Requiem of a Nightmare

by Jeremy Spires

  “Gilbaglian task force jumped in,” She replied, surprising me by being female. A full-face helmet is not easy for guessing gender. “Admiral Valentine moved off to engage them. We need to get moving before they get out of our range.”

  “Got it.” I said, looking at my cache of weapons. “How far off from their flagship are we?” I asked, making my decision and pulling my uniform off for my combat rated spacesuit.

  “Not far enough for comfort.” The pilot replied. “Hey, what are you doing back there, sir?”

  “Pilot, if I told you that I wanted to get aboard that flagship, what would you tell me?”

  “I would report you as insane and insist you report for medical evaluation.” She replied. “But since its you, sir, I suppose I might even be willing to fly in and engage long enough to drop you off. But I do have to wonder if you shouldn’t wait for your soldiers?”

  “They’re not coming.” I replied. “It is just me.”

  “Sir, that makes this a suicidal idea.” She paused. “Why do you want to board a Gilbaglian flagship anyways?”

  I really wanted to verify what Sparklia had told my men on that awful ammonia planet that we had just departed. And I also wanted to capture intact database information to see if I could acquire the information about the Meyges. “Information.” I replied.

  There was a long hesitation and then after a minute or two the gravity shifted slightly as we altered course. “Sir, I will comply with your request under one condition.”

  “I hardly have room to argue,” I replied, pulling my vacsuit helmet over my head and activating the oxygen recycler and the head up display. “What is it?” I asked, my voice now issuing over the communication system.

  “I’m going with you. I can simulate a crash, we can jump right before we hit the ship. Two of us have a better chance of success than just you, sir.”

  I paused. The pilot was beyond brave, I had to give her that. “Are you one of the pilots from the 160th?”

  She chuckled. “No, sir, I’m from Earth.”

  A Phelb. I was mid-swallow when he spoke, and I nearly choked on my own saliva. “Most of you want to incite some kind of rebellion.” I said calmly.

  “Yeah, well, most of them didn’t watch their parents hang for not believing in God.” She shot back.

  “Say no more.” I said. “You do the flying, I will wait for your signal.”

  “Copy that, sir. You tell Admiral Valentine what we’re doing.”

  Eh.

  I liked the idea of jumping out of a crashing shuttle more than telling my wife that I was about to do something she would consider mildly crazy.

  I’m going to spare the details of the dressing down she gave me when I contacted her. I was finally forced to falsely report that the ship was going out of range and we needed to prepare.

  “I could hear that through your helmet.” The pilot, Rosita, said as she donned her own vacsuit. “It didn’t much sound like your wife likes the idea of you doing insane things.”

  “I don’t blame her,” I said honestly. “Early in the war, I took two dropships and attacked your people on one of the Gilbaglian planets.”

  She stared at me for a moment. “We had two battalions of Marauders there.” She said.

  “Yeah, and there was a Destota there too.” I held up a hand, palm up. “What’s your point?”

  She smiled, her full red lips pulling back over her small white teeth. “That’s probably the best thing I’ve heard all year.” She pulled on her gloves and locked the collars. “We’re almost there. Anything I should know about combat drops?”

  “Yeah,” I said, pulling the saber out of its scabbard and holding it at my side. “Don’t miss.”

  The dropship began to roll, and from the camera on the exterior of the vessel I saw sparks and flames trailing from the engine pods, even as space was crisscrossed with angry red lances of energy from the particle cannons on the Vandorian ships. “Okay.” Rosita said, shaking her hands and bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Okay. I can do this.”

  I was sitting in one of the seats that lined the crew bay, sword held loosely, looking down at the floor. I sighed. “You’ve passed the point where you can turn back,” I said calmly. “Will you please sit the fuck down and relax before I hit you?”

  “You would hit a woman?” She gasped, mock surprise in her voice. She knew full well I’d probably kill her if I needed to complete the mission.

  “Unlikely,” I admitted. “But your anxiety is making it a strong temptation.”

