Peace Keeper

by Greg Prado

  William plopped down into the freely swaying grasses and tipped up a cigarette from his shirt pocket. He brought it to his mouth and touched a jet of white flame to the tip, summoned by a tiny metal square of yellow gold.

  “A doctor who smokes?” Mieke asked.

  “God awful habit,” William admitted breathing in a breath of smoke as the tip glowed. “Unfortunately, it’s been stress relief lately.”

  He exhaled a puff of greyish ecstasy and closed his eyes. He kept them shut as he spoke again.

  “Just a few short hours and I’ll be back to Amelia, back to London. I just keep telling myself that. I’ll be honest, my friends. This mission has been more taxing than I had expected.”

  “For all of us,” Friedrich added.

  “Some more than others,” Mieke’s intended tone was one of brevity at her injury, but it came out more depressed. She chuckled with a fake smile, but no one was fooled. Mieke had lost much more than a gratuitous amount of blood.

  Mieke’s brain had been blended into a dendritic smoothie. She’d lost the woman known to her as mother, and memories associated with both parents were slipping into nostalgic sepia tone. They were scenes she knew were implanted, but she clutched them tightly nevertheless, like totems of a false god she still wished to worship.

  The group sat down amidst the greenery of the beautiful park and wished only for the end of their odyssey. William checked his broadcaster several times as the minutes turned to more than an hour. It was pinging with a flashing red light just the way it should have.

  After a few more minutes, Dr. Schmidt looked toward his emotionally distant creation. She stared blankly up at the sky. He knew the slide back into reality couldn’t be easy for her. He approached cautiously as an explorer might have crept up next to an angry asp and cleared his throat.

  “Mieke,” Friedrich whispered. He crouched beside her and patted her ankle. He tried to bridge the space between them after his deception had been revealed. “You are brave beyond measure. You saved us all several times over. I’m so grateful to be here beside you as someone who cares about you very much.”

  He loved her. She knew that. Despite this, he found himself unable to express those feelings as they were entangled with his torment of guilt. He was responsible for Amelie’s death. If they hadn’t gone after the motorcycles, she might have still been alive. Perhaps the agent would never have found them.

  Friedrich continued lying to himself. He knew no one could outrun JCN forever. Even on another continent, he doubted Mieke’s safety as long as he was with her.

  “In case I don’t make it,” Friedrich said softly. “The Intel is on a tiny chip implanted under your right ear. I know they want me for the program, but—”

  “You will,” Mieke answered, forcing herself to sit up. Friedrich noted the speed with which she made herself upright and marveled at the healing ability within her. Once again, his mind wandered for a moment. He wished he never had to activate her. He wished she had retained the innocence he implanted within her.

  She was good. She was brave. She was everything he wished he could have been.

  “The transports are here. I already hear them,” Mieke smiled. She pointed out toward the west and seemed to touch invisible angels in an empty black sky. “Two verticopters and a—something? Sounds like a heavy chopper of some kind. Probably that air support William requested.”

  “Thank God for that,” William grunted with a shiver. “It’s bloody freezing and the cold ground isn’t making it any better.”

  As the choppers zoomed closer in the night sky, the distant rotor sound began to rise in pitch ever so slightly. They were flying in a hurry. William appreciated their haste. He popped the flare he’d saved for their extraction and flipped up a canister of green smoke. Much to his surprise, the LZ was clear.

  Finally illuminating their floodlights at the signal of green smoke, the three bi-rotor craft swept in so low and fast that William was concerned about an unintentional hair clipping.

  The first transport landed slightly away from the crew with its door mounted gun pointed back toward the city. The gunship held position above the rescuees, clearly watching the horizon. The warm and welcoming third chopper opened its doors and beckoned them in.

  William helped Mr. Fisher first, who was followed quickly by the good doctor and Mieke. As she stepped up, she took one last look out over the horizon. She froze in place.

