The Crimson Deathbringer

by Sean Robins

  SH-1 - 22.25 EST

  Kurt murmured to himself, “So, this is the end then.”

  He and the remaining members of his team were surrounded in a small, under-construction one-story building. Most of his people had been killed, and the remaining eight Commandos were injured, except for Sergei, who despite his large built was unscathed. That guy was so lucky.

  What bothered him most was not dying in this godforsaken city. He wanted to know that Operation Royalty would be a success, that all of this wasn’t for nothing. He would’ve died in peace if he knew they had succeeded. But with the Xortaags blocking their communications, there was no way to know how the battle was going. All he could do was wish Jim and the others good luck. He considered praying for a second, but after all those years of ignoring God, it was unlikely the deity would listen to him now.

  Oksana, shooting from behind a wall, said, “It was fine and good to be defiant to the end, but it was better not to get caught in the first place.”

  Sergei gave her a puzzled look. “I love you like a sister, but sometimes I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

  Oksana wiped the blood pouring out of a cut above her eyebrow with her sleeve and smiled like a crazy woman. “A sister!”

  Sergei removed his night-vision goggles and with a trembling hand rubbed his eyes to clear the sweat pouring down his forehead and blocking his vision. He told Kurt, “She’s definitely losing it.”

  One of the Commandos collapsed on the ground after getting hit in the chest. The man’s armor had given away after absorbing several hits.

  Seven, Kurt thought. He kept shooting his STG 666, bringing down a Xortaag with each shot, even though a wound in his right shoulder was throbbing with pain and made concentration difficult.

  Sergei, finally running out of luck, was next. A laser bolt hit him squarely in the face. Oksana screamed and despite having been shot in a leg limped to his side as fast as she could, but it was obviously too late.

  Kurt gripped his rifle so hard his knuckles turned white, closed his eyes for a second and thought, farewell, enemy mine.

  He aimed and shot a Xortaag in the head. Then another one, and a third soldier after that. His gun clicked empty. He looked for a fresh magazine, and when found none told Oksana, “I’m out.”

  Oksana threw him Sergei’s gun. “I’m on my last few rounds too.”

  “There must still be a few hundred of them out there,” said Kurt. “Maybe if they all stand in one line?”

  The earth beneath them started shaking.

  “An earthquake? Now?” asked Oksana.

  Kurt looked outside the building and smiled tiredly. “Nope. It’s General Blucher, and not a second too soon.”

  From down the street, five gigantic Leopards rolled into view. The tanks’ heavy machine guns roared, killing a dozen helpless Xortaag soldiers instantly. The Leopards’ crew manning the grenade launchers joined in. Some Xortaags fled. Others started shooting at the tanks with their sidearms. Hundreds of tiny laser bolts hit the tanks, causing no damage, while the armored vehicles kept firing at the enemy and butchering scores of them. The lead tank ran over a group of alien soldiers who were still shooting at it. They all died a horrible death.

  Kurt burst into uncontrollable laughter.

  “What is so funny?” asked Oksana.

  Kurt suppressed his laughter long enough to say, “The Xortaags are brave, but you have to question their judgment.”

  Oksana looked at him blankly for a second, then she started laughing too. The two of them laughed so hard they both soon found it difficult to breathe.

  A tank stopped right outside the building. Its turret hatch opened, and Matias pulled half of his torso out of it. He shouted, “Kurt? You in there?”

  Kurt stood up and looked outside. There were no Xortaags in sight. He waved to Matias. “Hi, Matias.”

  In a tense voice, Matias asked, “Is Oksana with you?”

  Oksana called out, “Hi, honey. Thanks for the rescue.”

  The former Marine, immense relief obvious in his face, said, “Sorry it took us a while. They’ve blocked your coms; otherwise, we would’ve let you know we were on the way.”

  Kurt helped Oksana stand up, and they both started limping out of the building towards the tank. He asked Matias, “How is the battle going?”

