by GX Knight
Uncle Raven laughed, “You think I’m here to stop you? I created you. I’m here to save you. My entire life has been devoted to making what you are right now. Things may have skewed slightly from the original plan, but the goal hasn’t changed.”
“Then why are you pointing your gun at her?”
Just then I felt another tingle, as the door to the room flung open and General Wyld answered my question. He stalked toward us with his own gun drawn, “Because he sprung the trap that was set for you. That isn’t his gun he’s holding.”
I jerked the other pistol and pointed both my guns toward a very menacing General Wyld. At the same time Starshine snapped out of her trance she’d been faking, elbowed Uncle Raven with her one arm, and then spun kick the gun. It flew out of his hand and fell over the edge of the balcony. She pulled an identical gun from beneath her hospital gown and pointed it at my uncle at the same time he was pulling his own pistol to point back at her.
We had ourselves a standoff. My uncle versus Starshine, and me versus the general.
I had no idea Starshine could be so brutal. I never would have thought she could be the warrior type. I couldn’t believe how deeply I had been deceived. I had to give it to her; when it came to acting she had me and Dupe beat handily.
“Drop, it honey,” She said through a sneer, “Or I get even with your uncle for getting the best of me before you got here.”
I held my gaze and my guns on Wyld. Two blue dots danced on each of his cheeks, “You do that, and you won’t be Daddy’s little girl anymore.”
There was a long silence. I could hear the hallway outside filling with guards. Air-chopping VTOL’s started to buzz around us. Their search lights sped back and forth across the windows until the spotlights stopped on us.
“Give it up,” Wyld ordered. “You are surrounded.”
I considered his position, and I had to agree. Things seemed grim, but before I could make up my mind on whether or not I was going to surrender, a whooshing sound zipped past us. Less than a second later, balls of lighting screamed out from the black of night and crashed with thunderous claps into the VTOL’s. They fell to the ground and exploded into columns of fire that reached up far higher than we were.
War broke out just after the last VTOL crashed. Everyone started firing.
MVP
Wyld moved his sights from me to Uncle Raven and then fired at the same time I did. From my pistols two blue bolts zipped through the air, leaving tiny plumes of heated plasma trails in their wake. The bolts went through Wyld’s chest and stomach and didn’t stop until they hit the wall behind him. I turned just in time to see Uncle Raven dodge the pointblank shot Starshine took at him, grab her arm, and then pull her in front of him so that the bullet General Wyld fired went into her good shoulder.
Starshine didn’t even register that she had been shot. She looked to her dad’s fallen body, and then to me with intense hatred. She elbowed Uncle Raven in the face with her shot arm. He teetered for before losing his balance over the edge of the balcony. As he went over, he grabbed her by what little hair she had left, and pulled her over with him.
I yelled for Starshine but tripped over a side table as I was trying to get to the rail to see what happened. I instinctively ducked from a boom sound Sabra made as she whooshed by again. This time she rained devastation from her rattling chaingun into the scattering ground forces. The wind of her passing rushed through the door and shuffled some of the fallen papers that were on the table I tipped over. My glance happen to spot a blood stained blue envelope. I scrambled to get it. It was the emergency envelope Uncle Raven gave me back at the java shop. Somehow it had ended up with Starshine after the bombing.
I threw it my pocket, jumped up, and ran to the ledge. Down on the ground I saw Star’s twisted, unmoving body. There was no sign of Uncle Raven. Somehow he had disappeared. I didn’t have time process or investigate as guards decked out in full tactical gear began pouring through the door.
They weren’t there to arrest me. One soldier checked Wyld’s dead body. When he didn’t get a pulse, he rose and took aim. I pleaded under my breath that the rest not follow suit, but they did. Damn them for this…
They were armored, but not armored enough. They turned themselves into a barrel of fish as my devastating pistols made short work of anyone that got in the way. After another wave went down and bodies started piling up, guards from outside of the room began hurling gas through the door. I whipped out my mask and goggles, ditched the coats I was wearing, and watched as Sabra continued circling Wyld’s forces with her vicious chaingun still firing. I had to get out of that room. Reinforcements kept pouring into the area, so getting Sabra for curbside service was out of the question. There was only one thing left: down and out.
I tapped the cuff, “Sabra. Our clearing. Five minutes.”
“Affirmative.” She replied.
I was regretting not having my warsuit, but I gripped the hilts of my pistols. I thought about what the scientist had said to me. “Closer than a lover,” I said repeating his mantra. I had to make them a part of me.
I warred my way through the building. The men kept coming, and they kept falling. There was no armor or safe cover that could hide them from the destruction of my pistols. I tried to give them a chance to surrender and walk away, but they persisted, and so did I. Down in the lobby after carving my way through floors of countless enemies, I stood in the wake of having caused the greatest combat devastation I had ever heard of. I was not proud of myself, but I was not ashamed either. I felt nothing. That was, until I realized that the smell of the building had gone from something clean, to the same as I had experienced when I lost my friends. The superheated plasma had charred every target they hit to near-vaporization. What made me sick? –The fact that it no longer made me sick. I found my healing by becoming an instrument of death.
