Chapter 58
Alex stalked through the impeccably sterile corridors of the Cur with his gun at a low ready. He and his few men had gone aft, hoping to intercept Land as he made his way forward.
Alex paused at the corner of the corridor and spoke to his men, "Alright, so we know that Land is armed and that he somehow took out two guards armed with top-of-the-line weaponry. Nonetheless, we aim to arrest him first and kill him second. No matter his crimes are, he will pay for them in a civilized manner if we can help it." Alex and his men turned the corner and proceeded down the next corridor. Land. He's the one who ordered my family killed, he's the reason for all of this… He'll pay for his crimes, even if its the last thing I do. Alex's knuckles whitened against the grip of his shotgun, but then he heard it: Gunfire.
...
Land fired off a salvo of rounds into a young lieutenant's chest before slamming his fist into the closed door that separated him from the next corridor. "Blasted rebels even have the air force infiltrated. It's a shame that I'll have to kill everyone." Land continued attempting to break his way through the locked door, splattered as it was by the blood of numerous young men.
Such a shame… I'll have to begin production of Naval droids. It doesn't seem right calling them Inquisitors, but oh well. At least it's pleasing to the ears. The door control panel flashed green, and the battered and bloodied door slid open. Land walked through and turned the corner, stepping right into the arms of Alex and his men.
Alex leveled his shotgun at Land's chest, "Hold it right there, Land. You are under arrest for crimes against humanity and conspiracy to commit acts of mass and indiscriminate destruction."
Land chuckled in his dry and condescending manner, "Oh Alex, the dear little brother of Erin… Go on and shoot me. I know you want to. Don't pretend like you're better than me because you can show restraint." He spread his arms like he was on an invisible crucifix.
Alex stood resolute, "Not a chance Land. Put your hands in the air and get on your knees. We aren't savages. You are going to pay for your crimes, and I am not letting you accept death that easily."
"If you say so Master Culloch." Land knelt down to his knees, and put his hands in the air, covered as they were with his metal skeleton of anti-ballistic armor.
Alex stepped forward and pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt while keeping his shotgun trained on Land. He neared the man and began to place the cuffs around the CEO's wrists. "Someone call Jack and tell him that we've-"
Alex was cut off when he found himself slammed against a wall with fiery pain shooting up his leg. Everything seemed to blur as the pain from his broken leg overwhelmed him.
"Oh sweet Alex, let this be a lesson," Land spoke as he deployed the guns from his forearms, "Never trust a man in an exosuit." Land fired and slaughtered Alex's men, covering the younger man in his comrades' blood.
"You should have killed me,' Alex spoke as he grit his teeth against the pain.
"Why, are you going to try and kill me, you can't possibly be s-" Land was cut off by the thunder of Alex's shotgun, and his left leg collapsed under him. Land cursed, "You little prick! I would kill you, but hearing you scream while I destroy New Columbia will be much more enjoyable. But that won't stop me from shooting you." Land fired a shot into Alex's stomach, and hobbled up to his feet. He routed more power to the damaged leg, powering on the assisted walking program, then walked through the door. Alex scrambled to grab his communicator.
…
Jack stood in the fire control room. He was surrounded by advanced holographic screens covered with technical mumbo-jumbo, and his fingers tapped nervously on the butt of his pistol. So this is how it ends. A gunfight in space. This is ludicrous, but what part of it isn't? Aerotec, Mars, all of it… Absolutely ludicrous. It's our grim reality, but it doesn't have to stay that way. This is how it ends, and it will end here.
Jack's reverie was interrupted by an urgent communication from one of the squad leaders. Jack picked it off of his belt and answered, "Alex, what have y-"
Alex stopped Jack mid-sentence, and his breath was strained and ragged, "Jack.. J-Jack listen to me…. Land is coming right... Right to you. He's wounded and.." Alex paused and winced as he applied pressure to the hole in his gut, "Just kill him. Don't try to arrest him. Go for his legs, take out the suit he's got on and he'll be a vulnerable old man again."
