Pax Omega

by Ewing, Al

  STANDARTENFÜHRER ACKERMANN TURNED white, then purple. For a moment, the scream was trapped in his throat, as if locked there by the angry vein pulsing at the side of his neck.

  When El Sombra landed on one of his men, sword first – the point slicing vertically down his belly, spilling his guts out onto the floor in a pool of blood and bile – the scream finally burst free.

  “Kill him! Kill the American!”

  El Sombra grinned, turning in a circle, facing each of the SS troops in turn as they closed around him, guns drawn.

  “Who are you calling American, amigo?”

  He darted forward, kicking one man backwards and stabbing another through the heart as the bullets began to fly.

  “God damn it!” Jack Scorpio cursed, leaping after the masked man. “Reed – stay where you are! Savate – with me!”

  Savate vaulted the balcony and immediately went to work, dispensing lightning kicks to soft tissue and vulnerable bones, crushing windpipes with the ball of his foot, snapping necks, driving nasal cartilage deep into brain tissue. Scorpio spun around in a circle, the Magnum exploding with brutal thunderclaps as it spewed chunks of hard metal that fragmented on impact, blowing great, ragged holes in what had once been men. The stormtroopers outnumbered them ten to one, and there seemed to be always more arriving, rushing in from every corner of the castle, converging on the slaughter until the floor around the chattering arrays was awash in gore, and the whole room seemed to have become a storm of bodies and blood, an infinitely complex chess match with every move carried out at the speed of a bullet.

  And in the eye of the storm, there was El Sombra.

  He was in his element now.

  He was no longer part of Jack Scorpio’s elite team. He was no longer part of any human structure. He was a creature of vengeance, without ties to man or country.

  El Sombra had spent the past four years trying to force himself to fit in, to align his war with America’s. He’d mistakenly thought they were the same conflict. But there was one vital difference.

  Someday, America’s war would be over.

  Herr Doktor Diederich, meanwhile, continued to flip switches, the sweat trickling down his face as he tried to ignore the bloody battle going on all around him. A bullet whined past his ear, breaking the handle off one of the levers a second before he reached for it. He grabbed hold of the jagged metal left behind, cutting his palm open as he pulled it down. He had very little choice but to carry on.

  In a gun battle, he could be killed. That was a risk he understood. But if he left the experiment half-finished, there was a risk of worse. Some terrible combination of death and undeath, perhaps – frozen in time for eternity, or stretched across millenia, screaming in agony for thousands upon thousands of years...

  What on earth had possessed him to play with the fabric of time like this? How much of this had been his own idea, and how much was Hawthorne? He racked his brain to think of any part of the process that had not been subtly suggested by the Englishman – and nothing came.

  Mein Gott, who was working for who all this time?

  There was no time for such thoughts now. This was the fatal moment. He threw the last switch, and prayed.

  The metal dais began to spark and crackle with strange blue-white energy, the pure cavorite layered into it glowing and pulsing with its own mysterious forces. Diederich closed his eyes and winced, and then the glow of the dais stabilised to a steady, throbbing pulse.

  “I’ve... I’ve done it!” Diederich smiled, suddenly delighted. “It’s begun! It can’t be stopped now! Oh, this is a marvellous day! Hawthorne was right – the armies of the Reich will double in size, and the Americans will be –” He turned in mid-flow, to look at the formidable armies of the Reich.

  They were all dead.

  El Sombra, Savate and Jack Scorpio stood amidst a sea of corpses. Standartenführer Ackermann was still barely alive, on his knees with El Sombra’s blade sticking through his throat. As Diederich watched, he coughed up a thick wad of blood, and then his eyes rolled back in his head and he slipped backwards off the sword, slumping to the floor.

  “Ah, well. It seems the human error has defeated us after all, ja?” Diederich smiled ruefully. Then Jack Scorpio put a Magnum bullet through his brain.

  With the last of the bastards dead, El Sombra found his eyes drawn to the dais. Slowly, a column of blue light was rising up from the centre.

  “So,” he said softly, “I guess this is some big science, huh?”

  “You guess right.” Reed said from the balcony, “And if you think I’m coming down there, you’re crazier than I thought. It’s Scorpio’s job now.”

