The Golden Viper

by Sean Robins

  Three down, three to go.

  The other enemy ships were turning around, trying to get on my six. I made a sharp turn inside another fighter’s curve, lined up a shot and squeezed the trigger. Number four went down in flames. I resisted the temptation to quote Gladiator. Very mature of me. Keiko would’ve been proud.

  But now, I was in serious trouble. The last two gomers were on my ass. White-hot energy bolts passed by my fighter. As a fighter pilot, my worst nightmare had always been to see an enemy behind me, and two was a kiss of death. With my heart trying to leap out of my chest, I swung my Viper into a power dive, but the two enemy ships had me in their death grip, and I couldn’t shake them. I jerked the stick hard right to avoid the incoming fire, but my ship was hit a few times, and a number of warning systems started flashing.

  “Cordelia?” I asked, hoping the AI had some brilliant ideas.

  “Out of options,” she said. “Maybe you should parachute out?”

  “You want me to punch out on a planet that’s about to go kaboom? That’s your expert advice?”

  “I’m an AI, not a miracle worker, and what you need right now is a miracle.”

  Not a believer of divine intervention, I thought.

  I wished I could at least rub my temples. Beads of sweat trickled down my brow (in the temperature-controlled canopy), and my already high adrenaline level surged so much that I felt I was going to lose consciousness. There were only two things I could do: keep twisting and turning my Viper, and pray. The former would only postpone my death a few minutes, and the latter wouldn’t help at all.

  And then, one of the Arshan ships turned into a million tiny splinters.

  The Firefly flashed by like a comet. Xornaa had used the shuttle’s weight to put the ship in a blistering vertical dive and rain deadly laser bolts on the bandit. The Firefly disappeared in the clouds below. I followed her on my screen, holding my breath, to see if she survived her pilot’s suicidal maneuver. Xornaa managed to gain control of her ship literally inches away from the surface.

  All that happened right after I rejected the possibility of a divine intervention. Maybe it was a sign?

  “Fly, you fools,” I growled, but I was happy they hadn’t; otherwise, with two enemy ships on my six, nothing would’ve been left of my body for a proper burial. But now, there was only one left. That I could deal with.

  I let go of four Sparrows, which streaked backward towards the Arshan ship. The pilot shot one; then he twisted his ship up and down, right and left, and avoided the other three, but by the time he was done, I was in his back, and I’d never miss from that position.

  And finally, it was over. I was slightly lightheaded after my most recent brush with death. One of these days, I’d run out of luck (or miracles), but not today. I sank into my seat, let out a huge breath, and watched my racing heart calm down.

  “All done,” I spoke into my mike. “Now blow this thing so we can all go home.”

  “That sounded like a bad line from a porn movie,” said Venom.

  “We have to leave the atmosphere before we blow up the bomb,” said Kurt, “which you would’ve known if you’d come to the briefings.”

  I pulled the stick and my Viper started gaining altitude. “Didn’t I just save your life?” I asked. “Again?”

  “Are we keeping scores now?” said Kurt. “And didn’t we just save yours?”

  I heard Ella’s voice in my ears. She sounded angry. “Coronel Harrison, would you mind telling me how you left Invincible without my knowledge or permission?”

  “Tarq showed me a way to sneak out without anyone noticing. He thought he’d have a laugh when you found out and freaked out. As for your permission, I just happen to be the commander of the fleet, so I don’t need anyone’s permission to take my Viper out for a spin.”

  “Didn’t you resign?” she asked.

  “Tarq didn’t accept my resignation, so I’m still your boss. I suggest you get all the way off my back, or I’ll demote you.”

  “You’ll be doing me a favor. Hopefully, I can find more professional people to work with than you and that alien clown.”

  I laughed. “ ‘Alien clown.’ Good one.”

  “You people know I can hear you, right?” protested Tarq.

  “And we’re about to blow up a planet and kill eight billion people,” Kurt said with the tone of a fed-up adult listening to children argue.

  “And whose fault is that?” I asked, always having to have the last word.

