It was obvious how Zero found this location, but no one would dare say why. Everyone knew, at least the people who did the research on Josh that it was his fault. He’d become a walking tracking mechanism from Zero. Valkyrie’s commanders knew it but they didn’t know if to kill him or not. He was of her blood. They had to keep him, at least until she woke up. Now that it’s come to this, who knows what Josh’s fate will be?
Crimson Spear’s forces were located underground but they had ground level defenses to disrupt Zero’s tracking or occasionally knock out and capture Zero’s rogue technology. The War Maidens led the charge. They flew in the air and commanded forces of swarm-like unmanned drones to swoop down and pummel the ground layer with a barrage of missile attacks.
Crimson Spear responded by sending out their armored anti-air tanks to go out and do some work, but they’d soon realize this battle would not be in their favor. The drones were unending in their assault. For every one they’d shoot out of the sky, another three would spawn. They tried sniping the War Maidens, but that too would prove of no use. Between their high mobility and the barriers that absorbed every attack, the War Maidens were seemingly untouchable.
Soon, Zero’s Forces penetrated the ground layer and sent the drones underground. This is where things started getting real nasty for Crimson Spear. They had civilians down there. Zero’s forces didn’t care. They weren’t ‘cold’, or ‘heartless’, and they didn’t have any remorse or fear, or hurt, or vengeance. Zero’s forces didn’t remotely acknowledge the Crimson Spear as some kind of competitor. What angered Valkyrie, no, what saddened Valkyrie – was that this was like pest control. An eradication.
Valkyrie had herself armed with an assault beam rifle. It was her favorite kind of gun. Reminded her of the ancient G3A3. Brought back memories of the times she went hard. Real hard. The times where she would be the war maiden. The times that earned her that bloodthirsty name.
She shot high, she shot low. She got a few of those drones down. She didn’t bother getting others to safety. She might’ve lost the red hair but red shun in those eyes of her and they wanted destruction. Her commanders knew she was reckless. They had to give orders without her permission; to get the civilians to safety and order a general retreat. Valkyrie wanted to stay. Her willpower too great. Greater than what her body’s able to accomplish now.
Still, such willpower cannot be underestimated.
With that will, that determination… almost nothing can stand in your way. That’s what Valkyrie had. The burning fire within. Outside, she may have appeared cold and under control. Inside had a raging inferno. A galaxy of exploding supernovas all going off one at a time, like a domino effect.
During the battle, Josh remained on his knees, drooling in confusion and horror at what he had become. Soon, a piercing bolt of energy shot into his heart. It started beating rapidly. He could feel his heat level rising.
‘Won’t. Make. Their. Mistakes. Must. Correct. It. ALL!’
Josh groaned in anger. The guards tried calming him. They put guns to his head. He didn’t care. A volcano was about to erupt. He knew it. They knew it. No one could stop it. Josh started rising to his feet. They told him to stand down. He didn’t listen.
‘GET. OUT. OF. MY. WAY!!’
He crunched his fists so hard blood started oozing out. His brain went into overdrive. He started screaming to the top of his voice as he looked to the ceiling. The room started shaking. It wasn’t from the battle outside. It was from Josh. Fear went into the hearts of his wardens. An energy barrier formed around Josh and then it exploded violently. The whole room ripped a part. The doorway blasted open and the door shot out like a bullet to clear the path.
Josh walked out, the only one left. People saw him. They cowered at what they saw. They knew they couldn’t stop him. Rage brewed in Josh. He felt the power. He felt what he had become. Inside, he thought he could take the world. Inside, he developed his own willpower. He looked to the end of the hallway.
‘Heather, I’m coming for you.’
Fuel entered his legs. He got in a runner’s stance. He closed his eyes for a second. When they were reopened, a pathway cleared by flames left behind from his take off. Josh had gone so fast, he broke the sound barrier. In less than a second, Josh was gone.
The battle raged wildly in Zero’s favor. Soon, Crimson spear was devastated. It was not much of a fight, though they tried their best. Nevertheless, this is Zero. Zero does not play competitively. Zero eradicates.
