Phoenix Reborn

by Joseph Mackay

  “You…” the man tried to say.

  “Shh, don’t talk. I need to get you patched up and out of here before those soldiers arrive,” Alex said quickly, focusing on the wound, which was bleeding badly.

  The man reached up with an unsteady hand and pulled down the bandana that was covering his face, taking a deep breath.

  Alex turned to see the face of William Mercer for the first time in six years.

  “William! Oh my God! I’m going to get you out of here!” Alex’s voice was on the edge of panic as he stuffed the injured leg with synthetic bonding gel.

  “Alex…”

  “What is it?” Alex asked, looking the man in his eyes.

  “I’m proud of you, son,” William managed to say, coughing between his words.

  Smoke began to fill the transport and Alex knew he would have to risk moving his stepfather if they were going to have any hope of survival. Alex reached through his OMBI and felt around the area for anything that might help him. He could feel an AFMR somewhere to the north of him not too far away.

  “I know you are, William. I need you to try to walk.”

  The man shook his head from side to side, coughing again as blood spurted from his mouth onto Alex’s uniform. William grabbed Alex firmly by the arm.

  “Your mother … would be proud of … you too,” William said, struggling to keep his eyes open.

  Alex gripped the man’s hand as tightly as he could, looking him right in the eye.

  “She is proud of me, William,” Alex said quietly. “Mom is alive.”

  Chapter 20

  Undaunted

  Two hundred and thirty-nine feet off the coast of Breaker Beach, San Francisco, the Battle Armor Vessel called Skoll was quietly absorbing the minerals from the water and sand. The deconstruction of the elements took time, but slowly the ship had enough raw elemental data to reconstruct useful materials. It began with the vital systems, slowly removing the damaged parts, replacing them with new ones. The damaged pieces were deconstructed and reformed into new pieces, which fit over different areas of the ship.

  So it went on for hours and days, piece by piece repairing the damage it had taken, trying to be made whole again. Inside the CPU, the virtual intelligence could sense that its operated was in danger, but could do nothing to help him. Skoll cried out, but received no reply.

  ~ ~ ~

  Two miles from where he had crash landed, a sixteen-year-old boy with striking green eyes, enhanced by the power of an alien technology, carried the body of his stepfather to the north as quickly as he could. The sounds of battle continued behind him and he could see that several squads of soldiers broke off from the main group, to give chase to the target they had come to kill.

  Covering nearly a mile inside six minutes, even with the weight of the man in his arms, Alex burst into the California Pacific Medical Center, frantically searching for a medical robot that could assist him. He pushed past patients and administrators, forcing his way deep into the interior of the hospital with soldiers coming in right behind him. The staff and patients screamed and fled, slowing the soldiers trying to get in. Alex found a room at the end of the hall, and, using the power of his OMBI, began summoning the 311 Anti-Fire and Medical Robots from all over the hospital.

  They marched slowly, like an army of robot zombies, through the halls in the direction of the call. When the first one arrived, Alex ordered it to help the man in any way possible. The robot removed enough of the man’s battle suit to see his wounds and began evaluating them with the thin green light projecting from its one eye.

  “Prognosis: Deceased”

  “No!” Alex screamed, denying the claim.

  Alex used his OMBI to override the machine’s protocol and ordered it to revive the man.

  As more 311AFMR began to approach, Alex heard the sounds of soldiers in the hallways encircling his position. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, Alex manifested a mounted machine gun with a sensor turret. He had no idea he could do that until now, but he needed time and his OMBI had responded. He even manifested wheels for the turret and rolled it down the hall. The weapon rolled to a stop and began firing at the fortified positions of the soldiers who had come to retrieve him.

  Alex found that he only needed to maintain awareness of the weapon to keep it active, which wasn’t hard with all the noise it was creating. He created two more for good measure and set one at the door and the other down the hall in the opposite direction. Maintaining three was more of a challenge, but as he steadied himself with a few deep breathes, he found that he could manage it well enough.

  He turned his attention back on the man and the robots who were working hard to repair him. One had William’s leg propped up with two of its arms and was stitching a wound internally with tiny finger-like appendages protruding from its third arm. Another was examining and re-setting what looked like a broken ankle that hadn’t been allowed to heal right. A third had the man pushed onto his side, while it used two of its arms to stitch a wound on his back that Alex hadn’t even seen until now. A fourth AFMR was manually pumping man’s heart with fingers which elongated into his chest while simultaneously infusing him with a blood regeneration enhancer from a nearby table.

