The Crimson Deathbringer

by Sean Robins

  Kurt, pulling his goatee so hard he plucked a few facial hairs, was staring at Barook and mentally urging him to work faster when the Akaki shouted, “Got her!” and pulled his hand across the touchscreen.

  Kurt let out the breath he was holding, told Tarq, “That was close,” and turned to look at the screen showing the battle.

  Elizabeth’s last thought right before a laser bolt hit her cockpit was “Jim, I am so sorry.”

  I shouted hysterically into my mike, “What happened? Where’s she?”

  No one answered.

  Mind-numbing horror grabbed my soul and didn’t let go.

  I yelled even harder, “Where is she?”

  “Jim, I’m sorry,” answered Kurt. “We couldn’t save her. Maada got her.”

  My whole body started trembling. I clutched my chest, choking on my own breath, my world collapsing all around me. Those three words ended me. I was gone, and there was no coming back. My soul had imploded; only an empty shell was left, covered inside with a sheet of ice.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As soon as I landed, I went straight to the mess hall, indiscriminately grabbed as many bottles of alcohol I could carry, and went to our—my!—quarters. Once there, the first thing I did was take off my wedding ring and throw it at the wall. Then I started drinking.

  “Jim, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am Liz is gone,” said Cordelia. “But I don’t think killing yourself with alcohol would change that.”

  “Yes, yes. I am such a cliché,” I murmured. “Well, screw you.”

  Kurt walked in, saw my ring, picked it up and put it on the bedside table. He sat next to me, saying nothing. I stared ahead and drank, rocking slightly back and forth, trying hard to keep the tears from overflowing. Kurt moved to touch my shoulder, but I pushed his hand away. Kurt sat with me for a few hours. We barely talked. Then he stood up, picked up my gun, went to the washroom and came back holding a pair of scissors. He looked around, obviously looking for sharp objects I could kill myself with. I turned my head slightly to the left, showed him my carotid artery, and said, “I can do it with a broken bottle, you know.”

  He flinched. The agony in his eyes made me regret what I’d said for a second, but I immediately thought, Boo-fucking-hoo. Cry me a river. I’m the one who’s lost my wife, not him.

  “No, you can’t,” said Cordelia. “I’ll zap you if I see you are about to hurt yourself. You won’t die, but it’d hurt like a bitch.”

  “Zap me?” I snorted. “Who the fuck do you think you are, Zeus?”

  “Funny you should ask,” she said.

  A lightning bolt hit the sofa next to the one I was sitting on. The sofa fell over and caught fire. A single sprinkler in the ceiling became active and put the fire out.

  Kurt stared at the sofa, his mouth gaping. I didn’t react at all. Kurt asked Cordelia, “How the hell did you do that?”

  She sighed. “I’ll tell you, but don’t tell Tarq. He’ll freak out, and maybe this time he has a heart attack for real. I’m in all Winterfell systems. I can do things you can’t even dream of.”

  They were wasting their time. I had no intention of killing myself. I wanted to feel the pain.

  “It’s your fault,” said Venom. “If you hadn’t frozen and had gone back to help Keiko, the two of you might’ve defeated Maada, and Liz would be alive now. You killed her as much as Maada did. Because you’re a coward. A freak and a coward.”

  I tried to argue this wasn’t true. I was pulled out mere seconds after Keiko attacked Maada; there wasn’t enough time for me to turn back even if I’d wanted to. But it was pointless. Logic has no power over guilt.

  The thought of never seeing Liz again gave me such a heavy, leaden feeling in my chest that the mere act of breathing was difficult. I’d make myself breathe or move–just turn my head–and the action of that would flip a switch and she’d be there in my mind, showing off her flight suit, prancing like a happy child; sipping coffee in the mess hall, complaining about lack of sleep; or wearing that little grin that meant she was about to kiss me. The smell of her breath, her hair. How could she be so vivid, so right here, and be nowhere?

