The Last Watchmen

by Christopher D Schmitz

  Dekker turned his attention back to MacAllistair. Another zombie appeared to interrogate him; the beast appeared as both intelligent and in command. A kind of knobby growth covered the leader’s skin and his horn had split into two prongs; several misshapen offshoots made it more resemblative of reindeer antlers than a unicorn spike. It apparently didn’t like MacAllistair’s replies and began beating the scientist with his crooked, mangled fists.

  “We gotta rescue him,” Dekker sighed, not too enthused about the prospect, especially given his personal history with the doctor.

  “You know, we’ve got both DNIET units. We could just stay here,” Vesuvius offered, analyzing the bleak situation with cold, precise logic.

  “Yes, but that’s not who we are. Besides, we’re just waiting for the air to give out at this point. We might as well go out on our feet and with guns in our hands.”

  She nodded her reluctant agreement.

  Dekker turned to his crew. “Give us a head start. You guys gather up whatever research looks most valuable and then come for us. Bag the prototype up—we don’t want even MacAllistair to know we have it.” He yanked a heavy pack from among the scientist’s belongings for them to stow it. “Give us no more than five minutes. If we have to blow the DNIET units and go out with a blast, I’d prefer we all did it together.”

  Nathan acknowledged and then began rummaging through the scientists research while Dekker and Vesuvius darted to the central hub.

  ***

  Beading sweat stung his eyes as it trickled off his brow. Dekker peered around the corner; he spotted the raiders inside the central control terminal. While MacAllistair had unlocked it the last time they’d gone through it, the invaders had merely wrenched their way through it with organized, brute force leaving the passage jammed open.

  Dekker waited a few seconds more. He could hear MacAllistair’s groans as the attackers ground the scientist’s face against the floor.

  “This can all be over, just as soon as you tell me where the device is.” The deformed creature spoke in a very human voice.

  “I—I told you! It was stolen from my laboratory. I don’t know where it is,” MacAllistair whimpered.

  “Really? I should hope that you are lying; we will find it should that be the case—it can’t have left. Once it is discovered you’ll be useless to me.”

  “That’s enough!” Dekker yelled, rounding the corner. He trained his pistol on the leader while towing Vesuvius. “He’s telling the truth. Now let him go.”

  The horned, zombie leader grinned wickedly at the tethered investigators. “And I suppose you are the one who stole it then?”

  Dekker surveyed the scene. Only the leader and one other were present; the other creature stood guard at the far door which Nibbs had unlocked earlier. The sentry tried to inconspicuously flank them. “Maybe I am. Who, and by that I mean, what, are you?”

  It grabbed the scientist and jerked him to his feet. He put a hand on MacAllistair’s air mask, fingering it as if threatening to unmask him. “We are children of the apothecium!” He shook his head like a buck flaking pre-rut velvet. A golden dust cloud momentarily hung before dispersing.

  “Do you see our seed? Once he breathes this in, the spores will root in his lungs, spread to his nervous system, and make him one of us!” The apothecium-fiend’s voice dripped with pure villainy. “Now give me the device or I will unmask him!”

  “No.” The word fell out like a cold diagnosis; bitter and hard—he left no room to negotiate. Dekker squinted, his eyes dared his enemy to call his bluff.

  The horned leader shrieked and ripped the mask from MacAllistair’s face. He kicked the scientist to the ground and turned to challenge Dekker.

  The flanking minion rushed Vesuvius.

  She blasted him in the chest with the laser pistol but it didn’t slow him. Not wasting a moment she hurled it at her assailant’s head.

  He ducked and came back up, grinning at his own cleverness. Recognition came too slowly and Vesuvius’s blade separated head from body.

  Dekker brought a heavy, double-barreled flak-caster to bear and unloaded a cartridge of shrapnel into the central demon. The impact knocked it to the floor. Dekker stepped forward and kicked the monster onto his back.

  It lay writhing in mixed pain and mirth. “It is too late for your friend,” it cackled.

  “I didn’t figure you’d recognize it,” Dekker looked down on his enemy with cruel eyes. “There’s no oxygen in this air. MacAllistair isn’t breathing anything.” He said it somberly—his boast reminded him of their dire straits.

