by Sean Robins
“Yeah. Dad’s gone. I think that blast got him, and good riddance.”
Kurt dropped a round through another man’s chest. “At this rate, we’ll soon run out of ammo. Good thing Xortaags don’t have shoulder-fired missiles.”
“Or grenade launchers,” said Xornaa, then she cursed under her breath.
Kurt gave her a questioning look.
“Another group is approaching us, very slowly. It looks like they’re carrying or pushing something heavy.”
“A weapon?”
Xornaa nodded. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a laser cannon.”
“How long before they’re here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe fifteen minutes.”
Kurt took his eyes off his targets to eye Tarq for a second. “How are things on your end?”
“My people are attacking the Xortaags all over the planet,” said Tarq, “and I have asked everyone in the immediate area to come to our help. The palace is under attack.”
“Let’s hope they arrive soon because I don’t think we have much time left,” said Kurt.
And he kept shooting.
Sitting in his Deathbringer’s cockpit, Prince Polvaar heard General Maada’s voice. “I have invited the commander of the enemy fleet to a one-on-one duel. Nobody is allowed to interfere, obviously. Enjoy the show. One day, you can tell your grandchildren you were here when I killed the Kingslayer.”
Polvaar watched the Crimson Deathbringer fly away from the fleet as frustration rose in his heart. He had joined the fleet in search of glory, and he was anxious to make a name for himself. He had done well during the Kanoor invasion. His father had sent a message and complimented him on his courage and skill. Still, his achievements were overshadowed by Maada who, as usual, had taken credit for everything. As far as everyone was concerned, this was a one-man show.
And now, the general was about to kill the most famous enemy ace fighter in the whole galaxy. After that, nobody would even remember Polvaar was here too, no matter what he did from this point on. It was so unfair.
But what if he killed the Kingslayer?
He wet his lips, and his skin started tingling all over. Imagine that. If he killed the enemy commander, right under Maada’s nose, his name would be recorded in history as the greatest fighter pilot who had ever lived. His father would be so impressed.
Polvaar made up his mind, moved his ship a little bit closer to where Maada was engaged in a furious battle with the enemy pilot, and waited for the right moment to pounce on the Golden Viper.
That bastard will not know what hit him.
The Crimson Deathbringer came at me, laser cannons blazing.
I jerked the stick hard left, and the enemy ship stormed past mine. I took a sharp turn. He was dead center in my gunsight for one second. I squeezed the trigger, and my cannon roared to life, but Maada dodged my laser bolts. I hadn’t expected that hitting him would so easy anyway. We kept twisting, turning, and shooting at each other.
The Viper’s computer used the stick movements to interpret my intentions and calculate the best way to execute the maneuver. With Cordelia on board, this happened so fast it looked like my Viper could read my mind and react instantly. It felt as if my fighter and I had become one. It was exhilarating.
So now I was Cyborg, but I still couldn’t hit that frakking blood-red space fighter!
Granted, Maada’s ship was much more advanced than the old models, but so was mine. I was beginning to think it wasn’t all about flying skills. That guy had to use some kind of magic to make his ship move like that. Freaking Xortaags and their voodoos.
Our duel continued. Maada maneuvered furiously for an opportunity to fire his cannons, but the few times he did, I evaded his energy bolts. Once, he did hit my ship, but it only caused minimal damage. Nothing to worry about.
All of a sudden, I managed to line him up in my gunsight. I zeroed in, let loose a stream of fire, and gave him a long burst. I shouted in excitement as several energy bolts hit the left side of the Deathbringer. Each energy bolt caused a small explosion and made my heart swell with anticipation, but Maada rolled left and broke out before I could blow him to Kingdom Come. Still, just hitting that bastard felt good. Fierce joy pumped through my veins. Now I knew Maada was beatable, like any other man. He wasn’t the superhuman pilot everyone thought he was, after all. I took a long breath and savored this victory.
I’m not the Kingslayer for nothing.
“Well done, Boss,” said Cordelia. “You’re really good at this.”
