Jack Strong and The Last Battle

by Heys Wolfenden

  “How?”

  Gaz nodded, unable to take his eyes off Stormborn’s arm. Even now the metal was weaving around muscles and patches of skin with all the dull efficiency of a machine.

  “Oh, they didn’t infect me, if that’s what you think… I went over to them… As for the rest though...”

  “The rest?”

  Stormborn gestured towards the sounds of gunfire, though now it was quieter, more subdued.

  “You… you betrayed us?”

  “Of course,” said Stormborn, eyes gleaming. “It was the only way.”

  “The only way for what? Everyone is either dead or a dreadnut now; there’s no one left for you to save.”

  “To secure my immortality, OUR immortality,” said Stormborn, showing Gaz a long red rash just above his collarbone. “With these changes, these alterations, we can live forever, never die. No pain… no more suffering.”

  “You’re mad,” said Gaz, fingers groping for the pistol at his side. “Someone’s got to…”

  Gaz felt like he had been hit by a truck as the laser round struck him in the stomach. He staggered a few feet, swayed, collapsed against the table, head jarring against one of the chairs. He could taste something salty on his lips; a red lake began to form around his legs, getting larger with every second. His vision began to blur, the room swirling like a carousel.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll order the dreadnuts not to kill you,” said the President. “Not like your mother.”

  “What?” coughed Gaz, wine-red droplets speckling his chin, neck, chest. “You’re lying. I saw her…”

  “You saw only what I wanted you to see,” sneered the President. “I did what was necessary to accomplish the mission.”

  “What mission?”

  “Why Jack of course; you are an extraordinary resource into his psyche. Your encounters with him helped me to understand what drives him, what his main weaknesses are. It also allowed me to predict your little rebellion, to snuff it out before it was too late.”

  “I’m g-going to k-kill you,” said Gaz, trying to clear the blockage in his throat. Why did he feel so cold?

  “No. You’re not,” said the President, crouching in front of him. “Pretty soon you won’t be much of anything, just like your mother.”

  Gaz wanted to scream, to shout, but all that came out of his throat was a blood-filled croak. He was dying.

  President Stormborn tossed a Polaroid photo onto his lap. “This is your Mum after I killed her. Pay attention to the knife work; I had some fun before I put a bullet through what was left of her skull.”

  Gaz looked at his Mum’s bloody corpse; she looked like she had lost a fight with a tin opener. It was all his fault, and now she was dead and so was he. He would have cried-out, but he had no breath left. He closed his eyes, blood frothing on his lips. He began to choke. Darkness took him like a drug.

  Vyleria looked into the dreadnut’s savage eyes. Its grip got tighter and tighter, she could barely breathe, its fingernails clawing at her jugular. Dimly, she heard breaking glass, the shrill whine of metal grinding against metal. Hands wrenched at her legs, tearing at her abdomen. Shivers of pain wracked her body. Why weren’t they injecting her with nanobots? Why weren’t they turning her into a dreadnut now she had turned off her shield? They pulled her out of the car; her head slammed against the front seat. So many hands…

  Vyleria looked at a seething mass of mechanical bodies, the pistol in her hand materialising soon after. She flicked the gun to rapid fire, obliterating half a dozen in an instant. She turned round to shoot the dreadnut who was holding her down, only for a huge weight to knock the pistol from her hand. It re-appeared moments later, but a tongue of flame shot out from the melee, severing her hand at the wrist.

  Vyleria shrieked, howled, cradling her bloody stump. She switched off her central pain nerve and recalled her pistol a second time, took aim at the line of dreadnuts.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I was you.”

  Vyleria spun around. Before her was a walking volcano, ash and pumice coursing over a lake of fire.

  Lava Man.

  “Why not?” she said, eyes darting from Lava man to the dreadnuts around him.

  “Because then I’ll have to take the other hand,” said Lava man. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll take the rest of you piece by piece; I’ll barbecue you like a bloody steak.”

  Vyleria looked him in the eyes. Fire, hate and madness.

  “Sensible as always,” said Lava man, watching her pistol drop to the floor.

  “Do I have a choice?” she said.

