Automatic Assassin

by Marc Horne

  Chapter 21

  Two paracopters groaned away from earth. One was full of humans. The other was slaved to the first and it was full of zombie stuff.

  The full human contingent, including the princess, had left the battlefield in the paracopter. They looked down at the earth, veined with zombie trash.

  Only Sunny and Boa Morte had flown before. They were all reacting to flight in one way or the other. Most were suspiciously quiet.

  Not Gomez. He was gabbling. “Look at those zombies. They are almost beautiful. Like the blue in a blue cheese. The country is fucked up man! Looks like it is going to drop off in the Mediterranean. It’s all fucked up down there. It’s all black. The trees are…they’re crying, man. What are we doing? We don’t have a chance. It’s all over.”

  Boa Morte clamped his shoulder. “It’s only just begun.”

  “No. It’s over.”

  The air became visible. It was dark. Then black. Space was here.

  Essentially they were dead. That was the feeling that overwhelmed them. But they knew dead people could do amazing things. Not just the dead people they fought every day, but also the dead people who had done almost everything worth doing on their planet.

  The paracopters flew in a low orbit. Boa Morte was jamming attempts to track and communicate with them but he could see exactly where the fleet was, hovering over Africa.

  “Tell me the plan,” said Sunny. “The exact plan.”

  Boa Morte looked over his shoulder at her. “I’m a bit busy sweetie,” he said. Oh she was fuming now.

  Tamano stepped in. “We all need to know. We should never have got in this deathtrap without an exact plan. Plan! Now! Or I’m going to take command away from you and head back down.”

  Boa Morte swiveled around. He had a very calm look on his face. “I’m piloting two ships, you know…but…okay. This is the plan. We return these paracopters to the main space dragon. Gomez puts on that helmet and says, ‘we took major casualties but we got Boa Morte.’ I’ll be all tied up. The first paracopter goes in, then the other one. The zombies leap out and take over. We wait a few minutes then we go in too. We act like we are fighting the zombies, get to the command and control center and then we turn the fleet against itself and wreck everything. We leave a ring of death around the planet.”

  “How do we get back to Earth? How do you get off Earth? How do we stop the Horned Man from getting control of these ships and eradicating us?” asked Sunny, calmly.

  Boa Morte turned back to his controls.

  “The flow of battle is like a symphony. An unwritten symphony.”

  He saw his face reflected against the eternal night. Calm, resolute. Rather…unfamiliar?

  “That makes no sense. Tamano! Take the controls.”

  But it was too late; he had opened the com-channel and tossed a helmet over to Gomez. Everyone froze.

  “Para 10. We are getting your signal.”

  A holo head popped up just outside the space ship.

  “Oh, thanks to our space gods!” said Gomez from inside his blood-drenched helmet.

  “What was that, pilot?”

  “We got ambushed, big time. They have some kind of heavy weaponry. We need to rethink. I have a lot of wounded here. Oh, but hey we…err…we got him, we got Boa Morte!”

  “You what! You got him! Fantastic!”

  “Yes, we have him ship-board right now.”

  “Can we get a visual confirm?”

  “Oh yeah sure.”

  Gomez grabbed Boa Morte by the scruff of the neck and pulled him to where he guessed the holo was focused.

  “Got the bastard!”

  “Great. That matches the photos they took back on Belaarix. Great work. Only two ‘copters left?”

  “Yeah the others didn't make it...it was Hell.”

  “Make sure you land safely, brah.”

  Two black specks lifted out of the final haze and entered the fleet. At first the fleet looked like nothing or the thing next to nothing. Soon it was a school of floating cathedrals, with massive firepower aimed at them. Their display showed autolock symbols sliding and ticking across the copters' surfaces.

  They got closer to the main ship. They couldn't believe that they were being allowed into the command ship. Well, Boa Morte could. He knew what a treasure he was.

  The muscular silver ship began to dominate the front screen. It was money smoothed. It was sun filled.

  The console bleeped that there was a call coming in. Gomez swallowed hard and then waved his hand to accept it.

  The face of Boa Morte holographically appeared. Yes. It freaked out everybody for a second but only for a second.

  Then it totally freaked them out. “This is Xolo speaking! Restrain my body!!!”