  “Take off!” she screamed over the thudding engines. “Get that chopper—”

  She pointed at the landed transport a few dozen meters from them. The gunner looked at her with a puzzled face as the tracer rounds made contact with the engine directly above his head. The gunship nosed forward toward the threat. The hail of gunfire ripped through the grounded helicopter as though it were made of paper. The Vulcan cannon roar followed as the supersonic shot ripped their escort to shreds.

  “Fucking hell, that bloody thing is still kicking,” William shouted out. “We are leaving, now! Quickly!”

  He felt the liftoff in his legs as the engines roared, giving the craft all it could take. It rose too slowly. William was sure of it. Missiles streaked through the night sky and seemed to pass around the craft in a spray. Friedrich jumped on the mounted 50 caliber gun, ready to return fire as soon as an opportune angle presented itself.

  They heard the Omaha gunship open fire with a flurry of missiles and its own Vulcan cannon, but explosions from the invisible assailant seemed to indicate that the reactive armor was doing its job.

  In a period of ten horrifying seconds, they watched three awful events transpire.

  The Omaha helicopter lit up orange and began to fall as the peacekeeper Vulcan ripped up the length and was followed by a pair of missiles.

  Another trio of surface to air missiles passed even closer to the crew’s escaping transport.

  Dieter stood up from his jumpseat and grabbed the netting above him as a horrified expression painted his face. There, in the ever-more distant field, was Mieke. She carried the mounted gun of the other helicopter and was beginning to slip from view.

  He only noticed her because of the incendiary rounds being fired from her cannon. Just as the peacekeeper gunfire approached the final escaping chopper, the stream of rounds dipped back down toward her position.

  “We have to go back!” Friedrich shrieked as he almost leapt from the aircraft toward her. He grabbed a uniformed UK airman’s helmet microphone and craned it toward his mouth. “Take us back!”

  The young man didn’t want to say the news he was hearing, but he stammered through the pilot’s announcement.

  “That is a negative, Doctor Schmidt. The lieutenant says we cannot compromise—”

  “I don’t give a flying fuck what the lieutenant says! Turn this around or I’ll throw myself from this aircraft! You do not leave her—”

  William stared at the ground as a trio of rockets splashed down around Mieke. His heart dropped into his stomach as the woman faded from view and the tracer rounds ceased.

  “No!” Friedrich howled in brokenness as he fell to the floor. William reached out an arm and handcuffed himself to Doctor Schmidt as he slammed the door opposite the gun shut.

  “We will not have her death be in vain!” William roared. “She made a choice, Doctor Schmidt. We are saved only because of her decision!”

  “But she. . .” Doctor Schmidt blubbered. “. . .What’s the point? She had the intel. She died for nothing!”

  The door opposite the pair clicked shut as the airman whose microphone Friedrich had borrowed yanked the gun back into the body of the craft.

  “You are the intel, Doctor Schmidt, and you bloody well should remember that when you reach the prime minister. Mieke gave her life to end the war. Now please—see that it gets done,” William retorted.

  Friedrich gazed over at Dieter. The man looked empty. He wore a blank expression. It was as though the impact of the events hadn’t caught up to him yet. As he looked to the stoic older man, Fri
edrich pondered his failure. More importantly, he thought of what he could do about it.

  Mieke sacrificed herself to help end the war. By God, he resolved to do his part as well.

  As the engine noise normalized, William looked back toward a shattered Berlin, still aflame from the peacekeeper attacks. The smoke faded, but he was sure of one thing. His memory of Mieke never would.

  * * *

  After just six months of non-stop work, Doctor Schmidt had taken the non-viable prototype agent he had been provided by The Crown and turned it into something extraordinary.

  He’d worked day and night. His staff never saw him leave. They were sure he had a cot somewhere on premises because no matter how early they seemed to arrive at the black site, he was there first.

  When Minister Shandi visited Doctor Schmidt, he made the extremely rare exception of bringing a certain medic along for the trip. The engineering team had blacked out many of the lab windows in preparation for his arrival, but he’d been granted a DV, Developed Vetting, clearance.

