Cromwell.
The real Cromwell.
Embellished in the regal ceremonial uniform Matt had first glimpsed him wearing on Epsilon, Cromwell’s features appeared way more deteriorated since Matt’s last encounter with him in the subway tunnels of D.C. His inherently ghoulish features were even more fish-belly white and sickly - to the point where muscles and tendon were completely visible underneath his translucent flesh, stretched over disfigured bone, like lacings of wet string. Matt immediately knew this was the net result of extended time travel. Cromwell’s expeditions had finally taken their toll on his already decrepit body, much like his former colleague, Darius Prescott. While it was entirely plausible, he could no longer move his limbs without augmented assistance, he was still a juggernaut of unblinking malice, now willed into a three-ton exoskeleton. “You seem surprised to see me, Matt,” he croaked through the cab’s external comms unit. “Do you think I would leave my most prized asset up here, unguarded?”
Much to his relief, Matt could hear Ally stirring behind him, so he began to track away from her, breaking Cromwell’s line of sight while keeping his eyes locked on his steady advance. He had no idea how he was going to get out of this one. His only option was to stall Cromwell by keeping him engaged with dialogue. Something he knew Cromwell would be privy to eventually, if not already. “I had a feeling that bloated tub of excrement inside the monastery wasn’t you.”
Cromwell’s lips curled into a wan smile. “He was merely created to oversee production. The monks knew no different. Only a select few were chosen to join me here.” He stopped his advance and looked around, admiring the magnificence of his creation. “As you can see, my real work has taken on a life of itself.”
“How long have you been up here?”
“I could not tell you. Years. Decades. But I have grown to like it. I enjoy the solace.”
“Yeah, plenty of quiet time to think about your murderous plans for humanity.”
Cromwell turned back to face Matt. He knew Matt was attempting to stall him, but he had the upper advantage, so he decided to humor him a little longer. “Was it the American author, Helen Keller, who once said everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence?”
“I don’t think she was referring to the far side of the Moon when she made that quote.”
Cromwell’s barren eyes fixed on Matt and hardened. “You should have stayed where I sent you, Matt. You wanted to see your daughter again, and I gave you that opportunity.”
“If you think I was willing to let you carry this out, you know less about human perseverance than I initially thought.”
“Ah, yes, your little deal with the Combine.” Cromwell saw Matt’s reaction and gave a wide grin, revealing a mouthful of decay. Pistons hissed as he lifted the exoframe’s huge pincered-hand and motioned to the time band on Matt’s arm. “You were hoping I was unaware of that, weren’t you?” Cromwell rebuked his own assumption with a dry snicker. “That night in the subway tunnel, you saw my plans, but now that our minds have met, I am the tumor you can’t see but can only feel. I am the stubborn cyst on your back that refuses to burst. I am the dull ache at the base of your skull that never stops throbbing no matter how much you numb yourself. You know this to be true, Matt. I know you feel it. Everything you do and see is only a reflection of my will. We are irreversibly linked. How many times must I remind you of this?”
“Every time we meet, it seems. And I gotta say, it’s getting pretty damn annoying.”
“Then you would already know that device on your arm is not going to save you, or your daughter. The Combine hold no power here. Sending you to try and stop me only reveals their growing weakness and desperation. They know I am coming for them.”
Matt stood there, resolute. He had a few moments left to act. But how? His Reaper-rifle had been flung from his grip to god-knows-where. He was also unarmed and exposed, with the stubbed barrels of two electromagnetic plasma cannons aimed squarely at him. The only option he had was to keep talking. “You know, it’s funny. Every time we come face-to-face like this; you seem to forget something.”
Indulging Matt for the last time, Cromwell stomped forward, the motors and gears of his exoframe whirring with each step. Red lights began to glow above the mounted cannons like the enraged eyes of a wild animal. “Oh? And what would that be?” he queried with a disparaging glare.
Matt swallowed his dry throat, determined not to let Cromwell see the fear that was coursing through him. “I thwart all your traps, Cromwell. Whatever it is you send my way; Afflicted wolf packs, Whitescreechers – it doesn’t matter, I overcome them all. The same goes for whatever timeline or dark hole you choose to hide in. One way or another, I always end up finding you.”