  “Are you sure about this?” Ella asked me.

  “What? Hell, no,” I said. “But I have to do it.”

  “Your funeral,” she said.

  “I’m tearing up because of the confidence you’re showing me.”

  “I don’t think you’ve thought this through, so let me voice my objection one more time,” she said with anger in her voice. “What’ll happen if they attack you all at once, and we can’t pull you out in time?”

  “All men must die,” I said philosophically. I was sure my response pissed her off even more.

  They sent my golden Viper back to Talmak’s (or whatever was left of the planet) orbit. I hadn’t seen the planet explode. It happened after we’d jumped away, and I didn’t have the heart to look at the footage, but the view in front of me was exactly what I’d expected: millions of asteroids, still kept close together by gravity, and more than seven thousand Deathbringers hovering in space, having nowhere to go. I tried not to think about billions of corpses trapped in the asteroid field, especially the tiny ones.

  They didn’t immediately attack my ship. That was a good sign.

  I opened a channel to the enemy fleet. “Who is in charge in here?” I asked in their language.

  A woman answered, “I am Arittaa, the commander of the Xortaag Royal Fleet in Talmak.”

  “I guess you know who I am, do you not?”

  “You are the mass murderer who just destroyed a planet with fifty million people on it,” she said.

  And not a word about the poor Arshans who’d been caught in the crossfire.

  I clenched my fists, took a deep breath and counted to ten. “That is accurate, but I’m also the man who holds your fate in his hands, so I do not think pissing me off is the way to go.”

  “How so?”

  “Let me summarize your predicament: you are stuck here. Without the SFD, you cannot reach another habitable planet, and you cannot call for help because we have destroyed your subspace communication center. Even if your fleet decides to send someone to investigate, it will be a couple of months before they arrive, by which time you will have died of thirst, hunger, suffocation, or all three. And that is if you do not decide to do yourselves a favor and blow your own brains out.”

  I paused to give Arittaa and the people under her command a chance to picture their very unpleasant future. Then I added, “Or I can save you.”

  “And why would you do that?”

  Good question. “To be honest, today so many people have already died that thinking about it is enough to make anyone go insane. I am hoping that by saving you and your pilots, maybe, just maybe, I can get a few minutes of sleep some time during the next few weeks.”

  Arittaa didn’t immediately answer. She was probably talking to her people.

  “Come with me if you want to live,” I said in my best fake German accent.

  “I cannot understand your language,” she answered.

  “Did you really think that Xortaag woman had watched The Terminator?” asked Venom.

  All of a sudden, two dozen Deathbringers separated from the rest of their fleet and came straight for me.

  I might’ve been one of the best flying aces in the galaxy (hell, according to the Akakie propaganda I, He-Who-Killed-Maada, was the best), but even I couldn’t hope to survive if these guys decided to fight. I opened my mouth to ask Ella and Tarq to get me out, hoping they could do it before the enemy ships reached me.

  The whole Xortaag fleet started shooting.

  A
t their own ships!

  The Deathbringers approaching me disappeared under a hailstorm of laser bolts. With that many space fighters shooting at them at close range, I doubted you could find pieces bigger than my thumb left.

  I heard Arittaa’s voice. “Sorry about that. Some people thought killing the Kingslayer was worth all of us dying a horrible death.”

  Brutal.

  “What is your plan?”

  “We are going to have you jumped to our fleet, a hundred ships at a time. There, you can land on one of our transport ships’ hangar bay. Also, to be clear, we have ten thousand Vipers on the other side. If any of your pilots as much as looks at us funny, we will kill everyone who has already surrendered and leave the rest to die here.”

  “And how do we know you will not murder us all once we are defenseless on your transport ship?” she asked.

  “Tell the stupid Xortaag to look around her,” said Cordelia. “If you wanted them dead, there was no need to go through all this trouble.”

  That was a good answer, but I had a better one. “I am the Kingslayer. Everyone in the universe knows I keep my word,” I told Arittaa.

  Cordelia sounded surprised. “Do they?”