  “I’ve never done this before, okay?” She said with exasperation.

  “I haven’t either,” I snapped, real anger creeping out. “Sit down, flight officer.” I said, pointing a gloved finger at the seat. I called up her bio signs on my HUD and slaved the information to my display. It was now my mission to keep an over eager Phelb alive as well.

  “Tell me about Vandor.” She said softly, sitting down.

  “Whatever is in the bottom of a black hole,” I said. “Is where Vandor is.”

  “I meant before the war.” She said, looking up at me. I looked across at her, my visor was opaque, and she could not see my face.

  “It was beautiful.” I replied. “Crescent City was the only real large settlement, a few smaller outlying settlements. Most of those were destroyed when the Phelbs occupied our planet. Otherwise, it was fairly quiet. We didn’t have war or famine or…really anything. Our scientists created what we needed, showed us how to live longer. We played a sport resembling what I saw as north American football when we were on Earth. And Ice hockey in the winter time.”

  She nodded, just listening.

  “We learned to live beyond other humans. We learned to be stronger, to be brave. We wandered the stars, and we built bigger and bigger ships to take us farther from home.” I hesitated. “And we were at peace. Even though we were a heavily armed people, we did not fight. Well,” I smiled as I recalled some wonderfully violent bar brawls. “Not seriously, anyways. A good brawl is always welcome in Vandorian culture. It solves disputes that would otherwise escalate.”

  “Why did you give the Phelbs your genetics?”

  I checked the countdown. We still have eight minutes on the burn before we would blow the back ramp and leap from the ‘stricken’ craft. “It was part of the peace accords. We needed more soldiers, the Phelb could provide people. But our training is too powerful for your biology, so we needed to modify it. And in return, they showed us how to make better food…and that glorious beef and pork that you still ate.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I’d heard that your people went crazy about bacon.” Another pause. “What about your wife?”

  I blinked. “What about her?”

  “Tell me about her.” She rolled one shoulder, not an easy gesture in a vacsuit. “I’ve never…I’m not…”

  Oh. Oh.

  “Yeah…” I said taking a breath. “Well, Vandor was a fairly small population. Most of us knew each other, but I’d never met Mallory before we started training. I trained with her, even though she is in the Navy, they wanted to train pilots with the Night Stalkers. So, we trained together for five years. She was one of my best friends, and still is.” I smiled slightly.

  “What about…Ivata?” She asked shyly.

  I laughed out loud. “What about him?”

  “Is he…?”

  Holy fuck, this is hilarious. She was in love with the Major.

  “Is he single?”

  “Of course, he is, what with the horrible STDs that made his hair turn white.”

  Even through her faceplate I saw her turn three shades paler. “You mean…”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess you don’t have the sense of humor that Vandorians have. We cured diseases like that a thousand years ago.” I shrugged. “We’re all a little messed up, honestly.”

  “That’s good to know. We were taught that women have no place to laugh or enjoy the company of men. Many of us were…”

  I raised a brow bu
t said nothing. I had a feeling I knew what was coming next.

  “Many of us suffered mutilations…” She began.

  “Yeah,” I said, shifting. “I know. And I think I got all the fuckers that were responsible.”

  “Most of them.” She agreed and I rose a brow.

  “Most of them?” I echoed.

  “Well, there are still a few high priests alive. They were the ones that sanctioned it.”

  I pondered this. I’d shot their Pope in the face with a high-powered rifle at less than a hundred yards and essentially vaporized him and killed all of the weird guards that he had with him, but I’d been captured and not had the chance to eliminate the rest of the Priests. Vearse thought he’d gotten them all, but he’d been killed soon after as well.

  “I will ask Wrathe to bring them forward to answer for their crimes. Were you one of…?” I asked, awkwardly.

  “No, no.” She said, waving a hand. “But many of us.”

  “I will do what I can to make sure it never happens again.” I assured her. “And Major Noku is a fine man.” The alarm blared and I rose to my feet. “Are you ready?”