Cromwell’s face twisted into a maniacal grin. He moved forward, stopping a few feet short of trampling Matt like an ant. “And who do you think allows that to happen in the first place?”
Matt kept his ground, his chest now panting with rising anger as he stared up at his adversary. “You’re so full of shit.”
Cromwell knew he had struck a nerve. If there were one thing humans hated, it was not being able to control their destiny. “You humans are so sure of yourselves. So greedy. So much hubris. Always biting off more than you can chew. Always trying to control what you cannot.”
“How are you any different?”
“I never said I was. But since my time here on this world, I have learned one valuable lesson; part of the mechanics of destroying a civilization like yours is to pervert it to the extent that it becomes the instrument of its own oppression. Willingly or not, you, along with countless others in the USC did that without hesitation. You drove your species into the abyss, without ever thinking about the dire repercussions. I never did that. You did. My role was to merely point you in the same direction.”
Matt could feel the power from Cromwell’s exoframe tremoring through the ground, vibrating up his leg. The artificial air felt charged as the cannons began to spin faster like twin-turbines spooling up. He merely had a few seconds left to act. A minute, at best.
“Unlike you, I have seen time. I have lived it – both in the past and the future – and there is only one constant: what I started cannot be undone.”
“You’re Infiltrator thought he was a god too. He soon found out how deluded he was. I hate to break it to you, Cromwell, but you’re not a god.”
“You’re right, I’m not.” Cromwell’s milky-grey eyes turned contemplative - perhaps even a little remorseful. “But at least I now know what I must do to become one.”
Before Cromwell could fire on Matt, the air sizzled with a barrage of javelins. They strafed Cromwell’s exoframe, forcing him to nearly topple over as he dodged the fire. He skillfully spun the huge mechanized suit around to deflect another incoming salvo that clobbered his position. With deafening booms, white-hot javelin tracers split the ground open like a series of tectonic fissures, exposing part of the base’s substructure.
Matt dived out of the attacker’s line of fire and shielded his eyes from the intense burst of chrome, scurrying for cover behind a large support pillar. He could feel the heat from the javelin fire stinging his cheeks and forehead while he waited for his eyes to readjust. Once they had, he carefully inched around to see it was Ally driving another exoframe, her cannons vomiting silver fire as she relentlessly pounded Cromwell, driving him away from Matt’s position.
Renewed by a fresh surge of adrenaline, Matt frantically searched the hangar’s cavernous space for any opportunity to join his daughter. Now was their chance to end Cromwell once and for all. He did not have to look far.
Due to the high-pitched shrill of the electromagnetically propelled javelins, the other monks in the hangar seemed to have been awoken from their trance-like state. Many of them now racing for sanctuary in the base’s darkest recesses, dispersing like startled roaches. One of the monks driving an exoframe had ejected himself from it and taken off in terror, leaving the cab wide open like an abandone
d motorcycle helmet with its visor still up.
Matt sprang into action, buffeted by a wave of fleeing monks while keeping an eye on Cromwell and Ally’s engagement. If he could reach the abandoned exoframe, this encounter would quickly turn into two against one. That seemed like a fair fight, given everything Cromwell had put them both through.
As Cromwell recovered from Ally’s blindsided attack, he countered by unleashing a violent rage of destruction, drilling her with a blistering hailstorm. Inside his cab, the tracking display on his control console was not showing where Matt had fled to. That was fine with him. Time was still on his side. He would, if necessary, raze the entire base until Matt and Ally were pulverized into ash.
Ally’s exoframe shuddered as a molten-silver projectile raked the cab’s reinforced polymer shell. She rolled across the ground, taking cover behind a support pillar to evade another flurry of incoming fire, the pistons of her suit hissing like a den of aggravated vipers. Shrapnel exploded off the pillar, spitting lunar rock into the cab with the force of a shotgun blast. Ally felt something sharp clip her side, but she ignored the pain and broke cover to return fire. “Fuck you!” she screamed as she pelted Cromwell again, the shoulder-mounted cannons strobing the air as they spat rails of plasma.