  There were some things he was able to see.

  “I must say, this is a surprising turn of events, Mr. Prime Minister. I never expected to be granted access to the agent program in the—”

  “We’re not actually calling them agents here,” Shandi spoke curtly. The man’s copper skin and jet-black hair towered above the already large William Rutger. His deep, pleasant, regal voice continued on, “I simply thought with us bringing them online, and you being a medical professional whose services were so intimately intertwined with the acquisition, that if anyone should be a witness to them—it’s you.”

  “Right, Mr. Prime Minister,” William replied, not entirely sure what the grey on grey cement halls with reflective translucent silver windows were soon to produce. “But, again, I must ask—why am I here?”

  “William!” a familiar voice called from down the corridor. Doctor Schmidt walked briskly with an outstretched arm.

  He looked—different. Perhaps it was the exhaustion caused by ceaseless effort, or the loss of Mieke, but he appeared ten years older than the last time William had seen him. The man in the white lab coat approached William’s hand and ducked around it, bringing the taller Englishman in for a tight embrace.

  “Gods, I’m glad you’re here. When they said a doctor was needed, of course you were first on my list. The clones need to be monitored carefully for any abnormalities.”

  “A doctor is needed?” William wondered, looking up to Minister Shandi with suspicious eyes. “How queer. Minister Shandi, would you believe that I am a doctor?”

  The minister shifted slightly and snuck a smile.

  “I was going to ask before we got into the laboratory, but I thought seeing Friedrich again might help convince you.”

  “You hadn’t told him?” Friedrich gasped. “Shit. I thought that’s something they were sure to mention. Otherwise, I would not have brought it up.”

  “It does rather seem like a pertinent detail, Doctor Schmidt,” William said with a raised eyebrow as Friedrich released him.

  “Not convinced?” Minister Shandi asked. “Follow me, doctors.”

  His long steps moved quickly down the hall, and William followed out of insatiable curiosity. He was already there, after all. What would be the point in leaving before seeing the final product?

  “We, as a battered nation, needed something to inspire our people. It is only through unity and cooperation that we will redeem this losing war. The people crave hope. They are desperate to draw on something more than themselves. So, we thought about going back to our British heritage.”

  Minister Shandi waved his palm over the reader at the end of the hallway and a light in the middle of a pair of doors illuminated green. The polished steel began to open and revealed a majestic sight.

  There, before him, was a massive man suspended in a tank four feet higher than even Minister Shandi. The monstrous brute within seemed to tower well over seven feet high. His chiseled form was immaculate. He looked to be the perfect specimen of manhood with dangling brunette hair and a regal jawline.

  “I’d like you to meet Lancelot,” Minister Shandi smiled. He knew the work was impeccable. “We need a doctor to monitor vitals of the new kingsmen and address bodily degradation that is expected. Perhaps you can provide insight as to how we can avoid it altogether.”

  “He’s quite—large,” William spoke hesitantly, “in stature.”

  “He needs to be in order to fit his armor,” Friedrich proudly added. He pressed a button on a small remote and a second light column illuminated a brilliant silver armored suit that looked like a cyber futuristic take on medieval plate armor. Much more polished than it’s ancient counterpart, Lancelot’s tungsten plate looked to be a beefier version of the inky black armor Thirteen had worn.

  A sword just a bit taller than William stood beside the shimmering armor set. The massive broadsword had to weigh almost as much as the doctor and was well over six inches across.

  “What’s that at the hilt?” William asked, pointing to the base where an extra-widened blade guard seemed a bit blockier than it needed to be.

  “Plasma distributor,” Friedrich answered. “We haven’t gotten that part quite right yet, but when we do—it’ll be quite intimidating.”

  William turned to Minister Shandi.

  “So this beefy chap, Lancelot, is supposed to win us the war?”

  “No,” the Prime Minister replied. “They are.”