  Alex felt his turret go down before he heard the explosion in the hall. He let the thing dissipate as he rolled the one at the door way down to replace the first. The second one didn’t last long as the soldiers threw another set of grenades into the hallway. Alex knew he was running out of time quickly.

  “Come on!” he yelled at the AFMR, who continued to work impassively.

  Hearing footsteps, Alex manifested a grenade into his hand and threw it down the hallway.

  “Come on, William!” Alex yelled again, looking at the body of the man who had saved him, the man who had raised his brother, the man who had been like a father to him.

  “Mom never quit! She lived on even when they tried to kill her! She is alive, damn you! She still loves you! Now wake up, William!” Alex screamed.

  The man’s eyes shot open as he gasped for breath. The AFMR continue to work on him as he looked around the room, unsure of where he was or what he was doing.

  A smile formed on Alex’s face as his final turret fired down the hall, suppressing the soldiers who had come for him.

  “She’s alive?” he heard William say, turning to see the man with tears in his eyes.

  “Yes, and she is leading the colonies in a rebellion like you’re leading the people here on Earth. You are the Dragoon, right?” Alex asked, turning back to the hallway.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” William said, fighting to remain conscious.

  The AFMR simultaneously stepped away from the man and moved to the corners of the rooms. He had been revived, but despite his best efforts, he lacked the strength to stand.

  “Okay then. We’re getting out of here, now,” Alex said.

  His eyes flashed with a green glow as he focused. Before him he manifested an A25-Combat Drone; its hulking form filled up the hallway outside the examination room. The machine turned and began to march in the direction of the enemy soldiers, firing rockets and machine guns in a steady stream of destruction. Alex turned to face William, eyes full of a soft green glow.

  “Are you coming?” Alex asked, reaching a hand out to his stepfather.

  William accepted the hand with a grin. His legs were weak, but his stepson was strong, and the two walked out of the medical center, behind the heavy steps of the powerful drone, into a city torn by war.

  Epilogue

  With the manhunt for the dangerous pilot of Skoll fully underway and Tizona gone through a slipstream, General Harruhama didn’t waste any time ordering the attack on Aeris VII. Without Hati or Skoll to pull them through, the normal slipstream jump between Earth and the Hourglass Nebula would take between ten and eleven weeks. Even at their full strength of thirty-three Battle Frigates, the Independent Colonies could not withstand an assault from the full force of the UEDF.

  Ha
rruhama had one hundred and fourteen activate Battle Frigates, twenty-one Anubis Squads, and one hundred and forty Ra Squadrons still available at his command, ready to be wielded like a mighty fist. With the dangerous Battle Armor Vessels out of play, it would be easy to end the rebellion in the colonies and restore order to the Earth.

  “Open a channel to the commanders of fleets two, six, seven and eight,” Harruhama said to his communications officer aboard the UEDF Nostus.

  “Channel open, sir.”

  “My friends, the hour has come to rid the heavens of the resisting factions of the so-called “independent colonies.” Their defenses are down, and their leaders are missing. It is time to take back what we lost and restore order to the galaxy! Go forth with all your might and reclaim our empire!”

  With the orders away for the full-scale invasion, General Harruhama sat back in his chair, thinking about the problems he still had on Earth. He knew he had a lot of work ahead of him and began to lay out plans for the systematic disposal of the Free Men.

  “Sir, Mr. Wilhelm on the line for you.”

  “Clear the bridge!” Harruhama ordered.

  The man’s face turned white as the men and woman serving aboard the UEDF Nostus exited the room.

  A young man’s face appeared upon the screen of his datapad when Harruhama took the call.

  “General, what is the status of your search for the rebel leaders, both planet side and in the colonies?” the boyish voice of Articus Wilhelm said on the line.

  The boyish features were misleading, since this particular boy never seemed to age. Harruhama knew better than to stare.

  “We are currently in the process of hunting down The Dragoon. We have his location and strike teams are searching the ruins of San Francisco for him now. As for the colony leaders, I am awaiting confirmation that Phoenix is dead and the assault on Aeris VII should take care of Velez, Gellar, Watson, and Clarke.”

