The Golden Viper

by Sean Robins

  “Didn’t you and your dad spend your whole life trying to achieve world peace? That couldn’t have been easy.”

  Kurt shrugged. “OK. Listen. This discussion won’t end anytime soon, so let me use another argument. Back then, when I was busy killing Zheng’s people, I felt genuinely guilty whenever I got one. The first time I took a life, I couldn’t eat or sleep for a week…” His voice trailed off for a moment, and he offered his trademark staring-into-nothing expression. “Do you remember the first person you killed?”

  “To be honest, no. For me, it was always shooting down the fighter jet that was important, not what happened to the pilot, and most of the time I had no way of knowing who punched out and who went down with the plane.”

  “What I am trying to say is assassinating Zheng’s goons was a dirty job, but it had to be done. So is this. We’re going to do it tomorrow, with or without you. I’ll be down on the planet, and I know my chances of coming back alive will drastically improve if the Kingslayer is watching my back.”

  Kurt was my best friend. He was the brother I never had; in fact, he was closer to me than any real sibling would’ve been. We’d grown up together. We had fought, bled, and lost loved ones by each other’s sides. Hell, we’d saved humanity together. I would’ve happily given my life for him.

  But a man had to draw the line somewhere.

  I’d killed several enemy pilots when I was with the Air Force on Earth and had never given it a second thought. I led the attack that ended the lives of twenty million Xortaags sleeping in the cryogenic pods in their convoy, and I was partially responsible for the untold millions who died on the four planets we’d liberated. I was worried I’d turn into a monster if I took part in this one.

  And what if there was judgment after death? I didn’t want to lose whatever was left of my soul, just in case.

  “Sorry, Kurt,” I said. “I draw the line at killing two billion kids.”

  It was just like the time he came to me to ask for my help in fighting Zheng and I turned him down, only a million times worse. I regretted my words as soon as they came out of my mouth, but I stuck to my guns. I was nothing if not stubborn.

  No women, no children. OK, maybe some women, if they were armed soldiers, and it was really necessary, and even that would be against my Southern upbringing. But absolutely no children, not even baby Hitler.

  “And, my friend, to be honest, I’m worried about you too,” I continued. “I know you’ve done a lot of crazy shit during your terr… eh, freedom fighting days, but this is something else. If you do this, something will permanently break inside you. Trust me when I say you don’t want eight billion ghosts to follow you around for the rest of your life.”

  “Has to be done,” he repeated doggedly. “And those eight billion people you keep talking about? They’re already dead. They just don’t know it yet.”

  “Cliché much?” I said tiredly.

  Kurt left, and I wondered if this would be the last time I saw him alive.

  I hope we aren’t making a huge mistake, thought Ella, sitting on the command chair of Invincible.

  All around her, the crew was busy doing their job. They’d been briefed on the mission’s goal, and if anyone had any objection to destroying a whole planet, they’d kept it to themselves. They were all seasoned Navy men and woman, and they were good at following orders.

  When she’d joined the British Navy all those years ago, her brain full of naïve notions of honor and duty, she’d never imagined she would take part in space genocide, killing billions of sentient beings. But she didn’t know there were aliens in the galaxy who would kill humanity off without giving it a second thought. She wondered if Jim was right. Murdering all those children on the planet couldn’t possibly be right, whatever the justification. Then she thought about her two dead daughters, and her resolve to do what needed to be done solidified.

  She opened a channel to the fleet. “This is Captain Wood speaking. We’re going to make the final jump in T-minus two minutes.”

  She’d picked up that expression from her American counterparts right before the Xortaag invasion and had been looking for a chance to use it.

  “Just a reminder: we are bait. Don’t take any unnecessary risks trying to destroy the Deathbringers; only distract them long enough for the Marines to do their job, and then we can leave the Xortaag fleet to die in space, which is exactly what they deserve.”

  In short, please don’t get yourselves killed on my watch.

  Ella heard Tarq saying, “We are sending you in three, two…”

  “Godspeed,” she said right before the fleet jumped.

  After pacing back and forth in my quarters for what felt like hours, with my brain—in full OCD mode—thinking in circles, I stopped and asked, “They’re going to be all right, aren’t they?”