  The other members of their team quickly filed into the room. “Sterilize his face and breather unit before you put the airmask back on MacAllistair,” Dekker barked the order. “He’s got airborne contaminants on his skin.”

  Ahmed carried their medical pack as the backup medic to Britton. He calmed the blue-faced MacAllistair and cleaned his face with a chemical wipe before replacing the mask.

  “You’ll never escape! Even now, hundreds of apothecium drones scour the station! I command a larger force than you interlopers!”

  Suddenly a flash of light flared on the observation screen. Guns blazing, the Rickshaw Crusader, and a G-Class Battlecruiser burst out of FTL travel; the capital ship dropped a Shivan Interceptor from its bay. The sudden eruption of colored laser fire blazed across the view screens.

  “We’re done here,” Dekker stated. He pointed his remaining barrel at the enemy commander and unloaded the second cartridge before chambering two new rounds.

  Nibbs jumped over the communications console as soon as he could reach it. Looking over his shoulder he spotted incoming horned drones. “Someone lock that door up!”

  “I’m on it!” Rock shouted. He tossed the DNIET into MacAlllistair’s lap and blasted the override device they’d used earlier to hack their way in. The doors slammed shut just before the zombies could reach it. “They’ll crawl up our rear-end if we’re not careful,” he shouted, pointing to the rear door. The damaged, metal skin jammed it ajar.

  Nibbs opened a channel to all the three ships. “You guys got a plan?”

  “Something like that,” Matty’s voice came from the Rickshaw Crusader.

  Guy broke into the radio feed. “Sorry. We’re such bad babysitters. The Shivan got out, but we think he’s helping? At least, he’d better, for what we’re paying him.”

  Gr’Kah’s Interceptor spun a corkscrew attack loop, evading a bursting defensive salvo from the enemy; he unloaded a barrage of laser fire. The emerald blasts ripped away hull and girder from the behemoth ghost ship. “Does this one ever shut his mouth?” Gr’Kah questioned.

  “I got the plan.” Corgan’s voice. “I’m in the cruiser. We’ll pull you aboard and jump to FTL. How soon can you get to the escape pods?”

  Dekker looked to his guys for an analysis.

  “They’re on C deck,” Nathan told Dekker. He glanced at the internal sensor array. “The bay is clear, but the whole way there is overrun with these new, tougher drones.”

  Dekker scanned the map, observing the invader’s blips. His oxygen starved brain tried to find a viable way down.

  On screen the Crusader and the Shivan rolled into a joint attack on the enemy cruiser. Jumping nimbly between the massive bursts of return fire, they ripped open a new section of hull; the force of the discharges vented bodies and shrapnel in a cloud of galactic flotsam. The Crusader cleared the cloud and burned the gases off like vapor as it passed through the engine wake. Gr’Kah’s interceptor flew too close; it caught a piece of debris and caromed away, plunging downwards. The investigator’s felt a dull impact as the Interceptor collided with the station.

  “We’ll be away in a few seconds,” Dekker claimed. The sudden fall inspired him.

  “Copy that.”

  “Rock,” he ordered, “Blast open the central grate to the air supplier. Knock it all out, right down to base!”

  Rock jumped onto a table-like console and unloaded the heavy guns. Las
ers slagged the flooring and shredded through the fan assembly that had impotently circulated the dead air for days now. It clattered to the floor far below and opened the giant tubular chasm which spanned all three decks.

  “That leads to the air recyclers down on C deck,” Dekker explained.

  “But that’s a fifty meter fall!” MacAllistair moaned, still winded.

  “Belts off everyone!” Dekker ordered.

  “Is a thirty second delay long enough?” Nibbs asked.

  “Perfect. Everyone ready to jump?”

  MacAllistair stood at the edge of the deep hole, too dumbfounded to speak. Nibbs remained at the console nearest the blasted aperture; they’d strung all of their belts together to tie Nibbs to Rock.

  MacAllistair clutched the reclaimed DNIET device tightly enabling the Investigators to free up their gun hands. Shaw kept the original prototype slung across his back in the dark bag. He looked almost as skeptical of this escape as MacAllistair did.