  “Plagiarize much?” asked Venom.

  Arittaa got back to me a few minutes later. “We surrender.”

  “Good decision,” I said. “Please allow me to add that you have just saved more than seven thousand people under your command. There is no shame in that.”

  “There is no shame in surrendering to the Kingslayer, period.”

  “This whole Kingslayer thing is getting weird,” said Venom.

  For once, I agreed with him.

  When I landed my Viper in Invincible’s hangar bay, Tarq was waiting for me, wearing a World-War-One-style flight suit for no reason. With a wide smile, he said, “If I did not know any better, I would think you are actively trying to enhance your status as a living legend. The man who made fifteen thousand Deathbringers surrender without even shooting a single laser bolt.”

  “There were just a few more than seven thousand,” I protested.

  “By the time we spread this story in the galaxy, there will be fifteen,” he said.

  “Kurt’s going to be pissed when he hears this,” said Venom.

  I couldn’t sleep that night. I wasn’t able to get my OCD brain under control to focus on watching a movie or writing. All I could think about was what we’d done, its moral justifications or the lack thereof, and its consequences. I had a few fascinating conversations with Venom, and a few more one-sided ones with Liz, until Cordelia said she was worried I’d finally gone insane.

  The few minutes that I did doze off, I had a nightmare about thousands of dead children who looked like zombies attacking me. I was probably better off not sleeping for a while.

  At around 3 a.m., I got a message on my PDD. It was from Kurt. You up?

  The bear and the woods, I wrote back.

  Drink in the mess?

  When I arrived in the mess hall, I found Kurt drinking whiskey and Oksana drinking vodka. I pulled up a chair, grabbed a glass, and filled it up with half of each. I needed something very strong. “We keep this up, we’re going to have a drinking problem.”

  Kurt raised his glass to me. “We wanted to say thank you for saving our butts today.”

  I nodded. “What are friends for?”

  “Xornaa wanted to come and say thank you too, but she figured you might not want to see her, so I am supposed to convey her gratitude.”

  “That was one hell of a maneuver she pulled. She must be a great pilot,” I said. “I still don’t like her though. She’s too much of a Mary Sue. You know, good at everything: flying, shooting, martial arts. I bet she’s very good in—” I stopped talking and looked sheepishly at Oksana.

  She completed my sentence. “In the sack. All adults here. On that note, if I was a man, I’d totally go for her.”—“Or a lesbian,” Venom added helpfully—“I don’t understand why you guys don’t try.”

  “One word. Elizabeth,” I said.

  “Two words. Keiko and Janet,” said Kurt.

  “Is this a competition?” I asked.

  “In all seriousness, she’s never come on to me, or slept with anyone I’m aware of,” said Kurt. “In fact, she conducts herself with the professionalism you’d expect from a career Marine officer. I think, despite her initial slutty behavior, which she’s completely toned down, she just uses sex as a weapon, which sure as hell is very helpful in her endeavors as a spy. Kind of like a space Mata Hari.”

  I opened my mouth to ask who that was, but Cordelia anticipated that and sent a link to my PDD.

  “As a woman, I can tell you with certainty the ‘slutty behavior’ you saw is all an act and has nothing to do with her real personality,” said Oksana.

  “And going back to our original discussion,” continued Kurt, “she is genetically enhanced, after all.”

  “Aren’t all Xortaags?” asked Oksana.

  “They are, but the enhancements’ effectiveness varies in different individuals. In her case, they’ve apparently turned her into Superwoman.”

  “Good thing she’s on our side then.” I twisted my wedding ring.

  Oksana frowned. “Is she?”

  “Also, I’m seeing someone, sort of,” Kurt added. “We’ve been on a couple of dates.”

  That surprised me. Except for Keiko, Kurt had been alone since Janet’s death, and I knew he was trying to avoid emotional attachments. “Seriously? I thought you were planning to stay away from people for the rest of your life. What changed?”