  No one answered.

  “Deactivate privacy mode.” I’d forgotten to do it after Kurt left last night.

  “What did I miss?” asked Cordelia immediately.

  “Nothing. What’s going on out there?”

  “We’ve just made the final jump. So far so good, but no battle plan ever—”

  “Survives contact with the enemy,” I interrupted her. “I know. You learned it from me. Do you think I made the right decision?”

  “Let me ask you a question. If you had to choose between the Arshans and Liz, what would you do?”

  I resisted the urge to bite my nails just like Tarq. “That’s easy. This is the same choice Neo had to make at the end of The Matrix Reloaded. He chose Trinity. I’d choose Liz.”

  “And yet, somehow, you decided to choose the Arshans over Kurt?”

  “I didn’t,” I protested. “I simply refused to become a child murderer. Kurt is going to be fine.”

  “And if he isn’t? Will you ever be able to forgive yourself?”

  I hadn’t thought about it that way. Just thinking about the possibility that Kurt could’ve died down there while I was here doing nothing made my breath catch.

  Goddamn it!

  “It’ll be our turn soon,” said Kurt, following the battle on a VR screen.

  Which, if I’m being honest, I’m not looking forward to at all.

  He was sitting on the copilot seat of a Firefly. Xornaa was piloting the ship, and Oksana, along with nine other Marines—all in full combat gear—was sitting behind them. Kurt thought about what they were carrying in the shuttle’s cargo bay and shuddered. The planet buster made Little Boy look like a BB gun in comparison. It was too bulky and heavy to be carried by an invisible spy ship (they were very small and couldn’t carry more than three people), which had made Operation Trojan Horse necessary.

  There were few things in life Kurt liked more than planning a flawless operation and executing it, but not today. The feeling of anticipation he always felt before a mission was all gone. If anything, a part of him wished something went wrong and they didn’t have to go ahead with their plans.

  Kurt watched as their fleet attacked the Xortaags, but he could see the usual intensity of a battle was missing. The Vipers were trying to shoot at their targets from a more or less safe distance. Still, a few Vipers, piloted by the Akakies, got shot down within the first few minutes of the battle. Those freaking insects would never learn how to fight.

  A squadron of Vipers entered the planet’s atmosphere, attracting the Xortaags’ planet-based laser turrets fire. This was the cue Kurt was waiting for. His heart started beating faster. If their plan failed, this would be a very short flight, or a very long one if they had to fly all the way to heaven. “Here we go,” he announced and touched the VR screen in front of him.

  Thick black smoke emanated from the shuttle. Xornaa put the shuttle in a spinning dive while shouting hysterically in her mike, “Mayday! Mayday! I’m hit. I’m going down! Oh dear God!”

  “A little bit too much,” Kurt whispered to her.

  “Why are you whispering?” whispered Oksana.

  They were hoping the Xortaags, hav
ing their hands full fighting the fleet, wouldn’t pay attention to a hit ship falling uncontrollably onto the planet. This was why Tarq had said they could use this trick only once. Even if it succeeded this time, it was unlikely the Xortaags would fall for it a second time, which made the planet busters useless from this point on because they could only operate from the planet surface. Not necessarily a bad thing; otherwise, Tarq wouldn’t have hesitated to destroy every single Xortaag-occupied planet.

  “It looks like our plan worked,” said Xornaa, “since nobody is shooting at us.”

  “If Jim were here, he’d make a Star Wars joke,” said Kurt.

  “How come?” asked Oksana, looking out of a shuttle window.

  “There’s this infamous scene in the original trilogy where the bad guys didn’t shoot down an escape pod, which later resulted in the destruction of their whole empire.”

  Xornaa frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  “If Jim were here, he’d make a joke about trying to explain Star Wars to women.”

  “You are so sexist!” exclaimed Oksana.

  “I certainly am not.” Kurt turned in his seat to look at her. “I appointed you as my second-in-command, didn’t I?”

  “That’s because I kick everyone’s butt in hand-to-hand combat. Isn’t that right, big guy?” she asked a huge Hispanic man sitting opposite her.