  “On three,” Nibbs said. “One. Two. Three!” he yelled just as zombie drones poured through the far door.

  The eight jumped in tandem with Nibbs staying above. Just as the belt yanked Nibbs backwards, he slapped the activator and killed the station’s gravity.

  All the apothecium drones left their feet: disoriented and out of control. The Investigators’ momentum plunged them towards their destination, gracefully setting them against the wreckage on the bottom of the shaft.

  They waited a few seconds for the gravity to reactivate. Nibbs used the spare seconds to unstrap himself from the gunner. “The emergency bay is just past the main engineering plant.”

  As soon as the gravity reengaged they were back on their feet with guns blazing. Zombies poured from every possible juncture while the Investigators sprinted for the pods. The chaos became a silent blur as oxygen-starved blood pounded through their ears.

  With no offensive capabilities, MacAllistair simply ran. Something struck him across the back of his skull and he fell to the floor. His vision swam and he clambered across the floor in a panic, just trying to get into the escape modules. Rock yanked him to his feet.

  “I dropped it! I lost it,” MacAllistair screamed at Rock.

  The gunner turned to the swarm that pressed forward. “It’s too late, Doc. It’s gone!” He jammed MacAllistair into an escape pod and ejected them both into space. “Don’t worry; we’ve got all your research saved.”

  As the egg shaped container jetted away from the station MacAllistair sighed heavily. “That’s okay. I’m thinking I should destroy it, delete everything. It’s far too dangerous a technology to be released.” He paused introspectively. “I didn’t create it to be a weapon… only after I’d completed it did I realize it could be used that way.”

  Rock consoled him with a pat on the shoulder. Their escape pod shook as the Rickshaw Crusader yanked their pod into its holding bay.

  ***

  Corgan stood resolute at his lonely post on the Salvation’s command deck. “SHIP, concentrate all fire on that enemy cruiser, but keep us shielded as much as possible from their main offensive battery by positioning us so the science station obstructs their field of fire.”

  “Understood,” SHIP confirmed. The heavy cannon batteries on the starboard side shook as they fired discriminatingly; the brilliant rays blasted a swath of destruction deep through their enemy’s armor. The damage looked worse than it probably was.

  Apparently, the enemy vessel didn’t bother shielding itself. It didn’t worry about pressure leaks and hull breaches. An opponent had to whittle the entire craft down to pieces in order to defeat them. It truly was a ghost ship; it could continue its dread mission until it had been ripped apart down to the last weld.

  The enemy ship, still attached to the station, fired its thrusters and pivoted the entire outpost in order to bring her guns to bear on the Salvation. Corgan directed SHIP. “Bring us around and put the enemy to our bow. Let’s present the slimmest profile possible. Drop power to the rear shields and concentrate all allocated shield power forward so we can survive this.”

  “Understood.”

  Corgan sighed with relief when he saw the five escape pods jettison from the station. The Crusader zipped wild loops as it retrieved the others. He allowed himself a momentary grin of triumph.

  The ferocious shaking almost knocked him from his feet as the enemy guns unloaded on the Salvation. Its weakened shields held, but the barrage yanked Corgan from his reverie. “SHIP, use our starboard stabilizers to strafe us back into the station’s blind spot!”

  Salvation took another violent burst from the zombie ship’s guns. Alarm klaxons wailed and warnings splashed across the screens of empty stations.

  A garbled message came over the radio waves, Dekker’s voice. “We’ve got to decontaminate. Set us up in the Crusader’s cargo hold as soon as possible.”

  “Will do.” Matty’s voice.

  “One other thing,” Dekker ordered, his voice sounded weak. “We have to destroy the station. No survivors. They’ve still got a super weapon onboard. Lost it at the last second. Can’t let em have it.”

  A few seconds of silence followed.

  “You follow that?” Matty asked Corgan.

  “Yeah.” Corgan’s brain screamed at him, searching for solutions that didn’t necessitate ramming the Salvation through the station’s reactor core. His eyes flicked to the warning signs and dwindling gauge levels. The nearby navigational console tracked their position in three dimensions and provided real-time compensation for their FTL coordinates. “I got it,” Corgan reconfirmed. “You locked down yet?”