  He shrugged. “Something I learned from Keiko. She said we should cherish every second of life, and the fact that it can be cut short at any moment makes it more precious. I decided spending all my evenings alone in my quarters playing the piano is neither fulfilling nor sexy.”

  “I loved Keiko,” said Oksana sadly. “I cried for an hour when I heard she was dead.”

  I clapped him on the back. “Good for you, buddy. Who’s the lucky girl?”

  “Her name’s Patricia. She’s an engineer aboard Serenity. You’ll meet her soon, I guess.”

  “Looking forward to it. So what’s going to happen now? To the mission, I mean.”

  “The Akakies had a look at a few other Xortaag-occupied planets,” said Kurt. “All are under tight security, so we’re going back to Earth. Tarq says he has to go to Kanoor to deal with a few things, but the Akakie fleet will come with us. Tarq hopes you guys can teach them how to fight.”

  I scowled. “I’ll have better luck teaching pigs how to fly. Did you know a few hundred Akakies got shot down today, despite clear instructions to try to keep their distance from the Xortaags?”

  “No. I was busy supervising the Xortaags’ surrender. Any human casualties?”

  My throat went dry, even though I was drinking. “A few.”

  Kurt put his hand on my shoulder. “Sorry to hear.”

  Oksana sipped her vodka. “I, for one, am not looking forward to going back to Earth.”

  I knew what she meant. The news from Earth wasn’t good. There had been some unrest, and Jackson had decided to respond with an iron-fist approach. He encouraged his supporters to use violence against his critics, which made the situation even more volatile.

  “Rumor has it Jackson has formed a secret police, which arrests people who oppose him,” she continued.

  “How very SCTU of him,” I muttered under my breath.

  “It’s not only a rumor,” Kurt said with disgust. “I’ve heard the same thing from a few ex-resistance people back on Earth.”

  “It’s ironic that we put Jackson where he is now, sort of,” I said. “Maybe we should do something about it?”

  “What, exactly?” Kurt narrowed his eyes.

  “The fleet is loyal to me, and the Marines to you. We can kick Jackson out of office in five minutes.”

  Kurt’s face hardened. “We’re not discussing a military coup d’état! How is it different
from what Zheng did? My father fought for a democratically elected United Earth government all his life.”

  Oksana interrupted us. “Guys, we’ve just destroyed a planet. I think that’s quite enough for today. Let’s discuss the coup another day.”

  I raised my palms up.

  She finished her glass and put it down; then she looked at me. There was deep pain in her eyes, but it could’ve simply been a reflection of my own.

  “Tell me we did the right thing,” she whispered, her voice barely audible.

  The rush of emotions was disorienting. Suddenly, Liz was there, sitting with us, smiling and playing with a curl of her wavy black hair. How many times had I joked about Liz being obsessed with doing the right thing? I’d even once said (with my usual tactfulness) it’d be written on her epitaph.

  And she died doing the right thing.

  Did she though? Was attacking Maada the correct decision? I’d watched the footage of that battle and listened to the radio communications a million times. If Liz had stayed away from Maada for two minutes, she would’ve been alive now. Instead, she attacked Maada head-on, and all she accomplished was getting herself killed. Keiko and I were much better fighter pilots than she was, and the two of us together beat him by a sheer stroke of luck. If my energy bolt hadn’t hit the general’s Crimson Deathbringer exactly when Keiko was doing her Kamikaze run, chances were Maada would’ve killed both of us.

  I opened my mouth to crack a joke, unconsciously trying to use humor to defend against pain, but I looked at Oksana, looking so vulnerable, and for once in my life I managed not to say something stupid. I wondered how much more she could take: first her sister, then Matias, and now this. Having eight billion dead souls on your conscious couldn’t have been easy. I fervently hoped suicide didn’t run in her family.

  “I wish I could,” I told her.

  After Kurt and Oksana went back to Serenity, I stayed in the mess and poured myself another drink. Two Marines entered the mess hall. When they saw me, they exchanged a look and walked towards where I was sitting. I knew them both: Juan and Li were members of Kurt’s strike force in Operation Royalty.