  “Could not be going any better,” said Matias. “The soldiers Maada had placed around SH-1 are slaughtering the Xortaags, and nobody can stand against my Leopards. SH-1 is ours.”

  Relieved, Kurt smiled, raised his free hand in a V-for-victory signal and told Oksana, “We did it. Say something epic.”

  Oksana let out a thin laugh. “One other such victory would utterly undo us.”

  Arminaa was hiding inside a building on the opposite side of the street. Soaked with rain and feeling utterly miserable, she’d watched with hate in her eyes as the huge metal monsters killed her comrades by the dozens. She’d have happily given her life to be in a Deathbringer’s cockpit right now, raining fire and destruction on enemy vehicles. Since that was impossible, giving her life was all she could do.

  Arminaa looked at the grenade she was holding in her hands. She had taken it from a dead Commando. She’d never seen one of those before, but she’d watched how the enemy soldiers used them, and at any rate, how difficult could it be?

  Arminaa carefully cleaned her Crimson Deathbringer Medal of dirt and mud one last time, pulled the pin, and with a sidearm in one hand and the grenade in the other, ran out of the building. She was approaching the tank from behind, so none of the Leopard’s crew saw her. The street was full of fog-like smoke, both from the tanks’ engines and the explosions, which helped her cause. So did the downpour. She ran as fast as her enhanced muscles allowed her, feeling wind and rain on her face for what certainly would be the last time.

  Kurt caught a glimpse of the Xortaag woman before she disappeared behind the tank. A sudden coldness hit him at the core, and he shouted to Matias, “Watch out!”

  An energy bolt hit Matias in the back of the head, and he disappeared inside the tank’s hatch. Kurt, still holding on to Oksana with his left hand, started shooting with Sergei’s gun, but his target was mostly hidden behind the tank’s turret. The Xortaag woman managed to throw in the grenade down the hatch a fraction of a second before Kurt shot her in her forehead. Most of her brain splashed from the back of her skull. Her blood painted the tank dark purple.

  There was a dull explosion inside the tank, and smoke started coming out of the hatch.

  Kurt collapsed on the ground, pulling Oksana with him, not even daring to look at her. He’d never been so dead tired in all his life. Then he forced himself to check on Oksana. Her eyes were glazed with tears. She bit her lips, got up and tried to limp towards the tank. The image of what she’d find inside turned Kurt’s stomach. Feeling defeated and useless, he stood up and pulled the girl into a gentle embrace. For a second, Oksana struggled to free herself, but soon she hid her face in Kurt’s chest, desperate tears spilling down her face. The two of them just stood there under the rain, exhausted, hurt, and heartbroken.

  SH-1 - 22.25 EST

  While thousands of deadly dogfights raged all around her, Keiko circled the small area where Maada was fighting Jim and his companions.

  She watched the fight for a few minutes, trying to find a weakness in the general’s tactics, finding none. She knew she was no match for Maada. Still, she had one final card to play.

  She’d been thinking about her plan for a few days now, but she couldn’t make up her mind. With the moment of truth upon her, she knew what she had to do. Once she made her decision, a wave of serenity washed over her. It was how one felt when going home after a hard but rewarding day at work.

  She recited the Earth prayer in her mind. We gently caress you, the Earth, our planet and our home . . .

  Keiko witnessed Maada destroying Josef’s Viper, and Jim attacking the enemy craft with renewed vigor, probably born out of desperation,
even though his vessel was damaged. The two space fighters started an aerial dance, fiercely twisting and turning around each other, each pilot trying to gain the upper hand.

  Keiko saw her window of opportunity.

  She pushed the stick and flew in without hesitating. The Viper screamed into a power dive. Two Deathbringers tried to intercept her, but she didn’t engage them at all. She just evaded them and moved forward. The two enemy pilots gave chase, shooting at her from behind. They would hit her in a few seconds, but it was inconsequential.