  El Sombra frowned. “Your job, amigo? Here I thought it was a team effort. What haven’t you been telling us?”

  Jack Scorpio shook his head. “What you didn’t need to know. The Yankee Bravo mission is over. The S.T.E.A.M. mission starts right here, and if you interfere with it, I will kill you. I’m working on a scale you can’t possibly understand, and you just proved you can’t handle it.” He shot El Sombra an angry look. “I’d take a step back if I were you.”

  El Sombra didn’t move.

  Inside the column of blue light rising from the dais, there was a man. He was indistinct – barely visible – but he seemed to be dressed in some sort of duster coat and what could only be a cowboy hat. In one hand, he was carrying a stone – a large, blue, glowing gem that was the only distinct thing about him, almost as if it was the only part of the strange scene that was real.

  He had something else in his other hand, but El Sombra couldn’t make it out.

  Scorpio aimed his gun.

  “Drop the rock.”

  The man in the blue column turned to face Scorpio. He seemed to be moving at half speed, as if the blue light had the consistency of molasses.

  Scorpio spoke slowly and carefully, as if taking this into account. “This is your only warning. The bullet in this gun is made from the same copper, zinc and cavorite structure as the dais under your feet – the one that drew you here. It’s an Omega bullet, and make no mistake, it will kill you whether you’ve materialised fully or not. So either way, you’re going to give us the rock.”

  El Sombra looked around at Savate. “What is this?”

  “I could tell you, mon ami,” Savate whispered, “but zen I would ’ave to keel you. Comprendez-vous?”

  Reed grinned, up on the balcony. “It’s the man from the mesa, ‘amigo.’ The Keeper of the Stone. You’re watching the future happen.”

  “Last chance, pilgrim,” Scorpio barked, and pulled back the hammer. “I want the stone. Drop it and kick it over to me – now – or I’ll sh –”

  The figure in the blue column of light moved, and El Sombra heard what sounded like a gunshot, slowed down to half speed, and then Jack Scorpio staggered back and fell to the floor, with a neat round hole in the dead centre of his forehead.

  Even at half normal speed, a bullet was still a bullet.

  And Jacob Steele, the Lonesome Rider of Time, was still the best shot there had ever been.

  El Sombra stared at Scorpio’s body, then up at Steele. The Lonesome Rider slowly reached up to touch his hat-brim, then faded away, as though absorbed into the swirling energies whence he’d come.

  For the first and last time, El Sombra saluted.

  “No,” Reed croaked, his voice hoarse. “Bring him back. Bring him back! Without the Stone –”

  He never finished his sentence. With a tremendous crash, the King Tiger smashed right through the wall and rolled over the bank of levers, and the column of blue winked out for good.

  “I’VE BEEN ACCUSED of acts of treason against the United States, and that’s probably true.” Reed smiled genially, lifting up the handcuffs he wore. “I mean, as a covert agent of S.T.E.A.M. I definitely took part in missions that didn’t line up with the goals of the war. We were playing the long game – Jack Scorpio, Savate and myself, I mean. Thinking about America’s interests, post-war. The world’s
interests.” He looked up to the military policeman standing at his elbow. “Where did Savate vanish to, anyway? Does anyone know? Oh, well, I’m sure he’ll turn up where you least expect him.”

  On the other side of the one-way glass, General Zitron listened carefully, making notes. He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d still be a General come the morning. The Yodelling Bastards had pulled the wool over his eyes, and S.T.E.A.M. before them. In fact, he’d been played for a sucker since the days of his liasons with the Fourth Earth Batallion. And before them... what? Who had Jack Scorpio been before he studied under Channon? What had Reed been up to before he joined Yankee Bravo Seven?

  What did S.T.E.A.M. look like when all the masks were off?

  “Quite often, the goals of S.T.E.A.M. and the goals of the country were the same. Take Hawthorne, for instance. He was one of ours – a triple agent – and it was his job to persuade the Nazis to build his time platform, thus wasting incredible quantities of rare cavorite on something that would have benefited us rather than them, if it benefited anyone at all. Enough cavorite for eight hundred wing-packs, squandered. Not to mention all those logic arrays – crushed under Marlene’s new toy.” He grinned. “You’ll find over the next few months the Luftwaffe become rather easier to handle, and robot production in the Fatherland takes a significant dip. Just watch out for Fortress Berlin, that’s all.” He chuckled dryly. “You did know about that?”