“You’re not too bad yourself, R2,” I answered. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
And then, the Crimson Deathbringer suddenly disappeared from my view. I looked around wildly, trying to figure out where Maada went, and I remembered where he would be a fraction of a second too late.
He’d done his teleportation maneuver again.
“Behind you!” shouted Cordelia.
I ground my teeth. “I know.”
I didn’t have time to be scared. White-hot energy bolts appeared all over my Viper, and a few tore into the right wing. I put the fighter’s nose “down” and went into a power dive. He was all over me like a cheap coat. I let go of all six of my Sparrows, two by two. Maada blew them out of the, well, space, with ease and kept coming. More laser bolts impacted my ship.
“How did he do that?” asked Cordi with admiration in her voice. “Do you have any idea how impossible it is to shoot the Sparrows that are coming straight at you?”
“This asshole is a one-man PDC,” I growled through clenched teeth.
I was so focused on not getting incinerated by Maada that I didn’t see another Deathbringer coming at me from my right above until the last second. It opened fire with laser cannons and hit my fighter a few times before I had a chance to figure out what the hell was going on. I turned sharply to the left and put my Viper in a steep curve. The enemy ship followed and kept firing.
So now I had two Deathbringers on my six, one of them the galaxy’s most frightening nightmare, while my own fighter was damaged. And that wasn’t even the worst part. In my tactical display, I saw all the enemy fleet—more than eighteen thousand ships—starting to move towards me.
I knew enough about the Xortaags to realize they wouldn’t have attacked without Maada’s specific orders. So this whole mano-a-mano bullshit was nothing but a trap, and I’d fallen right into it, like the stupid over-confident idiot I was. Maada had taken full advantage of my cockiness. He knew I wouldn’t have refused his challenge, and he had carefully laid this death trap for me.
My pilots were moving too, but I was caught between the two fleets, and they’d never make it in time to save me.
I bit my lips. “Come on, Jim, this isn’t the place to die.”
“It very much looks like it is,” said Venom, supportive and positive as usual.
My Viper shook violently after being hit again. She absorbed the hits, but I didn’t know how much more she could take. Several warning lights started flashing.
I was dead.
My brain felt like it was full of rattlesnakes, but strangely enough, I still wasn’t scared, even though my body had developed a mind of its own and was showing all the textbook signs of terror. Everything had happened way too fast, and I had so much adrenaline flowing in my veins that the prospect of dying barely phased me. Also, I’d faced death so often in the past few months that it didn’t seem like such a big deal. The whole thing had a here-we-go-again feel to it, and it wasn’t as if someone were waiting for me back home, while Liz might be on the other side. Who knew?
On the bright side, I’d die how I had always imagined I would: in a dogfight, surrounded by enemy fighters.
I was worried about my pilots though. Who would protect them after I was gone? Hopefully, Ella could do that. She seemed very capable, and given that she was in command of a starship, she could probably do an even better job than I did from inside my space fighter’s cockpit.
“You know, I�
��ve always wanted to ask,” said Venom, “why is it called a cockpit?”
“Really? Now?” I grunted.
“Who are you talking to?” asked Cordelia.
‘And this is how the Kingslayer’s legend ended, fooled by an enemy, and all alone but for an annoying AI and an imaginary parasite,’ the historians in the future will say, I thought grimly.
Fleet Admiral Juntoo had never felt so miserable in his life.
The last several months had been one disaster after another. First, the Alora defeat. After that, Tarq, who was responsible for that catastrophe to begin with, had destroyed the Xortaag fleet and came back to Kanoor a hero. After that came the infamous day when he and fourteen other decorated fleet admirals got naked and asked Tarq to accept them as his concubines—in front of the whole planet, no less, and no one had ever come up with a logical explanation as to how that had happened. To top it all off, just a few days after that, Maada had come back from the dead and destroyed their fleet.
And there was absolutely nothing Juntoo could do about it. What was an admiral without a fleet to command? These days, he spent all his time sulking alone at his home.
All of a sudden, deep inside his mind, a voice said, “You are a hero. You are a strong, fierce warrior. How can you sit idly while the Xortaags are destroying your home planet? Kill them all.”