Jack was beyond worried, "Alex, you don't sound so good. Are you wounded? I can send-"
The man on the other end interrupted him, "Jack, deal with Land. I'll be… I'll be fine. Just stop Land. I believe in you, all of you. I.. Maybe I'll see Allie and Eva again," Alex sighed wistfully and took solace in his final moments, "But whatever happens, promise me that you'll protect your family better than I did mine. Cherish every moment with them."
Jack heard the communicator clatter to the floor, and he knew that Alex was gone. He was a true hero of New Columbia. Jack let the tears flow openly from his eyes, You'll be avenged Alex, but I'm not giving up on you yet.
Jack made a call with the communicator, "All units, fall back to the fire control room. Stan, report to Alex's last position and see if you can help him. Val, find a position near the fire-control room and hold that position until you hear us engage Land. Instruct your men to aim for his legs. We end this now." Jack turned the communicator off as soon as he heard the affirmations from the other end, and then he put his head in his hands.
Alex… He just wanted to live his life. He just… Oh God… Jack wiped the tears from his eyes and steeled himself. He pulled his revolver from its holster and hid beside the door, just out of sight of anyone that entered.
Chapter 59
Land limped into the final corridor that led to the fire-control room and found it blocked by a contingent of young men with guns.
One of them spoke up from behind a crude barricade, his voice trembling yet strong, “Stop right there, Land! Your tyranny ends today! New Columbia is free, and you will pay for y-” Land’s guns thundered in the hallway, and the young man's hands flung up to his throat moments before he died.
“Enough of this, kill me if you think you can!” Land shouted as he opened fire with his guns. He fired precise shots from the mounted weapons on his arms. Almost out of ammo. Not like these fools can kill me in a hand-to-hand anyway. Land walked through the corridor and stood among the dead and dying. He winced when he took a wrong step -the hole in his leg was a hole in his leg after all- but he wouldn’t be bleeding out any time soon thanks to the advanced Kingmaker suit. He activated the door to Fire-Control and stepped through.
Jack launched from his hiding spot behind the door and fired a shotgun shell from his pistol into Land’s back. Land surged forward, apparently unharmed. He turned around and looked at Jack, who seemed scrawny in comparison to his augmented bulk. “Ah, Jack. I finally get to meet you in person. Too bad I have to kill you now. You could have been an excellent heir to the company if my daughter ever met an untimely end. It's a pity she’s stuck on Earth.” Land raised his arm to fire.
Jack aimed his revolver at Land’s face. “You aren’t leaving this room alive,” he growled confidently without a hint of fear, “Not if I have a say about it.”
“You really expect that your whore of a girlfriend can save you? I’ve had slaves with better fighting skills than her. Besides, she won’t be getting inside anytime soon.”
Jack winced as Land’s gun thundered, expecting to open his eyes and be in heaven, or whatever place he was going to. He opened his eyes to see that Land had shot the door controls.
He seized his chance, “You could have just killed me, but you chose to shoot the door. Have I told you how much of an idiot you are yet?” Jack fired his gun, emptying the revolver’s cylinder except for a single bullet. Land just looked at him expectantly: the lead from the bullets had simply embedded in the metal plate under his tattered suit.
“And you’re an idiot for thinking it would be that easy,” Land spoke calmly while Jack loaded
a slug into the shotgun barrel of his pistol, “But enough fun and games. I’m growing tired of all this play. It will be quite entertaining to watch Valerie cry over your bullet-riddled corpse, Cabe.”
…
Val made it to the entrance to the Fire-Control room, but she was too late. The bodies of a dozen soldiers lay littered about the door, and the door itself was shut. No no no no, this isn’t… Not again… She ran to the access panel and began trying to open the door, but the touchpad wouldn’t even turn on, much less respond to her frantic commands.
“Dammit… I’ve gotta... Gotta find another way,” she turned to her guide from the ship’s crew, “Is there any other way into the Control room? Like a vent or something?”
The man shrugged, “Technically there is, but it’s zero-gravity since the magneto-suits don’t fit inside. You’ll be a floating corpse instead of an anchored one.”