Most of Crimson Spear had fled, intent on heading to the other backup hideout. Valkyrie stayed back. She wanted to confront Zero’s commanders herself. She wanted to kill them all. She got on ground level, no breather in hand.
“Come on bitches!” She shouted to the sky as she fired some rounds.
It caught their attention. The War Maidens flew down without an ounce of fear. One to the front, one to the left and the other on the right. Valkyrie may have intimidated the average man, or even her own officers and enemies alike, but these maidens didn’t care. They were here to do their work. It didn’t matter who or what stood in their way. As a matter of fact, they found it cute or rather, amusing.
“Well, well, well.” Said the Caped War Maiden, “Look what we have here gals, it’s the outdated Alpha.”
“Who are you?” Valkyrie asked, feeling a strange similarity zoning from them.
“You can call me Athena.” The Caped Maiden appeared to be the leader of the pack. She did most of the talking. The other two just watched – “And the Winged one, you can call Iris while the other’s our sister; Nemesis.”
Valkyrie wasn’t exactly in the mood for talking so she opened fire. It didn’t work. Not one shot as much as scratched any of them. Some kind of barrier or force field. Didn’t matter. She reloaded again and tried shooting but this time Athena held her spear pointed in Valkyrie’s direction.
“Such a weak flesh. Let me show you real power.” She taunted.
Her spear engulfed in lightning. Then a lightning ray shot at the legend. Valkyrie felt a surging pain throughout her body to which she could never compare it to. Her body went airborne, twisting and turning violently before smashing into the ground about fifteen feet away.
Aftershock effects still lingered around Valkyrie. She found it excruciating to get up. Her body wanted to give out. Her body should’ve given out, but she didn’t. She picked herself up, panting in rage. It didn’t occur to her that this may have been her last fight. Or maybe she didn’t care.
Now, the War Maidens were walking to her in group formation. Valkyrie armed her gun again. This time she swapped the mode to grenade shots. She fired and fired again and again. Now it would be Iris to step in. She held her hand out, a barrier formed around the trio and each grenade became entangled by the field. As the three got closer, Iris pointed at the Valkyrie and the grenades suddenly took life of their own. They shot back at Valkyrie. She knew she was in deep trouble. She rolled to the side, avoiding the blast radius of two grenades, but it wouldn’t be enough. One of the blasts stumbled her, slowing her down and then the other grenade came at her feet.
Boom!
Valkyrie was tossed away like a ragdoll, smashing into one of the ruins of a nearby wall. She coughed. Blood came up. Her body started going numb. Started getting unresponsive. That willpower though. It would be her undoing. It kept telling her to get up, to never give in. So she listened to it and when she got to her feet and saw the smoke cleared, she only saw two of the Maidens. The Winged and The Caped.
Where was the other one?
Something caught the corner of her eye. She glanced over to her right. Nemesis was right there. She knocked Valkyrie’s weapon out of her hand. Valkyrie spun around with a beam knife unsheathing from her wrist gadget.
Nemesis dodged it. Valkyrie tried a slash high, a slash low, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t touch the maiden. Soon she’d get parried and then a knee to the stomach, an elbow to the temple with a shot to her leg. Valkyrie dropped to
the ground, utterly defeated.
She growled in determination. Beating herself up for her body’s giving out. She crawled to her weapon. These War Maidens didn’t want to just end her life. They wanted Valkyrie to suffer. Once Valkyrie got her gun, she stumbled on her butt, unable to even get up and tried raising her weapon at her coming aggressors. She fired, missing her shot miserably. She simply was unable to continue the fight. The War Maidens came to her, looking down.
Then something happened.
Their visors opened. Athena had deep red hair and amber eyes while Iris was blonde with blue eyes and Nemesis had brunette hair with green eyes. Something they all shared in common, was the similarity on their faces. They looked like variants of The Valkyrie herself. Xeilya knew who they were, but at this point she did not care.
“I guess we should thank you. After all, you did give us the necessary requirements to achieve our perfection.” Athena spoke, “And now…”
“You’re nothing more than a pathetic failure.” Nemesis finished her sister’s sentence with a raspy tone that simply said ‘You’re garbage to me’
“A selfish coward that always ran because of the disappointments she had as a child.” Iris continued with an innocent child-like tone, laced in deceit.
“Who lost everything she ever worked for, all because of her reluctance to let go…” Athena added in her more neutral, leader-like tone.
“Of fighting for the wrong side.” The three finished together.
Valkyrie knew she could take a bullet to the head and call it a day, but why were they doing this? Why were they breaking her like this?
“Look at you, mother. You’ve lost everything. The man you love, the son you never cared for and your people thinks of you as a manipulative traitor.” Iris kneeled down spewing her venom with a devious smile.
“All the while, everything you fought for in the end was meaningless. Humanity is still a pathetic waste. They never turned to good, they got worse. They killed more. They raped more. They fucked more.” Nemesis was gnashing her teeth as she got her line in.
“This was a pleasure.” Athena chuckled. She held her spear right to Valkyrie’s neck, ready to deliver a decapitation. Valkyrie didn’t think of anything.
She only felt hurt, regret and rage. Tears welled in her eyes, but even in her last hour she tried so hard to hold those droplets from streaming down her face.
A strange ‘boom’ in the distance sounded, then in the blink of an eye, Athena went flying away, knocked back by an almost invisible supersonic force. The other two Maidens backed away from Valkyrie, not in fear of her, but they knew something else was around. They looked high, they looked low and saw nothing.
In the distance, they found the problem. Athena was engaging something. It was so fast. Whatever it was she couldn’t land a hit on it, so she flew into the air and shot her spear beam at the area, unleashing a gigantic energy emission. The fighting force Athena was fighting moved away from the area and rushed to Valkyrie’s side. Xeilya couldn’t believe it. It was Josh. He quickly grabbed her and sped off into the distant sands.
Josh laid his broken grandmother in the sands carefully some distance away from the fight. He got to his feet, set his sights on the direction they came from. Valkyrie knew what he wanted to do.
“Josh, no…” She scolded him as she struggled to get to her feet, “Don’t. You’re not ready for them yet!”
Josh looked back at her with a smirk – “Ancestor, I don’t know exactly what I am but I know what I can do. I’m going to fix all the wrongs that my forefathers have done. I’ll right where you went wrong. Starting with removing this so called Zero.”
Josh turned away, got into a runner’s stance, prepared for launch and go.
“Josh! Stop! Don’t go! Don’t be an idiot!” Valkyrie protested.
He ignored her. The ground shook beneath him, a sonic boom overtook the air and in an instant, he was gone. Valkyrie watched in the distance. That’s when it hit her. Josh would either be their only hope to win this war or their fatal doom.
Josh arrived back to the scene. The War Maidens were there waiting for him, each sitting on the broken pieces of buildings left. There was another guest Josh wasn’t expecting. He had his arms folded behind his back, looking toward the Maidens’ way. He knew Josh had arrived and so, he smiled in a fiendish delight.
“Look what we have ladies.” He announced to the girls before turning back at a fire-breathing Josh, “It’s the new prototype. The one Zero wishes to replace us with.”
Josh didn’t pay much attention to his words. Bloodlust shimmered in his eyes.
“Very well. Come, show me what you are.” Seven raised his hand out, gesturing a ‘get over here’
Josh charged in mightily. The power surging within and even outside of him. With all his speed, all his might, he went into Red fearlessly but he’d soon be very surprised.
This foe did nothing flashy. Josh threw wild punches, using all his mighty power and agility to back it, but he was untrained and it became obvious very soon.
Red kept a calm composure and did nothing for eye candy. He simply sidestepped or turned his body only a tad bit to avoid Josh’s attacks.
From a distance, it would look like a swarm of bullets attempting to hit a strange-dancing man. Josh kept going though. Unrelenting, he thought eventually he’d land a punch on Red, but not one. He never landed one. Red was toying with him. At last, he caught one of Josh’s punches and immediately kneed him in the gut then sent a series of shattering punches to his chin, noise and neck. Josh stumbled away silly. Red appeared to be pure human but his hits were melting through Josh’s cybernetics. This only infuriated Josh more. He had to beat him. No matter what the cost, he had to beat Red.