Juntoo stood up, went to his bedroom, opened a hidden panel under his bed, and took out a blaster cannon. He had built it in his spare time, and he had often boasted that this was the most destructive handheld weapon ever made, even though he never thought he might end up using it. He carried the heavy weapon outside his house.
There was a Xortaag checkpoint right down the street. Juntoo saw other Akakies carrying various weapons, but he did not need them. He was an admiral of the fleet and a strong and fierce warrior, after all. It was time for the Xortaags to taste his fury.
Juntoo stepped onto the street, raised the weapon’s barrel, and opened fire. He hit the guardhouse and the two vehicles parked in front of it, both of which exploded into fiery balls of red and yellow flames. A few trees next to the checkpoint were shredded into pieces, and another explosion ruined half the houses behind it. He screamed as his weapon blasted away, feeling strong and invincible. A real hero.
And yet, he did not manage to hit a single enemy soldier.
Juntoo died instantly when the Xortaags returned fire.
Kurt knew they had lost.
He was too busy shooting to look at his PDD, but he could listen to the reports coming in from the Akakie spy ship in orbit. Tarq’s plan had initially worked. The Akakies had attacked the Xortaags, and the palace was surrounded by thousands of the insectoids, trying to break through the Xortaag defenses. But apparently, even MFM had no answer for the Akakies’ legendary incompetence when it came to fighting. They outnumbered the enemy a thousand to one, and they did surprise them with their sudden and brutal uprising, but the Xortaags were holding their own. The swift victory Tarq had predicted would never happen. Given their numerical advantage and the advanced weapons at their disposal, they’d eventually get their planet back, but it would take hours. Days, even.
Kurt didn’t have hours or days. He barely had a few minutes.
Aim, shoot, repeat. Again and again. Despite the Xortaags’ efforts to get their fallen comrades out of the way, the tunnel was full of corpses, the walls and ground painted with dark purple blood. But they kept coming, even though they had to step over their dead friends. Both Kurt and Xornaa were shot: he in the shoulder, she in the arm. The only reason they weren’t already killed was they wore body armor. The wall behind them was full of small holes caused by the energy bolts fired by the enemy soldiers. Sweat trickled into his eyes, and the throbbing pain in his shoulder made concentrating difficult, but what else was new.
Kurt couldn’t help admiring Xornaa. Her reputation as a brilliant markswoman was well-deserved. Scoring headshot after headshot, she hadn’t wasted a single bullet, showing no signs of being under pressure other than being slightly pale, which was probably because of her injury. It was as if she were a robot killing zombies.
Soon, I’ll witness her hand-to-hand combat skills too, thought Kurt, because we’re about to run out of ammo, and each of us has only two grenades.
Kurt stopped shooting, wiped the sweat from his brow, and looked back at Tarq. “Will they be able to control MFM?”
“You mean after they kill us? Of course not,” said Tarq. “Only Barook and I can do it.”
Well, at least that was something. This meant the Akakie could still take their planet back, thus preventing the Xortaags from getting hold of their technology. Maybe it was worth it, after all.
“They can shoot the controls though,” Tarq added. “That should stop OMC-BOWS and solve their problem.”
Kurt grimaced and cursed under his breath. With imminent death staring him in the eyes, regret washed over him like ocean waves during a violent storm. He’d failed, and his team would’ve died for nothing. In fact, all he’d done in his life had been for nothing, both him and his father. They’d spent their lives in pursuit of his dad’s dream—a united Earth—and later on he had fought both Zheng and the Xortaags. What was the point of all that if they lost here? The Xortaags would go straight to Earth from Kanoor, and they’d probably use a planet buster for real this time.
He felt the chamber walls were closing in on him, and his breath stuck in his throat. All humanity was doomed because of his failure, and there was nothing he could do about it. His mind replayed memories of the Xortaag invasion—which killed several hundred million people—in a loop. Enormous, engulfing terror got hold of him and shook him to his core. He didn’t want to be responsible for mankind’s extinction, and yet here he was, a fuck-up, the loser who had ended the human race.