  “You never did,” he said. Up above the sky had started to darken again. More rain was on the way.

  “I… what is that?” she said, looking at the black swirling mass.

  “You know what it is,” said Lava man, eyes flashing in greedy anticipation.

  “The black oil?” said Vyleria uncertainly.

  “The final nail in the coffin for you and your band of intergalactic hitchhikers.”

  “But…”

  “You think Jack is going to rescue you? He’s got to get through the space sludge first and we both know that’s impossible without exploding the sun and destroying the Earth in the process.”

  “Jack… Jack’s alive?”

  “For now,” said Lava man, skin swirling like a river of tar. “I’ll deal with him later. After the conquest.”

  Vyleria started to laugh, howling hysterically.

  “What is it?” boomed Lava man, magma primed to erupt.

  “He’s alive! He’s alive!” she shouted. “You had us beaten, outnumbered, and he still found a way to outsmart you to. You can’t beat him! You never could; he’s going to come down here and kill you. He’s going to kill all of you!”

  Lava man smiled. Coldly, wickedly. “I’m sure he is,” he said, stroking her face. Her skin sizzled. Vyleria could smell her skin being seared like a steak. She closed her eyes, fear invading her like a tsunami. “Now that I’ve got you right where I want you. He will do absolutely anything for you, perhaps even surrender a planet.”

  “NEVER!” shouted Vyleria.

  “We’ll see about that,” said Lava man, his fingers digging into her chest, melting away her central pain nerve. She did scream then. Like wind whistling through a tunnel. “We’ll see about a lot of things.”

  The world erupted in a chaos of light and noise as dreadnut after dreadnut swarmed over Kat and Padget. Laser bolts thudded into their shields, hands grappled with their pistols. A black woman with frizzy hair, half her face obscured by metal, yanked at Padget’s arms, trying to grab his weapon. Her head erupted in an explosion of bolts and blood as he increased the explosive yield of his pistol. More followed. Bam. Bam. Bam. Hundreds of dreadnuts evaporated out of existence in an instant.

  “Come on!” shouted Kat, as a police helicopter whirred to a watery death in the Thames. “Let’s make for that building, get some cover, hold them off.” The sound of explosions filled the air, what sounded like an airplane screeched low over the city.

  Padget ran across the lime-green lawn as quickly as his feet would carry him. His heart hammered away in his chest, his breath quick and rapid, a sharp pain needled away at his left side. Stitch.

  He turned around, shot a young boy through the eye, then an old woman through the abdomen. More followed. He looked-up at the giant clock above them, his laser bolt shattering its face and the cybernetic policeman taking aim at them from the rafters. Glass rained down like white rain. He spun around, downed a silver-faced fireman with a barb to his gut, then dived through a doorway.

  “This way!” shouted Kat, slamming the door behind them.

  “Where are we going?” asked Padget, following Kat down a dark corridor.

  “Anywhere but here,” she said, as the door began to shake.

  They found them huddled together on lime-green benches. There had to be about a hundred people. From the look of the sharply-pressed suits, they were mostly politicians, though there w
ere also some cleaners, technicians, and what Padget took to be security personnel. Their faces looked haggard, drawn, worn-out.

  “Have you come to rescue us?” asked a lady in a deep blue dress. Her question was followed by murmurings from the crowd around her. She looked strong and regal, though she was clearly exhausted.

  “I…”

  “Yes, we have,” said Padget. “Tell them Kat; once Jack comes back we’ll get this all sorted out.”

  “No Padget, we won’t,” said Kat, facing him. Padget was surprised by what he saw: Kat looked like a mirror image of the old woman – pale, fatigued. Did he look like that?

  Kat sat down on one of the green benches, next to an elderly man with red-rimmed eyes and chalk-white hair. From the other end of the room they could hear banging. “They’ll break open that door soon,” said Kat. “And then after that…” There was wailing in the crowd now, muttering, some tears.

  “Well then we’ll just have to give them an old British welcome,” said the lady in blue, recovering some of her former vigour. She brandished what looked like a broken table leg.

  “But you don’t stand a chance,” said Kat, head in her hands, “not with that.”