  The man blushed.

  Kurt hid his smile. The Marine, Juan Martinez, one of the five surviving members of his Operation Royalty team, was a brute of a man and easily two hundred fifty pounds. Getting beaten by a girl half his weight couldn’t have possibly been fun for him. He shouldn’t have been so embarrassed though. Oksana was insanely good at hand-to-hand combat. She had a lot of natural talent, and MICI had done the rest. Moreover, she’d trained diligently for a long time until she’d developed championship-level skills. And she wouldn’t shy away from fighting dirty. She’d scratch your face, bite your hands, or gouge your eyes out, which was why Kurt himself never got into the ring with her. Allen did that once, and he regretted it after he lost a few teeth.

  “Ouch, man. Burn!” Li Xing, a Chinese Marine and another surviving member of Operation Royalty, told Juan.

  The rest of the Marines laughed.

  Xornaa looked over her shoulder and told Oksana, “You and I should go a few rounds.”

  “Bring it, alien,” said Oksana.

  Kurt smiled. “I’d pay good money to see that.”

  “You’re getting more sexist by the second,” Oksana said flatly, “and you appointed me only after both Allen and Sergei died.”

  “That comment had nothing to do with sex. Tarq has told me Xornaa’s fighting skills and her, eh, markswomanship, are legendary,” said Kurt. “And Sergei was gay. Was appointing him over you still considered sexist?”

  “No, but it would’ve been homophobic if you hadn’t,” replied Oksana.

  “Humans are so complicated,” said Xornaa.

  “You think this is complicated?” said Kurt. “You’re lucky most SJWs disappeared after the Xortaag invasion.”

  Xornaa gave him a questioning look.

  “Social Justice Warriors,” Kurt explained.

  “Did these warriors die fighting the Xortaags?” asked the alien woman.

  “No, but once people realized the galaxy was full of sentient species, some of them hostile, who must use what washroom kind of lost its importance.”

  Ten minutes later, the shuttle landed on a desert, which Tarq had chosen to be as far away as possible from a population center. The Marines fanned out and established a perimeter. Xornaa opened the cargo doors, and Kurt used his PDD to extract the planet buster. The gigantic weapon looked like a cone, held upside down using a scaffold, and it moved using caterpillar tracks. Tarq had told Kurt the weapon used antimatter to dig a hole in the surface of the planet all the way to its core, storing all the energy generated when matter and antimatter met. Once there, the planet buster would detonate an antimatter bomb, strong enough to blow the planet into several pieces. Kurt hadn’t bothered to ask Tarq how the Akakies had produced enough antimatter to build a planet-destroying bomb.

  Kurt hesitated when the weapon was ready. Eight billion people will die if I do this. He couldn’t wrap his mind around that number. But he’d already made up his mind, and this was no time for second thoughts.

  “You can’t kill people who are already dead,” he told himself. He knew he was right. This was more like euthanasia. He’d cut those poor people’s lives a few months short, but he’d save them from all the pain and suffering they were going through, and the end result was the same anyway.

  With a heavy heart, he touched his PDD screen before he could change his mind. He expected the planet buster to start digging like a huge drill, but the weapon just fell onto the surface and disappeared. All that was left were the scaffold, the tracks, and a huge hole. Kurt approached the hole and looked down. It was so deep that he couldn’t see the bottom. “That was fast,” he said.

  Kurt suddenly heard Ella’s frantic voice in his earpiece. “We have six fast movers approaching you from eight o’clock. Get the hell out of there, now!”

  He shouted, “Time to go,” and ran back to the Firefly, followed by Oksana, Juan, Li and the rest of the Marines. He had barely sat in the copilot seat when Xornaa flew the shuttle off the ground.

  “How long?” he asked.

  “Less than a minute,” she said. “How did this happen? I thought the fleet kept the Xortaags occupied.”

  “These are not the Xortaags,” said Ella. “They must be from the Arshan fleet. Tarq tells me they have the same capabilities as Deathbringers. Backup is on the way.”

  “They won’t be here in time,” said the Xortaag woman, looking calm and relaxed as usual.

