiscriminately around the room. KILL THEM ALL! KILL THEM ALL!

  He was murdering his own men.

  More Asvari were cut to pieces, some clutching weapons, some in the act of surrender.

  YOU’VE GOT TO TELL JACK.

  What was that? Where had that voice come from?

  JUST DO IT. TELL HIM NOW. WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME. BEFORE HE DESTROYS EARTH.

  “Earth? What are you talking about?”

  Vyleria glanced at Ren. He was firing at the control screen, eyes etched with madness, face set on slaughter. A gazillion blue darts pinged off Earth’s surface, the image rippling under his weapon’s fire.

  QUICK. BEFORE HE CAN DO IT FOR REAL.

  Vyleria launched herself at the nearest console, it’s electric blue paneling coated with black Asvari blood. She would’ve used their normal in-brain communication but the Asvari had disabled it. She feverishly began to tap away at the computer screen, lightning raining down all around her. She brought up Jack’s name, face, opened a secure channel.

  Her side suddenly exploded with pain, knocking her off her feet. She looked down to see her stomach carved open, purple fountains spurting in all directions. She felt weak, sick. Smoke billowed around her. Fire everywhere. She couldn’t breathe. She was suffocating, drowning.

  Jack…

  Chapter Forty-Two: Peace Negotiations

  Jack walked between what was left of the shattered trees, a squad of marines next to him. A lone chimpanzee scurried over what remained of the tree-tops, a small limp form in its hands. It howled uncontrollably. What had they done? What we had to, and that makes it all the more tragic.

  “She’s here,” said Gaz, running up to him. It was strange to think of Gaz as a friend, not as an enemy, but he trusted him with his life now. The war had done that.

  “Jack,” said the black woman striding through the charred undergrowth, marines flanking her on either side. “How can America, how can Earth ever thank you?”

  “Madam President, I…”

  “You’ve saved America, Britain, Africa, the whole world. School children all the way from Alabama to Addis Ababa are going to know your name and celebrate what you’ve done here. They’ll name schools after you, town squares, hospitals, universities, you may even take my job one day.”

  “But I’m not an American citizen.”

  “That won’t matter after today, you’ve forged a new nation, a global world of likeminded citizens, united through the terrible hand of war.”

  “STOP THAT!” yelled Jack, storming past the President and through a crowd of marines.

  An Asvari soldier was on his knees in the middle of a burnt-out clearing. There was a pistol pointed at his head. An American soldier was holding it. Tears streaked down his cheeks. One of his arms looked badly burned, half of his neck and part of his face too. He looked like he was about to shoot.

  “Soldier, holster your weapon,” he said.

  “Do what he says,” said the President, walking up behind him.

  “How can I?” he said, tears leaking from his eyes like acid rain. “They wiped out half my squadron, my family in Arkansa
s too. They’re monsters.”

  “Yes, they are,” said Jack, glaring at the Asvari. “But so are we if we kill them in cold blood. We’d be no better than them. No, we’d be worse.”

  “Worse? How?” said the airman. “They…”

  “Because we’d know better, besides we wouldn’t stop. We’d find the next Asvari and kill him too. And then the next and the next. It would never end until the entire Asvari race is rubbed from the sky, eradicated. It would be an intergalactic genocide. Is that what you want?”

  “I…”

  “We’re better than this,” said Jack, looking at all the soldiers, sailors and airmen. “If we commit atrocities then we will lose whatever honour and sense of justice we’ve gained here today. There’s a war coming. An even bigger war than the one we’ve just fought. And we need the Asvari’s help in that. Without it we’re doomed. We got lucky today.”

  “You call this luck,” shouted one soldier.

  “Yeah, what are you talking about?” yelled an airman. “It’s time for some payback.”

  “These,” said Jack, bringing up a holo-image of a dreadnut and a lava man. They were designed to scale, horribly so.

  “You think I care about them?” shouted the airman. “The greys killed my husband when they took New York.”

  “Mine too,” murmured one of the female marines. “All they found were his teeth. His apartment block was levelled.”

  “Yes, I know it’s horrible,” said Jack. “But you’ve got to listen to me. The Scourge are worse, much worse. With them there are no survivors, only tools that they can use for future conquests,” he said, looking at the female dreadnut, her cybernetic eye glowing red.

  “But…”

  “It’s okay, I understand now.”

  Jack span around in the direction of the voice. It was coming from the Asvari. He was still kneeling.

  “We surrender,” he said.

  “Who do?” asked the President.

  “The Asvari people. It’s the only solution to this crisis, the only way out. We’re sorry to have caused all this… carnage.”

  “That’s putting it lightly,” said the President. “The Earth is a charred cinder, our economy is ruined, our cities rubble. The war may be over but in less than twenty four hours there’ll be hunger, famine, riots, bands of criminals roaming the countryside. It will be chaos, anarchy. I’m sorry Jack, but we are in no condition to fight another war. We are barely able to preserve the peace.”

  “I…”

  “We can help,” said the Asvari, getting to his feet, pistol still pointed at his head. “We all can.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Jack.

  “That we are eternally in your debt. We intend to heal the wounds we’ve created, re-build what we helped destroy. We are your servants now, with a debt to fulfill, starting tonight. We fought this war as enemies, but we can end it as allies, with a true peace, a true union of our peoples. Without it recriminations would follow, and the war would start again. Today, tomorrow, in ten years’ time, who knows? But soon. And that would be a terrible day, a red day for both humans and Asvari. What do you say? Will you accept our offer?”

  Everyone turned and looked at the President, their eyes grim, exhausted.

  “What do you think?” asked the President.

  “Who me?” said Jack.