  “No,” She said, rising with shaking legs. “But do I have a choice?”

  “Yeah, you could have dropped me off and gone back to the fleet.” I said, grinning. I yanked the charging handle on my rifle, checked my sniper rifle, and glanced at the rest of my equipment that I would be leaving behind.

  “Let me ask you a question.” She said, breathing raggedly. Her heart was firing like an automatic rifle.

  “Alright,” I said, watching the countdown timer count backwards from ten seconds. “Be quick.”

  “Have you ever lost?”

  “Not really,” I answered honestly and smacked the button. I grabbed her pack as the atmosphere was sucked violently out of the dropship. We flew into space, straight at the flagship. “But then again, even I have to admit that for a recon mission, this digs pretty deep in to the “fucking insane” realm of things I’ve done. Maybe the most insane.”

  My tone hadn’t changed as we launched, because it was just decompression and my suit protected me from the vacuum of space. I’d spent almost as much of my life in space as I had on ships or on planets, and it really didn’t bother me anymore.

  Flight officer Rosita Harrison, however, was screaming her face right off.

  “Will you kindly stop it?” I shouted over her screams.

  “I…It…I can’t…”

  “Just relax, it’s just space.” I said. I turned us and oriented towards our drop zone, right behind the dropship. “Look down there. That’s our target.”

  “Oh…look at that.”

  “Don’t throw up in your helmet,” I warned. “Phelb space suits don’t have a vent like ours do.”

  “I don’t think I will until we land.”

  “That’s probably for the best.” I advised as we accelerated towards the flagship. “You did arm the charges, right?”

  She turned her glove palm-up and pressed the detonator and the dropship exploded through the shields of the flagship and blew a gaping hole into the hull.

  “Well done.” I said, using my thrusters to adjust our course.

  As we dropped through the area where the shields should have been, I glanced up as we passed a view port and saw a startled Gilbaglian staring back at me. It pointed and jumped up and down, summoning a dozen more to the viewport.

  “Well,” I said.

  “Shit.” Rosita finished, pulling her rifle off the magnetic clamp and pulling the charging handle. “But why the big sniper rifle?” She asked.

  “You’d be amazed how useful a long-range weapon can be in close quarters.” I replied, plucking my saber off my belt. “But I have to admit, I thought we’d have the element of surprise. I don’t know how this is going to play out now.”

  “Craziest idea ever?” She asked. I had one arm wrapped around her, controlling her motion with my suit thrusters.

  “No, this is beyond crazy now.” I said grimly. “This appears to be a suicide mission.”

  ---

  We touched down a few moments later, lightly thanks to some handy thruster work from me. We immediately dived apart to different cover. Rosita came up with her rifle aimed and swept the room. I came to my feet with my saber in one hand and my pistol in the other.

  The doors on the edge of the compartment we’d landed in, which appeared to be a small cargo hold, slid open and five Gilbaglian defenders rushed in. I fired, but my pistol jammed open. I didn’t give it a second look, just lowered it and took three running steps forward, decapitating the leading avian with a heavy swing from the saber. I dropped to one side, taking a moment to look at my pistol. The slide had jammed halfway open, frozen by the mist from my thrusters as we traveled through space. I grunted as I came up to my feet, letting my adrenaline run through me.

  Time, as perceived by my own mind, slowed to a crawl.

  Did you ever see that kids’ movie, from Earth? Over the hedge. My wife and I watched it, the idea of movies was new and interesting, and they had selections from thousands of years ago in addition to more modern films. Anyways, in this movie, there is a squirrel, and he is hyper-active. And he drinks a high-caffeine beverage and walks around like nothing is going on while there is terror around him, with bumbling humans trying to catch the animals.

  Personally, while Mallory laughed uproariously at the film, I wondered why the humans in the animated feature did not simply bomb the small animals, but that just displays the differences in how I think.

  Anyways, that is what my adrenaline ability feels like, if I have to try and qualify it. I can use it to slow my perceptions, enhance my reactions, and even fire massive holes into the heads of high priests at point-blank range. It makes me massively strong, also.