At least he wouldn’t be alive to see Earth fall again.
He thought about Patricia. That relationship might’ve gone somewhere if he didn’t die here. He hoped she wouldn’t take his death too hard.
Tarq cautiously approached him from behind, carrying an STG-666. Kurt pointed at the gun. “Do you know how to shoot that thing?”
“Of course I know how to shoot,” said Tarq. “Whether or not I hit something is another matter altogether.”
Kurt said hesitantly, “We can probably use some suppressive fire, but—”
The words hadn’t completely left his mouth when Tarq stepped past him, stood completely exposed at the middle of the entrance chamber, brought his assault rifle to bear, shouted “suppressive fire,” and started shooting in full auto mode. He had a hard time controlling the weapon, and most of his bullets hit the walls, the ground, or the ceiling.
Kurt hurriedly grabbed his arm and pulled him back behind the wall, just as several energy bolts passed through where Tarq had been standing a second ago and hit the wall behind him. The sudden movement made his injured shoulder hurt so badly that he bit his lips.
“How did I do?” asked Tarq.
Kurt took his rifle. “I was going to say: because our biggest problem is we’re short of ammo, it’s probably better if you give this gun to us.”
“Second biggest problem,” said Xornaa. “That group bringing something heavy? They’re very close now.”
Kurt bit down the searing pain in his shoulder, aimed the STG-666, and shot three Xortaags in quick succession. “We all know you’re probably the best shadow master in the universe, but you make a terrible marksman.”
“What’s a shadow master?” asked Xornaa, still shooting.
“Some sort of an intergalactic master spy.”
Tarq looked at him. The little alien seemed surprised for a second; then his eyes glinted. He face-palmed and grinned like a maniac, showing rows of teeth.
Great. He’s lost whatever was left of his mind.
“You are right,” said Tarq. “I am a shadow master, and my greatest strength has always been deception. How did I forget?”
Kurt pointed at the Xortaags ma
ssing in the tunnel. “Can we throw deception at them? Because otherwise, I don’t think it’s of a lot of use for us right now.”
Tarq’s grin got wider. “You cannot throw deception at people, silly. But you can do much, much better.”
The two Deathbringers behind me kept shooting.
“What do we do now?” Venom screamed.
Now we do that fighting-for-our-lives thing we always do.
Laser bolts streaked past my fighter. Ignoring the eighteen thousand other enemy ships approaching me, I leaned hard on the stick and put my Viper into a twisting dive, making one final desperate attempt to get out of the line of fire and stay alive a few more seconds. I’d never been the take-it-lying-down type. I’d fight until my last breath; then my ghost would haunt Maada for eternity. And Lord of Death could kiss my ass.
I tasted blood in my mouth. I’d probably bit my tongue again. My body felt hot, my muscles tensed, my breath ragged and harsh. Sweat drenched my skin, ringing screams vibrated in my ears, and my heart beat against my ribcage. This was how facing—and getting killed by—your arch nemesis felt.
It took me a second to realize Maada was shooting at the other Deathbringer.
My eyes must’ve been deceiving me. I blinked a few times and looked again, just in time to see the other space fighter explode into millions of tiny shards traveling space in every direction.
That right there was the most beautiful scene I’d ever witnessed in my life.
The Crimson Deathbringer took a sharp turn, away from me and towards the Xortaag fleet. For a second, it looked like Maada was charging his own fleet. Then I heard his voice in my helmet, speaking Xortaag. “Anyone who does not stop right now will answer to me.”
He hadn’t even raised his voice. The enemy fleet, all eighteen thousand ships, the sharks who had smelled blood in the water, came to a halt.
I gasped. “Sierra Hotel!”
“Wow,” said Cordelia.
“I know, right?” added Venom.
I had another visual communication request, and a second later Maada’s face appeared on my screen again. “I know an apology is of no use to you, but unfortunately that is all I have to offer. That pilot, Prince Polvaar, was acting completely on his own accord, and I had absolutely no idea he was planning to attack you. The rest of the fleet thought his attack was some sort of a signal, and they started following him.”