  Moving in fast, feeling the thrill of hunting the biggest hunter of all, Keiko released all her six Sparrows in pairs and let go with the laser cannons. Maada countered by making a hard turn up and to his right, avoiding the missiles and keeping himself out of her line of fire. Under normal circumstances, Keiko’s Viper would fly by the crimson Deathbringer, causing little or no harm.

  This is no normal circumstance, thought Keiko. General Maada, welcome to Earth!

  Maada, intoxicated by his most recent victory, recognized the green Viper. He smiled wolfishly and thought, good to see you again, old friend. You and I have unfinished business.

  With a lifetime of experience as a fighter pilot, Maada might’ve sensed the danger, but half his attention was still focused on the golden enemy vessel, whose pilot, despite being obviously outmatched and having taken several hits, still doggedly tried to target his Deathbringer.

  Some people just do not know when to quit, Maada thought with disdain, but he felt a grudging respect for the commander of the enemy fleet who had apparently grown a gigantic pair since the last time they met in battle.

  The green space fighter abruptly changed direction and charged towards Maada’s ship. He understood the enemy pilot’s intention and with lightning-fast reactions started maneuvering to avoid the collision, smirking confidently.

  I have been dodging energy bolts all my life, and this idiot thinks he can ram my ship!

  He would have succeeded, but at that very moment, a white-hot laser bolt

  shot by the golden space fighter ripped into his Deathbringer. This caused only minimal damage, but it delayed the execution of his maneuver just a fraction of a second.

  That was all it took.

  From his cockpit, Maada saw the green vessel getting bigger and bigger until it filled his field of view. He had enough time to think, Fucking humans!

  The fabled crimson Deathbringer and the green Viper turned into a tiny supernova.

  Dumbfounded, I stared at the expanding ball of fire and whatever was left of Keiko and Maada’s space fighters.

  My vision blurred so completely I thought I was going blind until I realized my eyes were full of tears. I broke down into tears, crying as soundlessly as I could, ignoring both Tarq and Barook who were shouting in a frenzy, asking me if Maada was indeed dead, apparently not trusting their own eyes.

  “This is new,” said Venom.

  Teardrops freely slid down my cheeks. The magnitude of my loss swept over me. Liz was gone. Keiko was gone. Josef was gone. Allen was gone. More than half of our pilots were already dead, and only God knew how many more would join them before this day was over. For all I knew, Kurt was dead or dying. Now Maada was gone, and I couldn’t even get the slight satisfaction of having my revenge. But I was still here, having to carry this burden for the rest of my life.

  I still had a job to do.

  I shook my head to clear the tears from my eyes and rejoined the battle.

  Tarq contacted me. “Jim, some of your Viper’s systems are dangerously close to failing. You have to return to Winterfell immediately before your space fighter falls from the sky.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “That was not a request.”

  “You can demote me later. Right now, I ain’t gonna leave my men,” I answered.

  My men.

  I belatedly added, “And women. My women? My people?”

  The first group of enemy pilots transmitted their intention to surrender less than five minutes later. First in small groups, and then in bigger ones, almost two-thirds of the Deathbringers hoisted the figurative white flag. Despite losing their numerical advantage, the rest fought to the bitter end and managed to take a lot of us with them.

  By the conclusion of the battle, I had shot down more than a dozen enemy space fighters, but I had stopped counting.

  With the Xortaag fleet out of the way, we turned our attention to the battle still raging in the city. By this point, their laser turrets had all been destroyed by human ground forces, and the Xortaags were defenseless against an air strike.

  “Ants, meet boot,” I murmured.

  We slaughtered them by the thousands until every last Xortaag on Earth was either dead or captured.

  Operation Royalty, and the Xortaags’ occupation of Earth, was over.

  Due to the extensive damage to my Viper, I was the last pilot to RTB, barely hanging in the air. A few of my men (people!) had stayed behind to escort my fighter, but they all landed before I did. By the time I started my landing run, the whole space fighter was shaking so badly I was beginning to think I might not make it after all, and I pulled a deadstick at the end.