  I paused slightly as a Gilbaglian rushed me, cocked my hand back and brought the heavy pistol down on the crown of his head. The ice broke away from the steel and before the firing pin could close in on the fifty-caliber, match-grade round, I lowered it and aimed into the face of the next alien. The pin connected, powder exploded, and a spray of blue-black blood exploded across the floor. The pistol slide completed its action and the magazine happily fed a fresh round into the now empty, if slightly dirty, chamber.

  The sound from that massive pistol was like nothing I can describe to you. It does not pop, nor does it bang. It…crashes. Like the rolling thunder of an approaching storm. The big stainless-steel firearm just sounds like…well…

  Death.

  It crashed again as I fired the second round, catching the Gilbaglian in the torso and ripping him nearly in half.

  “Let’s go,” I said, walking towards the door. “The females will keep sending the weaker males at us, lets just hope they don’t have any of the big weird ones onboard.”

  I paused, where Rosita was still aiming her rifle at the doorway.

  “Problem?” I asked.

  “You…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I move really fast, kill really good, whatever. If you want to live, lets move. Now.”

  “Colonel, I’ve never seen anything like that, you were blurry.”

  “Yeah, great, whatever, I rock. Did I mention they outnumber us around, oh, I don’t know forty thousand to two?!”

  That snapped her out of it. She jogged up behind me, rifle up. At least someone had taught her fire discipline. I spun the sword in my left hand and then dove at the doorway, coming up pressed against the wall on the far side of the opening. I tilted my helmet around the corner and a Gilbaglian scattergun fired and bit into the metal beside me.

  Well, that answers the question if there were more in the hallway, I suppose.

  I dove and rolled again, coming up in the middle of the entry. I allowed my body to produce another flood of adrenaline and fresh, angry power sang through my veins. My muscles burned with energy and I slammed my boots onto the deck as I rolled up, sending myself into a forward spring. I landed on the backs of my wrists, coming up abou
t four feet from the closest Gilbaglian, and using my sword to close the rest of the distance.

  Blue-black blood splashed into small droplets on the far wall as my blade bit into the torso and cleaved bone. The sword stopped about midway through the torso, and I yanked it free, using the momentum and throwing myself into a spin, twisting on my boot heels. The sword came around, flashed, high and low, and bisected an avian. With a plant of my left boot, I drove off into another dive, coming up on my knees.

  I locked eyes with the Gilbaglian and I saw his feathered finger clench on the rifle he held. I watched the round leave the chamber and had a moment to marvel that I was able to see a bullet coming.

  Moving the sword, I caught the round and deflected it into the bulkhead, then brought my right hand around and fired once.

  The big pistol crashed again, the massive report making the lights flicker. I rose to my feet; ichor and blood dripping from my sword, splattering my mirrored visor and across my armor.

  I rose to my full height, six feet, seven inches, and towered over the Gilbaglian. He dropped his rifle and raised his hands, cowering away from me.

  “P…please…!” He wailed in his fluting language. “Have mercy!”

  I stared down at him, holstered my pistol. My blood was singing with the massive amount of energy, even though I was dimly aware of aches in my forearms and joints because of the violence, I reached out one hand, gripped his skull.

  “Did you have mercy when you dropped my planet into a black hole?” I asked, my voice quiet and laced with malice. “Did you have mercy when you liquified our infants? Did you show mercy to any Phelb, any Vandorian?” His slit-pupiled eyes went wide, and he became deathly silent.

  “This silence speaks a million words.” I said.

  Then I squeezed and felt his skull collapse under the power of nothing more than my muscle, like no more than an eggshell. I continued to grip until his body fell away from the crown of his skull, separated from him. I threw it against the wall, where it impacted with a wet and soupy splat.

  I bent down to his body and grasped his communication device; I waved the sensors in my glove over it, hacking the device and changing its display to English. I studied the schematic of the ship.