  Zitron leaned forward and picked up the speaking-tube in front of him. “If Hawthorne was one of ours... or rather yours...”

  “Why did he decide to warn the Nazis about the ‘rescue mission’? Well, he did resent our intrusion into his life; we were more than a little heavy-handed about recruiting him, but you have to understand what a prize he was for our side.” He smiled enigmatically. Zitron sighed, wondering what our side meant this time.

  Reed continued, frowning. “I have to assume, based on the evidence, that he wanted to claim the Stone for himself, and we showed up ahead of his schedule. He must have found out what it really was...”

  The General sighed again. “What was the Stone, Doctor Reed?” Reed considered the question for a moment, as if he wasn’t quite certain himself.

  “I won’t go into the science. I’ll just say that if I’m right – and I am – the Stone is a potentially limitless energy source for mankind. If the Devil’s Eye Incident is even half true, we’re looking at an infinite supply of cavorite at the very least. The very least.” He took a breath. He was getting excited. “We’d better hope we can find someone else as clever as Hawthorne someday. I mean, that was a man who made me look like... well, like you. Too bad we broke him.”He grinned again, and there was something deeply unpleasant in it.

  The President sighed, rubbing his temple. “Let me see if I understand this. The Yodelling Bastards were sent in to Castle Abendsen to foil a plot that S.T.E.A.M. had generated and fed to the Nazis in the first place?”

  Reed smiled sadly. “They had the technology, we didn’t. The plan – in terms you morons can understand – was to let them do all the heavy work, then extract Hawthorne and the Stone. Except Hawthorne had other plans, and in the end so did the Keeper of the Stone. So there we have it.” He smiled. “Look on the bright side, though – our little plot managed to cripple the German war effort – not to mention stealing the legendary King Tiger and piloting it back to Italy, thanks to the lovely Marlene. In a saner world, I’d be getting some kind of medal.” He shrugged. “Instead, I’m in prison for life. There’s gratitude.”

  General Zitron leaned forward. “One more question.” It was a lie. He had so many questions – who the hell was Jack Scorpio anyway? Did I ever really know him at all? Did anyone? He restricted himself to the relevant one. “If the Stone was as important as you say, why didn’t Jack Scorpio shoot?”

  Reed shrugged. “Some problem with cold-blooded murder, I imagine. I wouldn’t worry.” He grinned that unpleasant little grin again. “We’ll fix it on the next attempt.”

  “SO WHAT NOW?”

  Marlene drank the remains of her white wine and looked over at El Sombra. “Now? We all go our separate ways. Reed’s in custody for being too sly a spy, poor Jack’s dead, Savate’s vanished – I’ve a nasty feeling he’s switched sides again – and you’ve quit the team. That doesn’t leave me much to work with, even if I wanted to lead.”

  El Sombra shrugged. “You four guys did pretty good. America’s got the King Tiger now, thanks to you. Makes for a lot of dead bastards.”

  “Well, we’re breaking up the band anyway. Mike’s a full-time medic now, Lev’s back in the Navy despite his little problem...” – she hesitated, and El Sombra detected the barest hint of a blush – “...and... Johnny and me are taking one of the new USSA Tigers for a bit of a working holiday, as soon as it’s built. I hear deep behind enemy lines is lovely this time of year.”

  El Sombra raised an eyebrow. “You and Johnny, huh?”

  Marlene smirked. “He is awfully good at pulling my triggers.”

  “I’m not touching that one.” He smiled and shrugged, nursing his own cerveza. “You know... I always figured there was a chance...”

  “Oh, I still haven’t forgiven you for killing my car back in New York.” She mock-pouted prettily as the barman brought another round. “But if I ever do, I know exactly where to find you, don’t I?”

  El Sombra nodded grimly. “Six more months. Then I’ll have my hands at his throat. I’ve wasted enough time.”

  “Six months? As long as that?”

  “Make it three. It’s not like he’ll be hard to find, right?”