It was no longer a game. My actions had not been for points. They had been for life. I thought about the families I had destroyed, and the sorrow I would cause. Then I thought about my own life, and how it had been nothing to everyone. Nobody cared about me. I was just the experiment, the soldier, or the player. I had been a thing they thought they could play with, and now that thing had come back to bite them all in the ass.
I told myself I didn’t care about what I had done. It could have been the truth. It could have been a lie. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I had to get out of there before more soldiers came or I’d be forced to kill them too.
I arrived to the clearing just as Sabra was setting down. I still held the pistols as I climbed up the extended chassis ladder. I stopped and looked at that two elegant weapons. The barrels were still cool to the touch. The clips would fire forever. They had wiped out so many, and they were ready for as many as would come. Part of me wanted to throw them on the ground and leave them there so that I could never do harm with them again, but as I felt my fingers tighten around the grips, I knew it was too late. I made my choice, and I was going to have to live with it. Whatever that made me, it would be a “me” forged from my own choices. I would not be some faceless shadow’s manipulation anymore. I stuck them back in the holsters and jumped into Sabra’s cockpit.
We climbed high into the upper atmosphere, “Thanks for the warning,” I said sarcastically in regards to the entire army that snuck up on me.
“I am sorry Rayce. I had detected Wyld’s VTOL just after you switched off your cuff. I had to go into a silent mode so as not to be detected. It was unclear as to whether they knew of your presence, and I did not want to risk my signal prematurely warning them.”
“You made up for it with your timing later. You saved my life with that distraction. Thank you.”
“We are partners. You would do the same.” Sabra said.
So, I wasn’t alone after all. It was strange to be comforted by the thought of this computerized companion, but I was nevertheless.
Considering I knew nothing about my uncle, I opened the envelope I recovered in Star’s ho
spital room. It held a blank piece of paper surrounding a vid-disk. I placed the disk in Sabra’s player, and I had her upload the footage of my gun-cams. “First, let’s let Wyld’s secret out. I want him and my uncle exposed. Put together something that will explain what’s happened. Hack into every communications line you can and then start transmitting. We need to end martial law, and spread some light about the Calvarian situation. I want there to be justice for my teammates, and those who died because of Wyld. I also want my uncle’s face on every wanted poster there is. If he’s still alive, I don’t want there to be a single rock he can hide under on this planet.
Then I played the video my uncle sent me. On it was pecial coordinates for a planet. Not just any planet, it was our home planet. It didn’t look too unlike Bethesda. The water was a little bluer, the land a little greener, and it had a single moon almost identical to Bethesda’s. I watched him begin to speak. Behind him there was a white robe and blue mask hanging on the wall. I knew where I needed to go before I heard any of his farce. I turned off the video. I was not ready to look at his lying face yet.
After Sabra transmitted the “Truth Video,” I knew I would not have a safe harbor after what I had done to all those soldiers. I considered that going to the coordinates provided was exactly what Uncle Raven wanted, but I had to go somewhere, and there I wouldn’t be an enemy of the government. If there was a trap on this other planet, so be it. I couldn’t see what the trap was until I sprung it. So, Sabra confirmed a course, and calculated that we could hold just enough long range fuel for a one way trip.
We made a quick stop for a few supplies and rations, hacked into an auto-tanker for a fuel top-off, and then without looking back, we set a course that took us out of the atmosphere, and toward a planet called Earth.
One Earth year after arrival…
THE FUTURE IS HERE
The cave actually had gotten a little danker since my last visit. New patches of mold covered my worn footpath, and new trickles of water pinged and ticked that had not been there before. I sighed a heavy breath, and then put on my best happy face as I entered the main cavern. I threw down the bloodied bag I carried and yelled, “Happy anniversary.”
Sabra said nothing in return. I ran a hand across her rusted and beaten fuselage, tucked a few wires back into place, and tried to open the cockpit. When the lower control didn’t work right away I had to kick at it a few times before the bubble finally hissed open. “Did you miss me?” I tried again.
“It’s been almost four weeks. I thought maybe you had finally decided to move on,” Sabra said in the quiet tone I had come to recognize as her hurt feelings.
“I know. This last hunt took a little longer than expected, but I got it. Do you want to see what I bagged?”
“Severed swinetroll head? No thank you.”
“Well, that head is going to fetch us a box full of gold from the people it’s been harassing, so that should be enough to get you a new barrel or two of fuel.”
“Those dwarves are ripping you off,” She said.
I nodded, “I know, but they’re the only ones I can find who can make the fuel you need.”
Sabra’s tone was still somber, “Wouldn’t do much good. I lost two more systems while you were gone. I don’t think I can fly anymore, and my hacking equipment is long gone. I just wasn’t meant to be kept in such a damp place for so long.”