  “Acknowledged.”

  “SHIP, at current speed, spin us on our central hard-point and reverse thrust. Put our tail end right up against that station and shift our shields to compensate!”

  “This is a dangerous maneuver. Confirm action?”

  “Confirmed.”

  As soon as he’d spoken the word, the floor bucked for a second; Corgan had to take a step to maintain his balance before gravitational systems compensated in the shift. Corgan jumped over to the navigational controls.

  His eyes watched the distance meter scroll down rapidly. The enemy ship rolled around; their guns would come to bear on them in seconds and they couldn’t survive another barrage at such close range without a full shield charge.

  The distance dropped to terminal numbers and Corgan slapped the FTL drive ignition as the enemy guns cleared the station that obstructed them. The massive Thumper drive system shot the Salvation into FTL, detonating a thermo-nuclear explosion directly behind them; the blast ripped through the science station and everything in it, igniting the station’s reactor core. Its eruption shredded the void which the Salvation had just cleared via FTL; flames engulfed the demon-ship and the blast force eviscerated it at an atomic level.

  ***

  The battleship Salvation orbited Earth. Outside, a blur of activity took over. Supply ships and maintenance crews crawled around the intimidating cruiser. The Rickshaw Crusader patrolled the ship, discouraging any with ill-intentions.

  Over the course of two days the Dozen had systematically moved their entire headquarters onto the Salvation. Dekker took his time responding to the MEA’s demands for information regarding the long-lost ship which agitated his government liaison to no end. Dekker put him off under the pretense of writing accurate reports for the most recent MEA assignment; truthfully, an accurate response proved difficult to assemble—but the Salvation had enough firepower that he felt no compulsion to respond to the underwhelming forces making demands.

  Finally, with a civilian-owned, heavily armed battle cruiser orbiting the planet, the Dozen could be ignored no longer. His MEA contact opened a video channel; adjacent to him sat The Pheema himself—current Chief Magnate of Earth.

  Dekker grinned and accepted the video conference. The Krenzin diplomat smoothed the fur on his arm, a sign Dekker took to mean that he’d disturbed the Chief Magnate’s proper sensibilities. “Greeti
ngs. This is Dekker,” he said with a grin, kicking back in his chair as if this meeting was just another in a string of trivialities.

  Ruffled by the improper display of decorum, The Pheema focused the camera entirely on himself. “I demand your report, in full and at once!”

  “Hello, Chief Magnate,” Dekker. “I’ve been preparing my report until just now.”

  “I prefer my Krenzin title. Please address me as The Pheema.”

  Dekker leaned forward. “That, I will not do. I respect my home and her government, the MEA, regardless of how screwed up it can be at times. By extension I will respect the office of Chief Magnate. But I hold no regard for a religious-philosophical system practiced by an alien race while humanity—Jerusalem aside—is denied the freedom to practice her own religions.”

  The Pheema sneered. “I remember your father. I knew him before my ascension: when I assisted the previous Pheema prior to the assassination of the Krenzin Parliament. You are much more obstinate than he, and far ruder.” The leader’s words dripped with derision. “I was there that night; I saw the riots. It is a shame that the galaxy has lost the last of the Watchmen.”

  “I guess you’re just gonna hafta get used to being wrong, Chief Magnate. I am the last of the Watchmen.” Dekker nodded, stood, and angrily severed the connection. He decided to let the planet think they’d insulted the most offensively capable mercenary team in-system, and they sat on Earth’s doorstep.

  Seconds later, The Pheema resent his call request. Dekker let appeal linger unanswered for a few long seconds before he put it on screen. Enraged, the Pheema spit curses in his foreign tongue.

  “What is to stop me from revoking every credential you and your investigators hold? I will have you all sent before tribunal!”

  “What’s stopping you is the fact that I have so much dirt on the MEA that you’d never survive it going public; also, I have the most heavily armed ship within the closest eight sectors. I have forty eight heavy laser batteries trained on your headquarters right now! So, I want to know, did you call me just to exchange verbal pleasantries or were you hoping for an acknowledgement on the existence of DNIET?”