  When I landed, all our surviving pilots were waiting for me, nearly four thousand men and women, still in flight suits, standing in formation. Someone shouted, “Commander on deck!”

  All my pilots, in unison, faced me and executed a perfect military salute.

  After struggling with my space fighter’s flight equipment for what seemed like hours, my limbs might as well have been chained to iron shackles, but with pride welling up, I stuck out my chest and saluted back.

  If only Liz were here.

  That evening, Kurt, Oksana, Dr. Bob and I got together, had a few drinks and reminisced about Liz, Keiko, Sergei, Matias, and Anastasiya. The four of us looked more miserable than Dr. Gachet. Van Gogh would’ve had a blast drawing our portrait.

  Feeling bone-weary, I murmured, “If this is how we feel in victory, I wonder how we’d have felt if we’d failed.”

  Kurt sipped his Paulaners and said, “You know, Keiko was right all along. I should’ve cherished every second we had together. Instead, I pushed her away.”

  “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” said Oksana.

  “Didn’t your mother teach you not to use clichés?” I asked.

  Cordelia laughed. “Look who’s talking.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  There was a lot of work to be done, so we decided to keep MFM running until we could deal with several urgent issues.

  Nearly half a million Xortaags had surrendered. We turned what was left of SH-1 into a POW camp and kept them there under heavy guard for the time being.

  We rounded up Zheng’s people and put them in normal prisons. I was with Kurt when he was informed Zheng himself was found and was in custody. His eyes flashed, and a predatory smile crossed his face. I was so happy I wasn’t in Zheng’s shoes.

  We took this opportunity to deal with the organized crime once and for all. We used MFM to send out a message, asking whoever had been involved in any sort of criminal activity to report to their local police and confess to everything, supporting their confessions with evidence. Hundreds of crime bosses all over the world willingly went to prison, and an untold number of unsolved crimes and cold cases were closed.

  With all that done, we sent out a message, asking everyone on the planet to be in either front of a TV or online on October 14th at 12.00 EST. We stopped the MFM at that moment and broadcasted a previously prepared message by Kurt. We knew once MFM stopped, the people would remember their last memory before going under, which for most of them was the alien invasion, with incoherent bits and pieces of what’d happened ever since.

  Kurt filled everyone in on the Xortaag invasion, the Akakies’ help, the liberation of Earth, the whole nine yards. He asked people to go on with their normal lives and wait for a democratic election to be held in a few weeks. Until then,
Earth would be governed by us, and if anyone had a problem with that, we could just turn MFM back on. He wasn’t joking about that.

  We did turn MFM back on, but only for a few minutes. It was Tarq’s idea. We were worried about mass hysteria—it wasn’t every day that you woke up from a several-months-long dream and were told you’d been living under an alien occupation that had claimed the lives of several million people. Tarq used MFM to send out soothing messages for about five minutes. He kept doing that once every hour for the next few weeks until, slowly but surely, everything went back to normal.

  New York - October 14, 2048

  A voice in General Zheng’s head kept repeating that he should be in front of a TV at 12 noon. There wasn’t a TV in his cell, so he sat on his bed, waiting for someone to come and tell him what to do.

  All of a sudden, the voice disappeared, and his half-forgotten memories came rushing back. He remembered the alien invasion and the desperate attempts to fight them off. He barely had any memories of the last few months, but it appeared he had been busy running some sort of a figurehead government.

  Zheng noticed a man standing on the other side of his prison cell bars. When he recognized the man, he jumped out of his skin.

  Kurt von der Hagen was standing there, wearing his trademark black trench coat, staring at him with cold, gray eyes.

  Kurt took an antic six-shooter out of his pocket. It was an 1851 Colt Navy. He slowly loaded it, bullet by bullet, taking his time.

  Zheng paled. Coming face to face with the infamous assassin had always been his worst fear. He’d never dreamed of it happening with him unarmed and helpless in a prison cell. With a shivering voice, he said, “Now wait a minute. I’m sure we can come to a reasonable arrangement.”