  Entirely pleased with himself, Shandi pressed his own remote and another dozen lights blinked on across the apparently massive room. Set in a grand circular orientation, each towering soldier had a suit of matching armor directly across from them. William finally began to understand why they would need a full-time physician to monitor health concerns.

  “Doctor Rutger,” Shandi proudly stepped forward. “May I present the new Knights of the Crown.”

  Shandi smiled as he turned back to William.

  “God save the King.”

  Epilogue

  As Mieke’s feet hit the ground, she cried out. Her nanites had already repaired a great deal of the damage that had been inflicted upon her, but a jump from ten meters was still painful. Despite this, she had a mission.

  She pushed into a sprint with all her might and tore the gun from the burning helicopter with a single massive tug before it had a chance to ignite the attached ammunition box. Mieke peeked into the cockpit to check for signs of life. Not only had the crew been scrambled, but she watched in horror as the damaged peacekeeper, visible to her attuned vision, fired a salvo directly into the Omaha gunship which was peppering it with rockets in return.

  Having surely expended nearly all of its explosive ordnance, Mieke saw her opportunity. She crept closer to the monster as the still firing helicopter twisted to the ground in a fiery ball of molten metal. As it hit the dirt, she took aim carefully and opened fire, only a few dozen meters away from the peacekeeper.

  The massive mounted gun she carried bucked hard with each thudding explosion of fire. She focused on the feeder mechanism of the Vulcan cannon as it aimed upward at her father’s escape vehicle. After a few seconds of sustained fire, she saw holes form in the metal track even as shots continued to stream into the night sky.

  The peacekeeper aimed the gun at her as she returned fire and Mieke briefly closed her eyes. An explosion at the base of the gun rattled the beast as a misfeed caused the weapon to fire in-feeder. Effectively disabled, she laughed maniacally as she continued to unload shots into the tank-like machine. She concentrated on the sections not covered by tungsten plate and watched incendiary rounds penetrate the soft metal insides.

  The peacekeeper took aim at her with the anti-personnel cannon, but it spun uselessly in place.

  “Hah! Can’t get it up to fire?” Mieke teased. “I hear that’s a common—”

  Her taunt was interrupted as the third missile rack on the top of the machine flipped open. Three rockets whizzed outward and scattered arou
nd Mieke. She felt shrapnel enter her body from all sides as she dropped the fifty-cal to the ground. Her shin bone was chipped by a piece of rocket as it sliced across her previously undamaged leg. Even with her high pain tolerance, she screamed out.

  The cool dirt rained down over her laid-out face. She heard the peacekeeper approach to finish the job. She writhed in the dirt as she rolled over to see it a few meters before her.

  It’s two fore legs and one back leg were all that scooted it along. The appendages sunk deeply into the dirt with each step as they dragged along the disabled ones. It was a far cry from the blinding speed it had previously possessed. She noted the missing rail gun and plasma caster where its left arm should have been. It looked almost as ripped apart as she was. A handful of remaining sensors seemed to study her carefully. The entire left side of the beast looked to have been crushed in the fall from the dining area.

  When it was a few scant paces away, it looked down on her with a sort of disdain as the largest hexagonal missile rack opened its cover. The steel sheet seemed to recoil slightly as it bounced and failed to fully open.

  Mieke grinned.

  She rolled with as much speed as her impaired body could muster as she tossed herself into a crater dug by one of the rockets that had injured her. Her eyes caught the missiles launching as they rebounded against the guard and shot downward into the already paralyzed peacekeeper. Bits of metal sprayed into the ground all around her as a final explosion caused a fireball to rise into the night sky. Metal whistled through the air for seconds afterward as a crash indicated the peacekeeper’s fall.

  A bloodied Mieke stared up into the sky as the crater she’d taken refuge in was lit up bright white by a super-heated lithium flame. She coughed up blood as she forced herself to stand. She had to see it. As much pain as she was in, Mieke needed to know it was dead. Crawling upward on arms that were coated in a tacky mixture of dirt, clay, and partially coagulated blood, she forced herself higher and higher.