  “No, I don’t suppose we do,” said the Prime Minister, “but we’ll try to do some damage at least, go out swinging as the Americans like to say, give them something to remember us by.”

  “She’s right,” murmured one man, followed by another.

  “I’m with the PM on this,” went up another, “get some weapons, anything, let’s show them the bulldog spirit. Remember Dunkirk.”

  The banging stopped.

  “What’s going on?” asked the Prime Minister. “Have they gone away?”

  “I don’t know,” said Kat, getting up from her seat. “I’ll just check.”

  Kat was half-way to the exit when the roof collapsed in a storm of glass and masonry.

  Blood, screams and panic.

  Padget saw the broken column too late, its ornately sculpted axis hitting his head with a sickening crunch.

  Darkness.

  The fire moved through the palace like a tornado, eating everything in its path. Masonry and glass exploded; wooden beams crashed to the ground, followed by an avalanche of tiles.

  Grunt fired at stumbling figures of metal and flesh, their weapon arms firing maniacally. One of the dreadnuts jumped out at him from the wreckage of a tomb, half its face on fire, the other half a mess of molten metal, only for it to stumble to the ground in a sprawling mass of flames, a hole where its abdomen used to be.

  “Come on!” hissed Xylem, his yellow eyes mirroring the flames. “Let’sss get out of here.”

  “But the people?”

  “Dead. There’sss only usss now.”

  Grunt followed Xylem out of the back of the palace and into a wide courtyard.

  Dreadnuts everywhere.

  Grunt cleaved in two a half-boy half-machine, then ran in the direction of another palace, a tide of mechanical ants trailing after him.

  A line of dreadnuts stood in his way.

  He barged through them like a battering ram, spattering a teenage girl’s brains all over a wall, jumped through a large wooden door.

  More dreadnuts.

  He barreled through them, space pistol set at maximum. Bodies melted, exploded, burnt to a cinder. Like him, like Xylem, like everybody in the whole universe, burning away in their own private hell. He coughed, spluttered, hacked up his chest, fell to his knees.

  “Grunt look out! Get out of there!”

  Grunt registered Xylem’s screams just in time to see the roof crash down on top of him, followed by an impenetrable wall of flames and smoke.

  The boy found himself staring at the cream-white ceiling. How long had he been unconscious for? Hours? Days? He glanced down and saw an acorn-sized hole in his abdomen, a wine-red pool of blood at his ankles. His mouth, throat yearned for water, his body for a doctor and a clean hospital bed. He got neither, only a slither of pain that jagged up and down his body like lightning.

  He would be with his mother soon and his Grandma, though he couldn’t for the life of him remember what they looked like. It must be a side-effect of dying, he thought, chuckling absent-mindedly to himself. Still, I will be with them soon, I’ll know what they look like then…another chuckle, then the strong draught of sleep.

  Gaz awoke as a raging fire tore through his stomach. He screamed, yelled, moaned. He needed death – quickly – urgently - anything to stop the pain, but it waited at a distance, biding its time.

  Why wasn’t he a dreadnut? Why did Stormborn leave him here like this, a drooling mess on the floor?

  Because he wants to torture you, to humiliate you, to prove to you his savagery, his power.

  What was that voice? His own?

  Does it matter?

  I guess not, thought Gaz, babbling uncontrollably. I’ll be dead soon anyway, we all will.

  Not unless you put a stop to it. Not unless you get up now and get your revenge.

  “I…”

  He killed your mother!

  “He did.”

  He tortured her, ridiculed her, made her suffer.

  “HE DID!”

  He betrayed you, betrayed his country, the entire planet.

  “HE DID! HE DID! HE DID!”

  Gaz thrust himself to his feet, ignoring the daggers of pain that cut through his chest. He staggered over to the chair opposite, fell to one knee, got up again, swayed, breathed deeply, lent against the table.

  Then he turned around, picked-up a bloody revolver from the table, stumbled from the room and down the corridor. Pain lanced his body, blood snaked down his stomach, legs, ankles. He kept on going. He might be dying, but he was not dead yet, not by a long shot. Stormborn was going to pay for what he had done to his mother, to the whole world.