She was right about that, but we had been chased out of every other viable hiding place since Sabra had become number one on a government’s most-wanted-piece-of-technology list. They wanted to dissect her like a middle school biology project. Every close call left her more damaged afterward.
There were entire buildings of people out there who were salivating to get her under a microscope, and they had sent waves of man and beast to bring her in. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anyone who could fix her up and keep her in the air who wouldn’t try to turn her in for the bounty on her hull.
The irony of trading one government aggressor for another was not lost on me.
I tried my best, with her instruction, to keep her flightworthy, but there were tools and supplies we needed we just didn’t have and couldn’t get. I settled into the seat worn to my body shape, and just sat there thinking. Things had not gone the way we hoped they would over the past year.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said.
“We’re in real trouble this time,” Sabra agreed.
Then from the cave entrance a voice held aloft by age, strength, and confidence chimed into the conversation, “Perhaps I could be of assistance.”
I jumped from my seat and yanked my pistols from the holsters on my legs. I pointed them at the intruder and fired two bolts at a man with salt-and-pepper hair and beard. He stood confidently in an expensive maroon suit. He never budged. Faster than my plasma, a female fighter, armored similarly in color to Sabra, appeared out nowhere with a set of swords that ran the length of her arm. She blocked the shots with each of the blades, and then launched toward me. I fired again, but she deflected the attack before tackling me from the cockpit. I struggled, but since my warsuit had taken catastrophic damage on a job three months ago, I had not been able to recharge my NX-8. I was helpless in her grasp. She flew us around the cave, and then finally set me down from the bear hug in front of the suited man, who was puffing on his pipe in amusement.
A fight was useless. I’d lose. I shoved my guns back into their home with an unhappy grunt. Satisfied that I had finished, the female warrior sheathed her blades behind her in an upside down scabbard built into her armor. She headed back toward the entrance of our little watery cavern to let me and the older man talk.
“Been a rough year, has it Rayce? I’m assuming Earth isn’t quite what you had expected.” The man said knowingly.
I tried to read this guy, but I was getting nothing off him. Still, there was a disarming quality about him that didn’t set off my internal alarm. “You know me?”
“I know of you. I think would be fairer to say.”
“How?”
“All in good time. I’m afraid I’m on something of a tight schedule.”
“Then make it fast. What do you want?”
He pulled out of his suit coat a picture of a plain silver box. It reminded me very much of the one my clips had been presented to me in. On the back of the picture there was an address, pertinent security information, and his contact number, “There’s a collector in New York who I have been trying to acquire this case from. He has not been willing to sell. I need what’s in this case within the next two weeks. Get it for me, and I will pay you what I offered him. Further, I will arrange for you to have a safe, equipped facility to handle all of the repairs you need for your jet and your personal equipment.”
We were interrupted by the warrior girl, before I could question his intimate knowledge of me and my situation. “Sorry, sir,” her mirrored-helmet’s voice distorter rumbled, “But we’ve got confirmation. They’ve stopped in Colorado. They’re moving faster than we thought. It looks like they’ve already started the procedure.”
The older man’s pale eyes seemed to pale even more before he composed himself. I got the impression that he wasn’t surprised often, but whatever was happening had just spun him a bit. He placed his hands on the shoulder of the girl that stood taller than him because of her armor, “Those fools,” He huffed. “Go as fast as you can. Don’t think about conserving energy. Don’t think about stopping. Do whatever is necessary to save him. If you don’t have enough energy to get home we’ll use more traditional means, but you have to go now. I had hoped we wouldn’t need them, but I’ll have the girls on standby. I need you to outrun the light.”
She was gone like a blur that would have given Sabra a run for her money. The competitor in me immediately started thinking about a race between the two.
The older man turned his attention back to me, “My apologies, as you can see I stay busy. So, do we have a deal?”
What else could I say? I was despe
rate, and if this guy wanted to turn me in, I think he had the ability to do so before now. Plus, I was interested in learning more about that female warrior. This could be the break Sabra and I needed.
I shook his hand and said, “You’ve got a deal…. Mister?”
He smiled and puffed a ring of smoke from his pipe, “Call me, Largo.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
G.X. Knight: He is a single father from Montgomery, Alabama. If he were a Musketeer, he’d be Porthos (The Oliver Platt version). If he were a Power Ranger, he most definitely would be the very first green one (Play Dragonzord tune now). And if he were to pick only one superhero to spend a day at the amusement park with, it would be Iron Man (Stark’s paying). He enjoys showing his son who’s boss in Halo (the Sprinting Assassin forever rules!), he loves all types of music (please get back together, N*SYNC), and he hopes to one day live the Jimmy Buffett life of margaritas (Vodka/Red Bull) and cheeseburgers out on the white sand beaches of Gulf Shores. If you see him out-and-about you will know it’s him because he’ll likely be singing these wrong words: