Forever Series 5: The Forever Alliance

by Craig Robertson

  He lowered five digits.

  “The rest of us took out five ships with the membranes. That leaves two unaccounted for. Those are the ones that departed the battlefield so quickly.”

  “Maybe they learned their lesson and went back where they came from, tails between their legs, assuming they have legs and tails,” I said with little conviction.

  “Someone wise once told me, ʽHope for the best but prepare for the worst.’”

  I put a finger to my chest. “Wasn’t that me who said that to you?”

  “Yes, I’ve promoted you to being wise. Now become the role.” He smiled.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. We’ll plan the elimination of those last two slackers. We’ll make them wish they’d never been born.”

  “Assuming they were actually born.” Yibitriander raised a palm to Kayla, who high-fived him back.

  I got no respect.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Waiting to see if one sixth of the enemy’s original numbers were still sufficient to destroy the universe was not easy. By my way of thinking, if as few as twelve could do it, two stood a darn good chance. I mean, it wasn’t like they had to pedal a bicycle built for twelve. We still had no real idea how they erased universes. The void material was handy, but not in and of itself good for much beyond cover. They rounded up sentients for consumption, but as gross as that was, it didn’t explain the end of times aspect of their coming.

  Maybe, just maybe, they were all thunder and lightning but no rain. It could be they were rumored to eat souls and end universes to build their reputation, you know, scare little children. But, that wasn’t a thing to count on. Sometimes the dude with the most bad-ass reputation really was the biggest badass. Unfortunately, I knew I’d find out which it was soon enough. Even if they licked their wounds for a thousand years, I was going nowhere. I’d have to face them. As always, good thing I was a fighter pilot. In battle, we never worried about what came later than ten seconds from the present. I’d labored long and hard to seamlessly apply that principle to life in general. Short-attention-span theater was designed for my type.

  The more the status of the Churell stabilized, the more time Colin Winchester felt he could vex us with training and briefings. He nagged at us like a bitter ex-father-in-law. Trust me, of this I speak with regrettable authority. My first wife’s dad hated me the first time he met me, and our relationship plummeted from there. Colin was the only person who felt perfectly comfortable calling me day or night to discuss insignificant details of this, that, or the other. He felt that as group’s vice commander, I should “pull my full weight in the day-to-day operations of my unit.”

  The hell I should. I was only associating with the other pilots because I was no longer the only android with a cube. It was logical that we worked together. But I hadn’t needed Colin-level structure for hundreds of years, and I didn’t need it now. The problem was that the other pilots were so stoked to have their own miracle ships that they hadn’t developed my distaste for organizational zealots. But whenever I got in a particularly pissy mood, I pictured what Kayla would say to me about being an adult. Reluctantly, I’d hold my tongue.

  A month went by with no sign of the Last Nightmare. Everybody was getting edgy. When you know it’s coming, you’d rather it just come. Standing on tiptoes and waiting was hard. I went to visit Kymee, ostensibly for any technical updates he might have. Really, I simply wanted a break in the monotonous tension. I arrived at his workshop to find Yibitriander and Oxisanna there too. They seemed to be visiting socially, as opposed to being there for help with something technical.

  “Jon,” said Kymee as he saw me enter. “Good to see you.”

  I bumped shoulders with the three of them.

  “Nice to see you all too,” I replied. I’d met Oxisanna a couple of times since the battle and was getting to know her a little by then.

  “So, what brings you?” asked Kymee.

  “Does a friend need a reason to visit a friend?” I asked.

  “No, but you usually do,” responded Yibitriander.

  We all chuckled.

  “I really just needed to get away,” I said.

  “General Winchester’s having you wear a uniform and march in formation. Getting to the independent minded pilot?” asked Kymee.

  “No, I love parading around like a stuffed peacock and swinging a big gun.”

  “Men,” said Oxisanna. “Some aspects are universal.”

  “I especially like listening to him go on and on about the supply chain, top-down communications, and the importance of a highly-polished pair of boots.”