  Minutes, perhaps hours later, Gaz opened the main hangar door, shielded his eyes from the bright desert sun, and stepped onto the baking tarmac. Endgame.

  Chapter Forty-One: The Black Sludge

  The black sheet slithered and squirmed, a thousand sonic cannon rounds thudding into it at a million miles per hour.

  Jack and the Earth/Asvari fleet had been bombarding the space sludge now for thirty minutes. So far it hadn’t even budged, let alone dissipate. How much longer would they have to wait?

  “Be careful down there!” shouted Jack as a TR3b swooped over the black oil, depositing its payload at point-blank range. “We don’t know…”

  The American spacecraft exploded as a wave of energy bounced off the space sludge, hitting it directly beneath the undercarriage.

  “I’ve already told you to wait, everything’s under control; we just have to be patient.”

  “But his family are down there,” said a voice. “He was just trying…”

  “Yes, and now he’s got himself killed,” said Jack, looking at the black sheet a thousand miles below him. It completely encompassed the Earth now, not a glimmer of light could be seen. “For nothing. Hold your position… at all costs.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as necessary,” said Jack, wondering how Earth was doing beneath that thick blanket. Had Vyleria been able to stop the dreadnuts? “We stick to the plan.”

  Minutes passed by like ticking bombs.

  “What’s that?” buzzed a voice in Jack’s ear. “It looks like a gap in the space sludge. We’ve won, it’s dissipating…”

  “Scan the Earth for lifeforms,” said Jack, his throat suddenly dry. He could feel the excitement rising in his chest.

  “I…”

  “What is it?” he asked. “Tell me!”

  Whoever had responded was crying.

  “Report! What’s going on?”

  “They’re gone,” said the voice.

  “What do you mean?” said Jack. “They can’t have killed everybody.”

  “That’s just what I’m trying to tell you,” said the shaking voice. “They’ve been turned. All of them.”
/>   “What?”

  Jack punched away at the electronic readout in front of him. His heart hammered away like thunder, his breath machine-gun rapid.

  The message hit him like a battering ram.

  Earth: population 8 billion.

  All of them dreadnuts.

  Chapter Forty-Two: Terms of Surrender

  “But that can’t be,” said Jack, feeling suddenly weak. What about Vyleria? Kat? Padget? Grunt? Xylem? “Our defences…”

  “WERE OVERCOME IN MINUTES. YOU NEVER STOOD A CHANCE.”

  “L-lava man,” said Jack, thoughts swirling. “How… how could you?”

  “DON’T PLAY THE FOOL JACK. YOU KNOW WHAT WE ARE CAPABLE OF, WHAT WE DO TO OUR ENEMIES. EARTH HAS SUFFERED THE CONSEQUENCES OF REBELLION. NO MORE, NO LESS.”

  “But…”

  “YOU MAY HAVE DESTROYED OUR FLEET, BUT IT CAN BE REBUILT. MY BROTHERS HAVE PERISHED, BUT IN TIME THEY CAN BE REPLACED.”

  “But…”

  “TELL ME, WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH YOUR FRIENDS?” Voice sinister, full of malice.

  “They are alive? How?”

  “YES, THEY ARE ALIVE. I SHIELDED THEM FROM YOUR SCANS. BUT WHETHER THEY STAY THAT WAY IS UP TO YOU.”

  “I’ll… I’ll do anything, please don’t hurt them. What do you want?”

  “I WANT YOU JACK. COME DOWN TO MY POSITION AT ONCE. ALONE. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?”

  “Yes… I’ll do as you ask,” said Jack, voice trembling. “Just give me a minute, don’t do anything rash.”

  “NO TRICKS!” boomed Lava man’s voice. “ANY SIGN OF SUBTERFUGE AND YOUR GIRLFRIEND IS THE FIRST TO DIE.”

  “Understood,” said Jack, voice laced with despair.

  “What are you doing?” asked Captain Hardecker. “It’s a trap; they’ll kill you for sure.”

  “That remains to be seen,” said Jack, trying to hide the disappointment in his voice. “Look, I’ve got this; this is my responsibility. Don’t attempt to follow me or do anything rash, it will jeopardise everything; pull back to lunar orbit immediately.”

  “But…”