  My mind went around in circles as if this were a problem I could solve. I’d tell myself to stop thinking about her; it was too painful, and then I’d feel like I was suffocating, held underwater, unable to swim to the surface. All I wanted to do was to sit and drink until I died. And why not? My life had ended the moment I heard Liz was dead.

  Kurt came to sit with me every day. At some point, he stopped trying to encourage me to shave or take a shower. Matias, Samantha, and Theresa showed up, but I refused to even open my door, even though I could hear them saying we were family and should stay together at times like this. Josef didn’t get a better reception either. One evening, Tarq accompanied Kurt, and with scientific detachment explained how MICI could erase my pain. I kicked him out. Liz’s death was partly his fault anyway. If he hadn’t demoted her, she’d have been pulled out ahead of Keiko, who didn’t come to visit me even once. Bitch!

  Liz coming out of the shower, beads of water on her hand-sized breasts. Liz the night before it all started, shivering against my arm outside the club, curls blowing in my face. Liz on our honeymoon wondering what life would be like after we won the war and humanity realized the universe was full of alien life. Liz!

  Father Philip came with Kurt one night. He was wearing his black robe, showing he was there in an official capacity as a priest, not just a friend. He sat in front of me next to Kurt and told me how sorry he was for my loss and how much everyone was missing my wife. “I know you don’t really believe in God, my son, but it’s exactly in times such as this you must ask Him for help. I am certain He would listen.”

  All this did was remind me of Tarq’s prank—Liz and I in “heaven,” surprise and happiness on her face. I thought I’d never see you again.

  I rubbed my temples for a few seconds, trying to control my rising anger, then smirked and said, “Father, you think I don’t believe in God?”

  Kurt murmured under his breath, “Oh-oh!”

  I went on a rant. Words poured out of my mouth faster than I could consciously think them. “I’m a selfish man, Father. I spent most of my life caring about myself and nobody else. My only focus in life was having fun and enjoying myself, plus status and wealth. I didn’t join the air force to answer some selfless higher calling to serve my country; I just wanted to fly and blow shit up. When my best friend here asked me to join an honorable cause, I turned him down, and I even don’t really care about saving humanity from an alien invasion.”

  I paused to take a breath. “And despite all these things, I met the kindest, warmest, most amazing woman who ever walked on this planet, and she loved me, and you know what? I loved her back. Until your god took her away from me. No, Father. I absolutely believe in God, and I absolutely hate the—”

  Kurt jumped out of his seat. “Okay, time for Father Philip to go.” He pushed the priest, who looked like he was about to have a cardiac arrest, out of the door, probably saving me from eternal damnation in the process.

  Sometimes, from a dark corner of my tortured mind, a voice would whisper, blaming Liz for getting herself and almost three thousand other people killed. I’d had a good chance of stalling. All we needed was a few short minutes, and all this could’ve been avoided. If she’d controlled her impulses for once in her life . . . Of course, Maada knew very well how SFD worked. He might not have fallen for my trick, but we’d never know for sure. Maybe given that their technology was inferior to the Akakies, it took longer for their SFD to track and lock onto a target. That might’ve made him think he had time to gloat, letting us escape from right under his nose.

  But I knew what made her attack Maada. She wasn’t aware of Barook’s attempts to pull us out, and she’d come to the same conclusion I came to a bit later: The only chance we had to escape that trap was killing Maada himself. Liz, being Liz, had acted upon that conclusion as soon as she reached it
.

  I also had to deal with having three thousand pilots killed under my watch. I should’ve figured out there was a trap. A super-weapon capable of destroying an entire planet? Mushgaana and Maada had taken that straight from Star Wars. I’d been such a fool, and thousands of other people had paid the price. A better, smarter commander wouldn’t have led his people into such a clear trap.

  I didn’t even go to Liz’s memorial service. It was too much to bear.

  We should really have stayed on that Island.

  “By the way, just in case you didn’t get it, no more jokes, banter, or funny comebacks,” I told Cordelia. “My life would be a strictly DC universe from this point on.”