  “I’ll just bet you do,” sniped Yibitriander. “You know what, if you like it that much, maybe I could teach you to march Deavoriath style. I used to be quite the drill master.”

  “Yeah, like I need to learn a three-legged march. No, I think I’ll pass.”

  “How are the kids?” asked Kymee.

  “Great. You know, I think Oowaoa could stand a few new bundles of joy. You guys are dropping behind badly.

  “One step at a time. We’re only crawling out of our shells. Give us time,” replied Kymee.

  “When you talk about time, I hear another million years,” I teased back.

  “One step at…”

  Kymee stopped speaking. That caught Oxisanna’s and Yibitriander’s attention. She had been whispering something to him, so they’d been distracted.

  “What?” asked Yibitriander.

  Kymee pointed to nothing, right where Jon had been sitting.

  “Where’s Jon?” asked Yibitriander, his voice rising in concern.

  “He’s not there. He was there, and I was speaking to him. Now, there’s nothing there.”

  “You mean he’s gone?” asked Oxisanna.

  “No, look. There’s nothing there.”

  “Just a void,” said Yibitriander.

  And then the nothingness faded and the spot where Jon had been was unoccupied.

  Kymee’s consciousness swept the planet.

  “He’s gone. Wrath is quietly parked, and Jon is not here,” said Kymee in disbelief.

  “I fear the Last Nightmare has taken him,” said Yibitriander coolly.

  “But where?” asked Oxisanna.

  “We don’t know yet, but I suspect the Neverwhere,” responded Kymee. “I’ll be in my lab. I must locate him fast if we’re to rescue him alive.”

  “I’ll alert Alexis Gore,” said Yibitriander.

  “I'll be with his wife,” said Oxisanna as she jogged to her vortex.

  I was listening to Kymee. He was saying something about kids, I think. Then I became very dizzy, which is impossible. After a second, existence vanished. Nothing was, I looked and saw nothing. It only took a second to realize who was to blame. Where there’s truly nothing, there had to be the Last Nightmare. It was their signature. A couple moments later, I felt different, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what had changed. For better or worse, the nothingness that was faded. I was in a vast featureless plane stretching out as far as I could see. It was like the grayness extended to infinity in every direction.

  There were no sounds. I quickly determined there was enough atmosphere to carry sound waves. There was simply nothing producing any noise. It was very cold, maybe a hundred degrees below zero. Nothing moved, and there were no structures or ships, not even rocks. Nothing. What an uninteresting rabbit hole I’d fallen into. Dull homogeneous illumination came from no obvious source. The smell was remarkable in that even with my keen sense, the was no smell.

  The absence of an obvious threat did nothing to assure me. I was in deep, deep shit. I assumed my captors were toying with me. I would state for the record that I hated being a mouse to anyone’s cat. I scanned as much as I could and still detected nothing. Big surprise, right? I tried to attach my probes to something to analyze it but they wouldn’t stick to anything. For lack of a better plan, I started walking, choosing a random direction. The surface was partly obscured by mist, but it felt l
ike I was stepping on coarse sandpaper.

  After a few steps, a voice from nowhere said, “Don’t go that way. If you do, you will die.”

  Okay, his house, his rules. I turned right and took a few steps.

  “No, no. Not that way either. If you do, you will die,” said the hissy, quiet voice.

  I decided to humor the SOB a little more and turned one hundred eighty degrees and took a step.

  “Ah-ah, not that way. If you do, you will die.”

  That voice was flipping annoying. I walked in the only direction I hadn’t.

  “Tsk-tsk, no. If you go that way, you will surely perish,” the voice said joyously.

  I threw my arms up. “Which way can I go that I won’t die, dude?”

  “There isn’t one. Anywhere you go, I shall slay you.”

  “You’re a lousy host. I hope you know that, weirdo.”

  “I so love bravado, General Jonathan Ryan. Ask me why I do.”

  Fuck him. I crossed my arms and angled my body to one side. Wasn’t going to say a word.