  “Then you have nothing confirmed. They are still a threat,” the boy chastised the General.

  “Sir, with all due respect, plans are in motions. We are moving over one hundred Frigates toward the Hour Glass Nebula as we speak!” Harruhama pleaded.

  “See that it is taken care of. We cannot suffer those dissidents any longer. You see what waiting has cost us? We have almost lost Earth!”

  “I assure you that we are making every effort to correct the situation. You know that I am aware of how this works. I will do my part; please be patient.”

  “Either you will, General, or we will find someone else who can,” Wilhelm warned.

  The transmission ended, and General Harruhama was left to ponder the gravity of the threat.

  ~ ~ ~

  Five thousand light years from Earth, in the Omega Nebula on the planet Dytopa II and approximately sixty-three miles from the city of Tiberius Falls, while searching the rocky coast of the Scorpio Sea, Doctor Miles Arminus and his partner Ethan Pereira found what they were looking for. The sensor equipment in their all-terrain vehicle picked up a strange metal composite a few weeks before, but due to the advent of a large monster storm he had put off his expedition.

  Now, together on the shoreline, the two men had begun searching for the object that was giving off the strange readings. As they approached a small outcropped along the rocks, they saw something glittering off the bright white light of the White Dwarf star that Dytopa orbited.

  The silver glint caught Dr. Arminus’ eye and he proceeded toward the area. As he cleared the rubble away with a sonic pick, he saw a large silver door ahead of him. However, even with the pick he couldn’t get the door open. Looking back at the log on his datapad, he realized that this was the entrance to a massive structure buried deep into the cliff face.

  The howl of some nearby beast startled the man.

  “Doctor Arminus, we need to head in or back to the truck, soon,” Ethan said urgently, his eyes scanning the tree line.

  He removed his large battle rifle from his shoulder slowly. Ethan was better than Arminus’ previous pathfinder, who had failed to detect a mist wolf in their first expedition. Ethan’s eyes never missed anything.

  A shriek sounded from the opposite side, causing Arminus to jump. Ethan didn’t flinch.

  “We need to go, they are surrounding us,” Ethan cautioned.

  Packing up their gear quickly, they returned to their vehicle and began the long drive back to Tiberius Falls to report the discovery to the Independent Council of Colonies.

  ~ ~ ~

  She awoke to the rhythm of a soft snoring sound. Marlena sat up against the pain of the wound in her side, the motion activating the lights in the crew quarters of her ship. Looking down, she saw her youngest son asleep, snoring softly. She smiled despite her pain at the serene look upon his face. His body seemed completely fine, but when she tried to wake him, she found that she could not.

  Her smile gone, Marlena examined the device on her son’s arm. It was well-worn and clearly damaged from the explosion of the inhibitor chip inside. She took a deep breath and slowly got up, turning around at the door to look at her son again. She had missed her baby boy and he had grown so much over the past six years she could hardly believe it.

  She turned to look at the picture of her husband on the wall, the smiling face of William Mercer. She kissed her fingertips and pressed her hand to the picture with a tear in her eye.

  “Thank you for taking such good care of him, baby,” she said to the photo of the man she thought was dead.

  With heavy steps, she walked up the stairs to the flight deck of the Tizona. Sitting heavily in her chair, she began a sensor sweep of the area to find out where she had gone in the slipstream. She was relieved to find that she was not far from Aeris VII. Alex had put her within a couple of days of the planet.

  Her sensors showed no sign of Skoll and Marlena felt a sense of worry building her chest. She knew Alex was the most capable pilot she had ever flown with, probably even better than she was, but she still worried for her son. If he didn’t come through a slipstream soon, she had to trust he had a good reason for it.

  Setting her auto-pilot toward home, she walked careful back down to her quarters to be with her wounded son.

  About the Author

  Born on a snowy morning in LaGrande, Oregon, Joseph Mackay was raised with two brothers in Placerville, California. A born adventurer, Joseph has lived in an RV full time and off the back of a motorcycle, has flown a helicopter and enjoyed skydiving. When not writing, he enjoys playing bass guitar, playing with his dog “Mimi,” watching Giants baseball, and working as a fitness coach.

  Interested in contacting me?

  Please direct all emails to josephmackay@gmail.com

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