  Winterfell - September 7, 2048

  Feeling exhausted, Kurt sat behind the piano in his quarters. It’d been a rough few weeks. First Allen was killed. Then the pilots were massacred. And now, with Elizabeth’s death, Jim was a broken man, on the verge of either insanity or suicide. Kurt had been watching his best friend dying little by little for days now. That had taken a toll. Kurt wondered how much more of this he could take.

  Kurt had never thought anything would affect Jim this badly, even losing Elizabeth. His OCD aside, that man had a natural capacity to take things lightly, even things that were dead serious. He remembered how composed Jim was at his father’s funeral. He didn’t cry once, and he was only seventeen. Granted, he wasn’t close to his parents, but everyone wept on such occasions. Kurt himself had locked himself in a room and cried his heart out for two straight days when his father and mother were killed. Come to think of it; he’d never seen Jim shed a tear in all the years they’d been close friends. Mr. Macho Man probably considered it unmanly.

  Well, he isn’t crying now either, is he?

  The morale in Winterfell couldn’t get any lower. Right after the euphoria of their victory, Maada had sucker-punched them hard. A lot of people had just realized how desperate their situation was. Maada’s fleet outnumbered Winterfell’s by a large margin, and using MFM, the Xortaags could bring all Earth’s ex-military forces against them too, as evidenced by the two hundred thousand human soldiers now guarding SH-1.

  And with the Xortaag transportation ships bringing the first wave of colonists to earth, they had only about six more weeks left to defeat the Xortaags. How they were going to do that in such a short time was anybody’s guess. Kurt himself had no idea. Everything considered, it seemed certain they were going to lose, which would extinguish humanity’s last hope.

  Well, what else was new? It was just like the two years he was leading the Resistance with little hope of victory. The only difference was Maada was infinitely more dangerous than Zheng could ever be. At least Zheng wasn’t hell-bent on turning humanity into slaves and eventually killing them off.

  He started playing Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurenberg. Losing himself in playing classical music took his mind off of his problems and made him relax just a little bit.

  Someone knocked on his door. It was strange that anyone would just show up here without contacting him first. He got up, opened the door, and found Keiko on the other side. Her face was as calm and stoic as ever, but her eyes were red.

  “Can I come in?” she asked. “I have to show you something.”

  “Of course,” said Kurt, and moved out of her way.

  Inside the room, she gave him her PDD and played a video. “You probably know the Vipers are equipped with a camera that records everything happening during flight. This is from our attack on the Xortaags’ fleet base a few weeks ago.”

  Curious, Kurt took the PDD. The video showed an injured man shooting at Keiko’s fighter with a sidearm. Keiko’s Viper turned around and flew away.

  Somehow, Kurt immediately guessed what was going on. The blood in his veins turned to ice.

  Keiko reached over, paused and zoomed the image. Kurt found himself looking Maada’s face, leaning on the control tower’s railing, completely at Keiko’s mercy.

  The two of them stared at each other for long a moment.

  Keiko burst into tears. “It’s all my fault. I could’ve saved them all, but I didn’t. I got everyone killed!”

  She threw herself into Kurt’s arms. He reflexively put his arms around her, still trying to digest both what he’d just seen and the fact that Keiko, of all people, was crying uncontrollably. She hung on to him as if her life depended on it, her eyes flooding with tears. They stood like that for a couple of minutes, with Kurt trying to find something to say and failing. He felt an urge to somehow comfort her but had no idea how.

  All of a sudden Keiko raised her face, her lips searching for Kurt’s and finding them.

  The kiss caught Kurt by surprise, but suddenly he realized how lonely he’d been. After Janet had died in his arms in an SCTU ambush, which happened right after his parents were killed, he’d built a wall around his soul and hidden behind it. The only two people he truly cared for were Allen and Jim; one was dead, the other one slowly dying.

  You should pull away. Right now. Pull the hell away!