She spoke confidently, if frantically, “I don’t plan on becoming a corpse. Show me where it is.”
“If you say so, Miss. Come with me.” The man walked her to a vent in the wall on the other side of the Fire-Control room. Val winced with every gunshot she heard from inside.
…
“Dammit Cabe, just die already!” The cannons on Land's arms belched fire as Jack threw a table up as a shield, barely stopping the shots from giving him a surprise lobotomy.
Jack slammed another slug into his pistol, and yelled, “I’m not leaving until one or both of us are dead Land, and you know that I’m not giving up!” Jack charged at Land, using his shield to pin the larger man against the wall. He tried to aim his gun around the shield, but he was pushed back by the augmented strength of Land’s Kingmaker suit.
“You stupid child, when will you learn? 'Don’t try to mess with a guy in an exoskeleton', it’s that simple you dimwit!” Land grabbed Jack’s table-shield and broke it over his good knee, “You really should learn a thing or two about legitimate fighting.”
“Those are big words for a man who lost an entire city to people who hadn’t fought a war before.” Jack fired his gun into Land’s bad knee, bringing him to the ground. Land cursed and his lower leg hung limp from his knee. For once he began to fear for his life.
Jack was about to fire again when Land let off a final shot that nailed Jack in the shoulder. Jack yelped and clutched the wound. There wasn’t any pain yet, but Jack chalked it up to the adrenaline. “You should have gone for the head, Land.”
Land managed to pick himself up off of the ground, “Maybe I should have. Not like it matters.” Land raised his gun to fire his last bullet, but then flame and thunder rose behind him, sending him falling to the ground with a shot.
…
Val thrust her body away from the vent and fired her gun into Land’s back, her body already aching from being slammed into the wall because of the recoil and lack of gravity. She pushed through the air like it was water, barely able to control her movement.
Land crashed to the floor as she found a spot on the wall and spoke, her voice angry and powerful, “Land, I hate to break it to you, but Jack isn’t a one-man show. Not that he ever was in the first place.”
Land groaned from the floor, and managed to roll onto his back, the weaker spinal magnets barely keeping him connected to the floor. “You two have no clue what you’re dealing with.”
Jack laughed, “On the contrary, we know exactly what we’re dealing with: a deluded old man that won’t accept defeat, who even went so far as to try and annihilate all life in New Columbia to achieve victory. Even now you refuse to accept that you can be defeated.”
Land coughed, hoping that Valerie’s shot hadn’t broken a rib and punctured his lung, “You don’t understand, and you never will. What I did -what I am trying to do- it’s all for the good of New Columbia.”
Now it was Val’s turn to laugh, “I think that killing everyone because you’re a poor sport is a far cry from ‘good for New Columbia’. You must have gone senile in the past few weeks.”
“You still don’t get it. Kill me if you must, but know this: There are worse people out there than me, and your pitiful weapons aren’t going to do anything against them. Massive criminal organizations the likes of which you’ve never seen. You think the few vestiges of crime that I allowed were bad?” Land coughed, “They don’t have anything on the Cabal. They’re blacker than black, and dirtier than Chernobyl.”
Jack holstered his pistol despite every last fiber of his being telling him to shoot Land and be done with it. Jack instead grabbed a pair of handcuffs from his belt and latched them around Land's hands, “Land, if any of what you said is true, then we’ll deal with them when the time comes. You didn’t have to fight a war to stop them, and you didn’t have to-”
Land grimaced, ‘You don’t get it, do you? I don’t control everything that I do. If I hadn’t allowed them to do their business in New Columbia, they would have razed it to the ground. And now that you’ve won, they’ll be coming, not just for New Columbia, but all of Mars.”
Jack shook his head and sighed, “And when the time comes, we’ll deal with them. It doesn’t change the fact that you are guilty of hundreds of crimes that ought to earn you the death penalty in any civilized nation. Don’t take my mercy for granted.”
Val gave Jack a wary look, “Jack, are you sure about this?”