  “Give me the cannon’s control.” Kurt gripped his seat so hard his knuckles went white.

  Fireflies had a revolving retractable laser cannon under their hull. Not a very effective weapon against space fighters, but better than nothing. Xornaa didn’t reply, but the cannon controls appeared on a VR screen in front of Kurt.

  “Here they come,” said Xornaa. “Hold on!”

  Suddenly, red energy beams were all over the Firefly. Xornaa threw the ship all over the sky, trying to shake the perusing fighters, but they were much faster and more maneuverable than the shuttle. The Firefly was hit a few times in quick succession, each hit shaking it violently. Fire erupted from a console, but it was immediately put out by the shuttle’s fire control system. His heartbeat racing, Kurt looked at the screen in front of him, targeted the closest space fighter and started to shoot back, but he didn’t seem to be able to hit the lead enemy ship. He pinched his lips together and felt his throat closing up. With six space fighters against the slow and lightly armed Firefly, this encounter had only one possible outcome. He ground his teeth in frustration and kept shooting at the Arshan space fighters.

  “And to think we originally came here to save these guys!” said Oksana, her voice strained.

  “Maybe they found out we were planning to blow up their planet.” Kurt swept a hand across his forehead to get rid of sweat, still focused on hitting the leading enemy ship.

  “Well, it was nice knowing you guys,” said Xornaa, fighting with the Firefly’s controls, showing no signs of stress. She looked so calm that she might as well have been in a simulated battle.

  The enemy ship streaked in for the kill, spitting a deadly stream of laser bolts at the shuttle. Xornaa made a frantic dash, but the Arshan space fighter closed in on their tail. Kurt tried to get it in his crosshairs. It was no use. The shuttle vibrated intensely, which made targeting the enemy vessel even more difficult. This can’t be how it all ends. He shook his head in denial, but inside the shuttle he was every bit as helpless as he felt. He could stand against an army with nothing but his sniper rifle on the ground, but what was he supposed to do in this flying coffin, being followed by the people whose planet was about to go up in smoke?

 
Karma is a bitch.

  “We should’ve listened to Jim,” he mumbled under his breath.

  Now that he was about to die, and with everything he was going to lose, his biggest regret was that he turned his back on his best friend during their last briefing. He rubbed a hand over his goatee and panted for air, breathing becoming increasingly more difficult.

  “Speaking of the devil,” Xornaa said with glee in her voice.

  Two air-to-air missiles appeared above the Firefly and shrieked past the shuttle towards the enemy ships.

  “Where did these come from?” asked Kurt, stunned.

  I stared at my tactical display, my mouth dry as dust, mentally urging the Viper to move faster. My body wanted to run out of the pilot seat, hoping to reach the battle sooner, and my mind was doing its usual crazy-making ruminating, envisioning the worst possible outcomes. I kept trying to push away the very vivid image of a coffin with my best friend in it and focus on flying. Kurt’s Firefly was making wild twists and turns, but she’d already been hit a few times, and the enemy ships were gaining on her. I had my Viper firewalled, but there was no way I could reach there in time.

  But, fortunately, my Phoenix missiles could. The lead Arshan space fighter avoided the first Phoenix, but the second hit it dead center. The vessel disappeared behind a blinding explosion.

  There was a second explosion, this one inside my brain. “Alpha Mike Foxtrot,” I yelled excitedly at the dead enemy pilot who had very nearly killed Kurt and his team.

  “You know the Arshans’ minds are being controlled by MFM, right?” asked Cordelia. “That poor pilot was a victim.”

  “Not giving a rat’s ass right now,” I growled, focusing on the remaining targets.

  My golden Viper’s engines roared as I pushed the stick. Drowning in adrenaline, I dove in and let go of my fighter’s laser cannons. Another Arshan ship disintegrated under my fire. The others scattered in different directions. I jerked the stick hard left to peruse the closest one, centered my gunsight, and kept firing, peppering the enemy ship. Laser bolts after laser bolts tore into the gomer, and it soon turned into a ball of vaporized metal. I allowed myself the luxury of punching the air.