With incredible speed, Cromwell went prone, evading the incinerating fire as it streaked overhead, smiling at Ally’s futile gesture. Inside his cab, a train of red warning icons cascaded down the side of his console. He ignored all of them as he lunged forward and began to work on the damaged pillar she was using as cover.
Ally braced as the next blitz chopped into the pillar behind her, splintering it apart halfway up its length. Thick shards of moon rock crashed to the ground like giant melting ice caps, forming a cloud of choking grey dust. Suddenly robbed of any support, the entire pillar collapsed as Cromwell maintained his barrage. Now exposed, Ally took off running. She took huge strides as javelins whizzed past her, the hydraulics in her exoframe making her move with superhuman speed.
She reached the next pillar by staying one step ahead of Cromwell’s onslaught and sidled against it as close as she could. The air around her was strobing to the point where she was beginning to see white spots, and she could barely think over the deafening shrill of Cromwell’s cannons. Feeling a sudden bolt of pain, she looked down to inspect the damage she had taken earlier. Her hip was bleeding heavily. She could feel the warmth of her blood, but there was no time to do anything about it – Cromwell was marching towards her, firing mercilessly. It was then she realized an alarm had been wailing from her console for the past several minutes. The pressure integrity of the cab had been compromised from the blast of lunar shrapnel. Fire and sparks suddenly erupted around her console controls. While these exoskeletal machines were designed to take a lot of damage, their tolerances were not infinite. Ally felt weakened by blood loss as Cromwell’s footsteps thudded towards her over the banshee wail of his cannons - javelins cutting the air on either side of her peripheral.
As Cromwell rounded the pillar Ally was behind, he swung his cannon spray towards her, a magnificent grey shower of dust and rock erupting as the pillar was chewed to smithereens. But before Cromwell could end his wounded quarry, he was suddenly tackled by another exoframe. Six tons of pressurized hydraulics plowed through the air. Cromwell pivoted mid-tackle, both cannons firing wildly, missing Ally by mere inches as javelins flecked the hangar ceiling like a volley of archer’s arrows.
They hit the floor, grappling with each other in a blur of sparks and steel, exoskeletal joints gonging like a demented symphony of church bells. When Cromwell saw who the occupant of the exoframe was, he snarled and unloaded a point-blank burst from his left-sided cannon.
Blinded by Cromwell’s muzzle flash, the javelins screamed past Matt as he grabbed the cannon, and with his huge pincers, ripped it from its servo mount like a severed limb. There was an explosion of mangled circuitry and metallic gristle as Matt tossed the broken weapon across the floor. He did not stop there. He began to sink his other set of pincers into the exposed electrical innards of Cromwell’s exoframe, holding onto a knot of coiled tendons while Cromwell thrashed wildly as if caught in the jaws of a steel trap. When Matt ripped out another clump of electronics, oil began to gush like a rotten tooth being torn from a bloody gum, showering Matt’s cab with black muck.
Cromwell growled with anger, and with his free arm, walloped Matt square in the armored plate covering his sternum. Five-hundred pounds of enhanced strength knocked Matt backward, almost flipping him completely over. Like the jaws of some giant insect, Cromwell’s pincers clamped around Matt’s frame as he fell back, using the momentum to rise and shift his position out from underneath. Back on their feet, they traded furious hand-to-hand blows as they spun across the hangar apron in a tornado of steel. The fidelity and power of their movements was a sight to behold.
But Matt was tired of this dance. He squeezed his triggers and plasma skewered the short distance between them, momentarily blinding him. A risky move, given the potential ricochet proximity. The hellacious fire tore into the left arm of Cromwell’s exoframe, but when Matt went to focus his aim for another blast, Cromwell met eyes with him. Matt glared back from behind the reinforced canopy, panting but defiant, every sweat-drenched muscle as taught as a violin string.
The brief exchange lasted no more than a second, but Matt’s hesitation was enough for Cromwell to surge forward with another devastating melee attack – a side-kick that sent Matt hurling through the air, like he’d just been flung from a catapult.