“Val, as much as I hate to say it, Mr. Land is telling the truth. I can see it in his eyes,” Jack turned back to Land and growled with contempt, “But understand this, we’re locking you away, and the only people you’ll be seeing will be armed guards and the rest of New Columbian High Command.”
Land winced as he tried to shrug, “I hope you know what you’re doing. You’re in a battle that’s way over your head.”
Jack smiled, “They said the same thing when we started fighting you, but here we are. Nothing is impossible, no matter how difficult it is.” Jack found a way to detach the armed attachments from Land’s exosuit and pried open the door. Land stayed silent for the rest of the trip back to the surface. Even when the Rebels entered his office.
Chapter 60
The War was over. As soon as the New Columbian leaders had returned to the surface, Land had ordered all of his forces across the planet to stand down and begin repairing the city. But there was one last thing to do.
Awaiting Jack and Val at the bottom of Land’s tower was a cavalcade of the Resistance’s vehicles: tanks, jeeps, trucks, armored personnel carriers, all proceeding before a simple truck with a body bag in it, wrapped with the flag of New Columbia: Alex.
Behind him were the gathered bodies of those that had died aboard the AS Noble Cur, and those that had died in the assault on the port. A very ramshackle funeral, and a sobering end to the war, but a necessary one at that. Jack helped Val into the back of Alex’s truck, and she stood beside him and Stan as the cavalcade began rolling onward to the mine.
As it rolled on, it passed the burned-out husks of buildings, massive craters in the ground, and piles of corpses that had to be left out due to necessity. New Columbia would have to rebuild, and it would be a long and hard process. They would have to mend the wounds, both physical and psychological, that the war had wrought in spite of how short it was. The war had risen like wildfire, and just like a wildfire, it had left its mark on everything it had touched. Now New Columbia was without a true government, only a basic state. But maybe that’s how it needed to be.
As the Cavalcade crossed into the Outer City, they were reminded of why this war had begun. The abject poverty, the entire boroughs that had been burned over by raging fires that no one could combat, young children begging for food amongst their parents' charred corpses...
“Welcome back home Alex…” Jack muttered as he wrapped his arm around Val. She cried softly into his shoulder, and he let the tears come.
Stan looked out silently as the wind brushed against his face. This had not been his home, but it may as well have been. And he was determined to defend it and build it up to be as g
reat as it had been planned to be. He refused to let any tears fall and straightened his back.
…
A few days later, Jack stood on a podium and looked out over a crowd of thousands. They were packed into the Mine's auditorium and spilled into the nearby streets. Behind him, the flag of New Columbia waved in a gentle wind, and Alex’s casket lay at its base. The casket had been scrounged up from somewhere, a gift from TC, and it was draped with Alex’s favorite thing in the world: the flag gifted to him by the Resistance.
Jack tapped the microphone and wiped away a tear before speaking. “People of New Columbia! Today we are gathered both to celebrate and to mourn. The war is over! We have finally succeeded in what we set out nearly six months ago to accomplish. Land is imprisoned, and Aerotec’s armies are disabled. New Columbia can now enter into a new age of safety and prosperity for all.
Elections for president will begin as soon as stability is fully restored and a true government can be put in place, and our children are expected to return to school as soon as possible. But this has come at a devastating price.
Many of you knew him as a leader, a man who had cast off the shadow of his family name to do good. He led many of you into battle and fellowshipped with even more of you. Alexander Culloch was a man for which life was more than just his own. In the short time that I knew him, he refused to be beaten down by the harshness of life.
Three days ago, Alex died when he sacrificed his life to buy time for the Resistance to stop Mr. Land from firing a shot that would have destroyed New Columbia’s air supply. Along with many of the crew of the AS Noble Cur, he gave his life for all of us, and for that I thank him,” Jack paused, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe another tear away from his cheek, “Alex may not have been from the Outer City, but he had suffered just as much as we had. He lost his wife and child when they were brutally tortured in front of him by Aerotec, he was unleashed to hunt down the Resistance in its fledgling days, and he was hunted down when he refused.
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