  Instead, for the first time in years, Kurt lost his self-control under waves of unfamiliar, intense emotions. He couldn’t deal with his mental anguish alone anymore. He kissed Keiko back. Her body loosened. Kurt loved the way her small body melt into his. For a short time, the two of them forgot the misery surrounding them, lost in each other’s arms.

  Winterfell - September 8, 2048

  Tarq covered his eyes with his hands and put his head on his desk, holographic tears running down his cheek. He had bitten his fingertips so hard now there were tiny bloodstains all over his white clothes.

  Victory seemed at hand just a few short weeks ago, with the first phase of Operation Free Earth a complete success. The Xortaags had never tasted such a terrible defeat in their entire history. It had happened with such ease Tarq was confident that with humans he had found the Xortaags’ match. He was certain the second phase would end Maada and Mushgaana’s reign for good.

  And then Maada had ruined their plans for the second phase by using humans to defend SH-1 and destroyed a third of their fleet along with their most experienced pilots.

  With twenty million Xortaags and ten thousand more Deathbringers so close to Earth, Tarq knew he had lost. Everything he had done in the past few months was for nothing. All those humans who perished had died for no good reason. Worst of all, Mushgaana had decided to go straight to Kanoor as soon as Earth was dealt with, which spelled the end for his species. Tarq had sentenced not one, but two species to extinction.

  His despair kept building until he felt he was about to explode. His hearts started beating faster. He pressed his lips together and swallowed down his frustration. If Maada were there right now, Tarq would have happily chewed on his neck until his head was separated from his body.

  I have doomed us all, my own people and the humans. The greatest strategist the universe has ever known, my feet! And all four of them!

  His hands were moving towards his antennae when the door to his office opened and Barook rushed in, out of breath. Tarq looked at his burning red cheeks, so human-looking, and not for the first time marveled at his species’ technological and scientific advances. Barook was so excited he nearly tripped over his own feet. He waved a plastic bag in the air and yelled, “Commander, you have got to see this!”

  Tarq saw a USB drive inside the plastic bag.

  “Why are you carrying a USB drive inside a plastic bag?” asked Tarq.

  When he found out, he wished he did not know.

  SH-1 - September 9. 2048

  Sipping his coffee, Maada was sitting in Mushgaana’s office, reading the reports on the ongoing search to find the enemy fleet’s base. Using the Voice of God, they had made humans search their own planet looking for the enemy, but they had found nothing yet.

  Mushgaana was pacing around his office in deep thought. Maada asked him, “If you wanted to build a fleet base on Earth to fight us, where would you build it?”

  Mushgaa
na shrugged. “In a cold place, to minimize the chance of us finding the base by accident.”

  “My thought exactly.”

  “I must point out this is simply a conjecture,” said Mushgaana. “They could be under the sea or inside a mountain. They could even be on an invisible carrier ship, for all we know.”

  “There is no way to hide a ship big enough to carry several thousand space fighters and soldiers, even for the Akakies,” said Maada, “and if they could do it, they would come at us with all their fleet and hit both our fleet bases at the same time. No. I am certain they have a base somewhere on Earth, and we have already seen the maximum strength of their fleet. At this point, a conjecture is better than nothing, and it is not like we have to spend any time or energy doing it ourselves.”

  He brought up a holographic image of Earth. “There are plenty of cold places to search. North Pole, Antarctica, Siberia, and look at this.”

  “What?”

  The general pointed at the globe. “There is a frozen wasteland called Canada right next to City of God.”

  “That is just a coincidence,” said Mushgaana. “There is no way for the humans to know we were planning to build a fleet base there.”

  “There is no way for them to do any of the things they have done, but when did that ever stop them?”

  “Good point,” said Mushgaana. “Have the humans go over this place, as well as the other cold places on Earth, with a fine-tooth comb, as they put it.”

  “Why would the humans use a comb to search through ice and snow?” asked Maada.

  Mushgaana looked at him sideways. “Did you just crack a joke?”

  “Maybe,” said Maada, his face impassive.