  “Who else?” she said, looking at the servicemen and women from a plethora of countries. “This alliance is your handiwork. If it wasn’t for you, we’d all be fighting our own individual battles. It was your idea to attack the Asvari here in Nigeria where they were at their most isolated, most vulnerable, a central point where all the countries of the Earth could converge and render aid. The war would’ve been lost without you and the Asvari would’ve won. Slavery would have followed. So yes, I’m asking you to make this one important decision. We owe our lives to you, all of us. If you accept the offer then I will too, and if you refuse…”

  “No, no, not that,” he said. “Never that. That way leads to hunger, hate, suffering… war. The Asvari have attacked us and laid low our cities. Millions, maybe even tens of millions are dead or dying and many more are at risk of famine and disease. As I see it we only have one choice. We will make peace with the Asvari, but they must fix what they have broken, heal the wounds they’ve caused. If there is a fire,” he said looking directly at the Asvari, “I want you to put it out. If there’s a hungry mouth, I want you to feed it. If there’s a disease running wild I expect you to be there with the cure. Do we have an understanding?”

  “We will do all that and more,” said the Asvari.

  “See that you do,” said Jack. “Sorry, I didn’t get your name…”

  “It’s three.”

  “Three? That’s it? Don’t you normally name yourselves after famous UFO crashes?”

  “We’ve done away with names, all they brought was hate. No more Roswell’s, no more Chesapeake’s, no more Rendlesham’s. We are one now, of a sort, those designations are things of the past. The future is our emperor now.”

  “Then that’s it?” asked the President. “We’ve won? Ren has fallen?”

  “JACK! JACK!”

  The voice screamed from every radio and every microphone all at once, followed by a burst of static. Jack would recognise that voice anywhere.

  “Vyleria? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  “He’s going to destroy it!” she shouted.

  “Destroy what? Vyleria, what are you talking about?”

  “REN! He’s going to destroy the Earth with the planet killer. You’ve got to do someth…”

  “Vyleria?”

  Nothing but a whirl of static.

  “Vyleria?”

  More white noise.

  “The planet killer?” asked the President. “What was that girl talking about? Is it a Scourge weapon?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Jack. “It’s one of ours. Our spaceship has the ability to destroy entire planets and whole civilisations. We found it by chance actually, the Xenti…”

  “But that’s impossible. No spaceship can do that… except in Hollywood.”

  “Trust me,” said Jack, his face as grim as slate.

  “Then what can we do about it? There are eight billion citizens on this planet. We could never evacuate them in time, there’s too many…”

  “Don’t worry Madam President,” said Jack, “this is our problem, we’ll solve it.”

  Jack was all fluid movement as he leapt into his spaceship, swiftly followed by Gaz and Jorge. Their flying saucer zipped away from the jungle like a dart. He had to stop Ren, he had to. The alternative was the complete destruction of Earth.

  Chapter Forty-Three: Emergency Measures

  “Do you think she’s alright?” asked Jorge from the back of the saucer. Clouds whizzed by in a stream of light.

  “I don’t know,” said Jack, grimacing as they sheared through the atmosphere. “Ren…”

  “There they are!” shouted Gaz.

  A slither of light cut across the face of the moon. It turned towards them immediately, covering the distance in moments, its sonic cannon whirring menacingly.

  A thousand blue darts peppered the space in front of them, dicing-up a couple of asteroids. Rock spewed everywhere in a lunar hail. A micro-second later and the lightning storm consumed them, riddling their left flank with weapons’ fire.

  “Jack!” shouted Gaz.

  “I know,” said Jack, smelling smoke.

  “What are we going to do?”

  The spaceship was almost on them now, like an eagle over a hare, ravenous in its hunger. Its beak lunged towards them for the final bloody kill.

  “Eject me!” yelled Jack.

  “What? Are you crazy?”

  “Just do it. I think it might work, I think I know what he meant.”

  “What who meant? What are you talking about?”

  “The Asvari. Number three. I think the spaceship has lost its master.”

  “What does that
mean?”

  “That all bets are off.”

  “But…”

  “Look, I’ll explain more later. Aim for the ship. I don’t want to miss it and not hit dry land till Pluto.”

  “What good will that do?”

  “You’ll just have to trust me.”

  “Can’t I come with you? Jorge can pilot the saucer on his own.”

  “No, if I’m right, this is only something I can do.”

  Jack expected Gaz to argue further, but instead he found himself shooting through space at a thousand miles per hour, the gigantic silver hawk getting larger and larger and more menacing.

  All Jack saw was a sea of silver as he propelled through space like a human torpedo. He braced himself for impact, only for the cold, hard metal to reach out and embrace him, sucking him up like an intergalactic gobstopper.

  In a second the cold hard reality of space was exchanged for a warm, brightly-lit corridor and a soft metal floor. His plan had worked. Whatever had happened to Ren had resulted in him losing control of the ship, returning it to its default settings. Him in other words. Which was good, otherwise he would have been a big red smudge on the outside of the spaceship.

  He looked around. He could smell smoke, a fire flickered in the distance like a Chinese lantern. There were a couple of dead bodies a few feet further down. One was Asvari, the other was one of the Space SEALS. Their heads had been crushed.

  Ren.

  “Vyleria!” he shouted.

  Nothing but the soft hiss of flames.

  “Ros!”

  Still no answer.

  He had to find them. Time was running out. Had they arrived at Earth yet? He tried to think himself up into the control room, but it didn’t work. All their space apps had been deleted by Ren. He ran as quickly as he could towards one of the transportation rooms, hoping that they still worked.

  He jumped into the first one he found. He closed his eyes and brought up an image of the control room. Would it work?

  Jack opened his eyes on a scene of carnage. There were body parts everywhere, the entire control room was streaked with blood. It stank of death.