Matt corkscrewed into the pillar with a spark-lit explosion of dust and rock. The impact was enough to rip the support claws from an elevated walkway, sending it crashing down onto the hangar apron in a deadly tangle of steel.
His hideous face now twisted into a murderous snarl, Cromwell moved in on a dazed Matt and took another swipe. Matt parried just in time, blocking the incoming blow by forming an X with both his augmented limbs. The crashing din of exoframe’s steel and composite materials reverberated through the hangar. Despite canceling Cromwell’s blow, the sheer aggressiveness of his onslaught was too much for Matt, and it finally knocked him back down. He was now wheezing and coughing.
Cromwell wasted no time following up, reeling back to bring his pincers down on Matt like twin-sledgehammers. He was trying to crush the exoframe’s cab, along with Matt inside it. Matt managed to skillfully duck under the blow, coming up to meet the next pummeling when Cromwell’s limbs were suddenly mauled by jagged spears of silver lightning.
Cords of muscle bulged from Ally’s neck as she screamed over the thunderclap of her cannons, both of her triggers fully depressed. She had launched herself into a full-tilt charge towards Cromwell, her body now perched like a jockey inside the exoframe’s cab, moving in perfect unison with the augmented limbs like they were newly tamed thoroughbreds.
Cromwell’s suit spat electric fire as he fled the bombardment. Realizing he was outnumbered; he decided to cut his losses and take the fight to a more even playing field.
Matt watched Cromwell’s mechanized limbs sprint up an incline like a hulking gazelle, headed towards an overhead airlock. As Ally spooled down her cannons and went to pursue him, Matt switched to her cab’s internal comms channel then held one of his pincers out to stop her advance. “Ally, wait! He’s luring us outside. This is what he wants.”
Ally turned to Matt, her chest panting, her face slick with sweat. “Yeah, and we’ve got his back against the wall. We can take him, dad. This is why we came here, right?”
Ally’s voice pattern rippled across Matt’s field of view, but he stared out past it to see the lack of color in his daughter’s face. He could not see her bloodied waistline due to her jacket and the cab’s spiderwebbed glass, so he had no idea she was gravely wounded. He just assumed her pallid complexion was due to sheer exhaustion. A few hours ago, they were traveling through some remote corner of Eastern Europe. Now they were standing inside a hidden base on the far side o
f the Moon. He was amazed Ally had not yet collapsed from the overwhelming magnitude of that reality. The fact that she was still fighting alongside him was a testimony to her strength. And while he would never be foolish to doubt her resolve, he now needed her to stay here. There was still much work to be done before they could make the jump. “I’m going out there to finish it,” he replied. “You need to stay here.”
Sensing that was more of a command than a suggestion. Ally moved closer to him; bewilderment cast in her eyes. Due to the damage she had absorbed, her suit was also making a strange, mechanized warbling sound. “Bullshit. I came all this way. You’re not gonna do anything without me.”
“Ally, your canopy is pissing oxygen. You can’t leave this environment. Besides, I need you here. I’m not asking you as my daughter, I’m ordering you as a soldier.”
She blinked when a ripple of pain drew her attention back to the reality of the moment. “What am I gonna do here by myself? Get a campfire going?”
They shared a fatalistic smirk before Matt motioned to the Interceptor ship docked at the far end of the hangar with a cluster of vacant-eyed monks huddling nearby. “Put them to work. Load as many unprimed missiles as you can. Once I’m back, we’re out of here. Together.”
Ally’s eyes drifted over to the monks. “And what about them?”
“Send them home in that Death Pony once you’re done.”
Ally took in the damaged hangar. Parts of the apron were aglow with raging electrical fires, and many of the machines and consoles were fritzing and smoking. There were pillars and walkways completely incinerated. This place could go up in a massive fireball at any moment. Not a good thing considering they were in a confined space with a missile arsenal that rivaled some nations. She turned to her father and gave an earnest nod. “I’ll get them loaded onto that ship. You just make sure you get back here in one piece.”
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