  He grinned.

  “How long could it take?”

  THE LAST ENEMY

  SEVEN YEARS.

  Djego stared at himself in the mirror above the bar and listlessly sipped his schnapps, counting the lines around his eyes and the flecks of white in his black hair.

  The back of his head still itched occasionally where the knot of his mask had rested, even after all this time, but it was barely noticeable – phantom pain from a severed limb. Sometimes, during the night, the memories would return and haunt him – bullets slamming into wedding-guests, tearing flesh and bone asunder, his brother’s eyes accusing him before the light left them; but upon waking, he felt a vague sadness and nothing more. His muscle definition had softened and he was developing a slight but noticeable gut, although the days he spent gardening kept him in reasonable shape.

  El Sombra had been gone for seven years now.

  He took another sip of schnapps, and turned to look through the bar window. Over the tops of the houses, he could just about make out the polished glitter of the Berlin Wall.

  Bastard City, part of him thought, but did not emerge into the light of his mind. He nodded. Yes, Bastard City.

  Fortress Berlin.

  He stared for a moment, trying to dredge up some emotion, but nothing came. A vague feeling of pity, perhaps, for the poor souls trapped there. No more than that.

  After a moment, he shook his head and returned his gaze to the drink in his hand, and his thoughts lingered on his brother’s sword.

  He still had it, on top of his cabinet, wrapped in newspaper, and it was as sharp as it ever was. He remembered the weight of it in his grip, the feel of the sword-hilt in his hand, the little push of resistance as it cut through flesh and bone. The adrenaline rush of the kill. Those times he’d had it taken from him, it had felt like losing an arm, or an eye, or some part of his soul.

  And now it rested on the battered oak cabinet in the room he paid for with gardening work on the outskirts of Brandenburg. Wrapped in newspaper.

  He still had a scrap of the mask, for what it was worth. He kept it in his pocket, like an alcoholic’s badge of sobriety.

  Coincidentally, it had been seven years since the first time El Sombra drank.

  HE REMEMBERED VIVIDLY that first and last drink with Marlene, although it was El Sombra who’d sat there, not him. She’d been talking about her plans for t
he USSA version of the King Tiger that was being built for her – the Sherman Wildcat, they were calling it, a little sleeker than the German design, with better treads, and the standard .88-calibre machine-guns at the side replaced with the American multi-ammo model; still, it was very much the same beast. It wouldn’t automatically win against a Tiger, but it’d even the odds, especially with Marlene at the controls and Johnny Wolf manning the guns. He’d almost wished he could have gone with them, but experience had taught El Sombra that he worked best alone, and it wasn’t that much of a walk to Berlin. As Marlene had pointed out, behind enemy lines was lovely that time of year.

  Unless you walked into a full-scale battle between Wildcats and Tigers, of course.

  It was two weeks after he’d set out. He’d been ambling, taking his time, killing as many of the bastards as he could. He’d returned to the Luftwaffe base he’d visited with the Yankee Bravo team, catching them in the act of rebuilding. He’d killed the replacement ground crew, then the new squadron as they landed; it was nice to know that he could pull something like that off on his own, and he celebrated by blowing up the newly-rebuilt officer’s mess. Perhaps the Luftwaffe would decide that particular area was bad luck.

  He’d swaggered five miles north, ducking through the forests, killing the occasional sentry, feeling pleased with himself – and then he’d heard the first explosions, and the roar of the great steam engines. Over the next hill, he’d seen it – three King Tigers together, an unimaginable force. Presumably the Führer had decided, in the face of the new competition from the Americans, to group them together instead of spreading them out, and sent them south to take on the Wildcats as they were sent out from the Italian and French borders. Right now the three Tigers were chasing two of the Wildcats straight towards him, and all five of the tanks were exchanging fire – massive explosions of gunpowder, dynamite and peroxide, and great sprays of .88-calibre fire and dum-dum rounds. El Sombra turned to run back down the hill for the relative safety of the forest –and then one of the Tigers had missed its target and the shell had exploded close enough to send him flying through the air in a shower of mud and his own blood. He’d had just enough time to register that his mask had somehow come off in the blast, and then he’d passed out.