  “Oh, defiance. I love that almost as much. As the feline has your tongue, I’ll share my secret. I love those qualities because when I break you and you beg for death, they will be gone. I will have snuffed them out, tough guy.”

  “Do you have a bathroom here?”

  “Wh…what? No.”

  “I have to tell you you’re scaring the piss out of me, and I’d rather have a toilet handy than mess up a clean uniform.”

  I felt the force of a semi-truck strike me from behind. Wham. I face planted.

  “With the next words that displease me, I shall begin removing body parts,” said my most unfriendly ghost host.

  “Let me have a look at you, so I can tell you which one you should remove first.”

  In retrospect, it was not as clever a request as it seemed. At first, I just heard a crinkly sound, like cellophane balling up. Then I heard and felt a rumbling. Then I saw the Last Nightmare. C-r-a-p, crap. As I watched, he grew from a meter tall. He unfolded as he rose, expanding. He was a dragon, a golden-scaled, monstrous beast. His hide sprouted iron-like plates with sharp, ragged edges. One massive central head dominated two small ones to either side. His four tremendous arms ended in paws with talons the size of samurai swords that were just as sharp. When he eventually stopped growing, he was thirty meters tall and almost as wide. Dude must have weighed ten tons.

  He was scary, and I was scared. I’d never seen anything so horrific…uh, not even in a nightmare.

  I smelled a rat. How could something that big have escaped my prior notice? It couldn’t. I had to acknowledge he could be a shapeshifter. I’d never heard of such a thing, but there were a lot in popular sci-fi. I know, not the most reliable source of crisis information, but it did pop into my head. But, on the other hand, if he was a shifter, where was the mass coming from? Tiny to fifteen tons? Nah, not reasonable. Shapeshifter was off the list.

  Okay, I tried an experiment. I used my laser finger to try and slice the tip off a talon. Nothing.

  Man, I was tired of nothing.

  Either my terawatt laser wasn’t strong enough, or that wasn’t really a claw. I balked at experiment two, seeing if he could slice me into thin ribbons. But, he seemed to want to toy with me, so he probably wouldn’t kill me quickly.

  Talk about standing on shaky ground.

  One probe fiber, wrap up that talon.

  The fiber shot over and encircled its target.

  What are you?

  More nothing. I got no readings.

  Pull at the talon.

  Finally, something. The fiber was cut in half. Nothing anywhere had been able to damage the command prerogative fibers, but this bozo cut it like a hot knife through butter.

  What was I seeing? The talon couldn’t be cut, but it could cut. That made no sense. I hated things that made no sense when I was about to die.

  “You are the ugliest creature I’ve ever seen. It is actually impossible for you to be as ugly as you are.”

  Taunting was always a good way to distract an enemy. It was also an excellent way to further piss them off, sort of a two-edged sword.

  “You asked to see me. Now fear me,” he thundered.

  “Just for the record, are you Des-al or the other Last Nightmare I haven’t killed yet?”

  That caught his attention.

  “You know my name? Little being, how is that possible? Your species has never experienced the Last Nightmare. We have never visited this universe.”

  “Ah, it’s the smell. Everybody knows you guys stink.”

  “Arrr-ah.” he screamed as he impaled one set of talons a foot into the ground right next to me.

  “Your species knows about baths, right? Have you ever considered taking one?”

  Bam, bam, bam. A series of massive paws struck closer and closer. I think he was trying to frighten me. He was doing a good job. Des-al was a real pro.

  “I only wish you had a soul, tin man. I would rip it from you where you stand and consume it with…”

  “Ketchup.”

  He actually stopped waving his arms around and howling and looked at me.

  “What?” he asked.

  “If you eat my soul, try it with ketchup. You know, like french fries. Yum.”

  “Little machine, you’re insane. Your mind is so out of sync with reality.”

  I motioned around in general. “You call this reality?

  Hey, I had no idea where this was going, but I wanted to try and keep him unfocused, if possible. When in doubt, go to your strong suit. Mine was being annoying.

  “Of course, this is reality. It’s the Neverwhere,” he said defensively.

  “I think it’s a lot like you. It stinks.”

  Bam, bam, bam. Another round of talon impaling. The difference was that if I hadn’t hopped around like a chicken, he’d have landed a blow on me.

  “Where’s your playmate?” I yelled, as I dodged another swipe. “I’d hate to kill you separately. I’m kind of pressed for time.”

  “Arr-ahh-yah.” he wailed as all four arms flew at me.

  I had him right where I wanted him. Pissed. Now, if I only had part two of my plan, he’d have been in real trouble.

  “Where is he?” I yelled. “Hate your smell as much as I do?”

  “No,” he shouted with one blow. “I killed her for her cowardice,” he said with another.

  “Thank you. I hate wasting time killing you guys. It’s so easy I worry I might fall asleep in the process and miss out on the fun.”

  Wow, that got him extra mad. His immense tail with spikes thudded the ground by my foot.

  I rolled away.

  “I will eat your metal parts, insignificant toy,” he raged.

  “What do I care? If I’m dead, you can make a transistor radio out of me for all I care.”

  Wham. Paw, tail, paw.

  Come to think of it, he wasn’t very accurate with his bodily weapons. What was that trying to tell me? What advantage…

  “Des-al, ender of worlds, I would address you,” challenged a confident voice.

  In a parity of a trained act, we both stood straight up and looked to where the voice came from.

  No way. That was my first, second, and third thought. It was Yibitriander. He stood twenty meters in front of Wrath. I’d say he was walking toward us, but his gait was all wrong. He stepped easily enough on two of his legs, but the third was only a stiff crutch to the back of him. I’d never seen a Deavoriath walk like that. This Neverwhere just kept getting weirder and weirder.

  “You cannot be here, Deavoriath scum,” protested Des-al.

  “Yet here I stand, lizard.”

  Why was Yib wearing a large backpack? I’d never seen anyone on Oowaoa with a hiking knapsack before. I was mightily confused.

  “At least I may feast on a living soul, fool. Thank you for coming. Killing this Cretan has worked up a powerful appetite,” mocked Des-al.

  “You have killed your last victim. I will
end the Last Nightmare here and now.”

  Yibitriander continued to stagger forward. What was with him? He was just fine when I left him.

  “Stop where you are. I will deal with you after I have turned this mechanical nuisance off.”

  “Do not give me orders, inferior. I will do and say what I please.”

  Along with a limp, Yibitriander had developed a really bad case of corny speak.

  Des-al slapped his impressive tail in front of Yibitriander. Oddly—what else was new in the Neverwhere—Yibitriander didn’t stop. He angled around it, advancing with awkward jerks.

  “I will sip your essence at my leisure.” Des-al set his tail on the ground in a loop around Yibitriander.

  “Looks like this is as close as I get,” Yibitriander said to I had no idea who. He turned to me. “Catch.”

  Yibitriander hurled the big pack at me. I caught it easily but was surprised by its heft.

  “Now,” yelled Yibitriander.

  In my head, I heard Captain, stand still and trust me. We think this might work.

  Al? What might…

  Instantly, the world went blank. It took a second, but then I realized I was in a small full membrane.

  Al, what in the…

  I didn’t need to finish my thought to have a good guess what was happening. The force of a thousand stampedes rushed past the tiny sphere that protected me. I was shaken like I was in a blender, and the noise was deafening.

  Al, did he just set off an infinity charge?

  Yes, Captain. We’re sort of hopeful this will work.

  Sort of hopeful? You couldn’t do better than sort of hopeful?

  You left without warning. On such short notice, we had to wing it.

  Wing it? I wing it. Yibitriander doesn’t wing things. You don’t wing things.

  Like I said, you gave us little time.

  I didn’t kidnap myself. How could I serve proper notice?

  Please don’t change the subject. And be silent for once. I’m listening.

  Listening for what?

  I knew you couldn’t do it. You couldn’t just once shut up when I ask. We’re in the middle of a crisis here. Had you not noticed?

  Al…