“We’re all Zero’s Spheres’.” Red folded his arms behind his back and waltzed in a circular pace around Josh as he regained his composure from the beating – “A generational line destined to feed data to an intelligence that only has concern for the return to Sirius. Using whatever means necessary, it’s used the DNA of your forefathers, our forefathers, and created us to be the perfect humans fit for the journey. Bit by bit it continued to perfect us, starting with earlier clones. One of them even raised Valkyrie’s son. Amusing.”
Josh was on his feet again, ready to charge in for more.
“Now Zero wants to start a new line, with you and that girl. What was her name again? Oh, Heather, isn’t it?”
Once the name ‘Heather’ was mentioned, Josh crunched his fists in rage and screamed to the top of his voice. An aura formed around him, the ground beneath him sunk and waves of energy shot out from all directions. He charged at Red with a new level of power, this time managing to tackle him into the ground. Josh started pummeling him with all his rage, all his might. Red just took it, laughing, apparently unaffected by the blows.
“Are you done?” Red taunted him.
Josh tried landing another hit, but this time Red caught it. He kneed Josh in the groin, threw a head-butt then flipped him over where Red was now on top. Red didn’t strike much but any time he did, Josh was hurt. The damage felt unreal. Each hit brought Josh close to the edge. Red pummeled Josh brutally, beating him to a pulp. The skin on Josh’s left eye and forehead began peeling and his cybernetics started showing. Blood ran across his face and it got to the point where Josh couldn’t even react any longer. He was knocked out cold.
Red got to his feet, addressing his allies – “This is why we no longer follow Zero’s ideals. In the end, both father and Zero are prone to mistakes. Nothing in this physical existence is perfect and here’s your evidence right here.” He dusted his hands in victory at the fallen Josh.
Seven glanced over the unresponsive Josh. He held his hand out, ready to deliver a telekinetic deathblow.
All hope seemed lost… until a rocket came out of nowhere, smashing into the Seven’s face. The impact knocked him and the War Maidens away with a violent boom. An armored war truck skidded into the scene, Valkyrie dove
out of it and grabbed her grandson while the truck continued laying down automatic suppressive fire to cover her as she dragged him into the vehicle, then they immediately fled the scene.
Smoke cleared from the area. Red Seven and The War Maidens walked out of the rubble, seemingly unharmed. Seven smirked, a newfound scar across his eye from the blast radius; showing only a fragment of his own cybernetics within.
“Should we chase?” Athena asked
“No. They mean nothing. It’s too late for them to change anything.”
The Son of Mars on route to the Asteroid
“You know you don’t have to be here. I’ll be fine.” Colin spoke across the room to the beautiful, blonde, green-eyed woman who called herself Astraea. They were in the commander’s quarters of an MDSU asteroid turner spaceship. The rest of the crew had no knowledge that Astraea was on board. Only Colin knew. She sat on his desk while he kept watch on her in the commander’s chair.
“I want to be here.” She said softly.
Astraea’s voice had this, soothing effect to it. Her words, if even one or two were spoken, it was like healing waves of energy. She comforted Colin, just by simply being there.
“If everything you told me is true, then I can’t fail here. No matter what.” Colin reminisced over the things she told him.
“You won’t fail.” She smiled.
Astraea got out of her seating position and reached for Colin’s hand tenderly. As their fingertips touched, Colin felt a rush go to his head. He looked at her with new eyes.
“Why?” He blurted out stupefied, “Why do you remind me so much of her?”
“Think about future lives.” She replied.
Colin let himself go. She came to him when he had no one else. She comforted the man who needed it the most and now, he couldn’t deny it. He felt a strong connection to this woman. Beyond the flesh. He hadn’t known her for more than a few days but Colin could confidently say that he felt as if he’d known her a lifetime. She led him to the window. The two of them gazed over the orbit of Mars.
Zero Sphere: A Space Opera Thriller Page 14