Jack Strong and The Last Battle

by Heys Wolfenden

“Those are my orders Captain; I don’t want to give Lava man any excuses to kill the hostages.”

  “Of… of course,” said Captain Hardecker. Was he crying again? “Whatever you say.”

  The Earth and Asvari ships disappeared in several flashes of light. Jack was alone. Like always, he thought, looking down at the giant black snooker ball. He pulled his spaceship into a steep, elliptical path that briefly took him beyond the International Space Station, before looping through the window of clouds Lava man had made for him.

  The last battle had begun.

  Chapter Forty-Three: End Game

  Jack sailed through a grey sea of clouds, wind and hail caressing his hull.

  He had half expected the space sludge to close over his spaceship like a guillotine, but he had passed through unmolested. Lava man wanted to enjoy his sport before he lunged in for the final kill.

  He followed the co-ordinates Lava man had sent, descending slowly. At first all he could see was a mixture of clouds and vapour, but then he saw the funnels of smoke, the fires like an infestation. It was total environmental devastation. Most urban areas had been levelled; Earth was a blackened corpse. He wasn’t sure if it could be revived.

  He passed over Boston, New York, Washington D.C, St. Louis. He scanned as much as he dared. Nothing stirred, not even so much as a mouse or an insect. It looked like carnage, a mass extinction. Everything is linked together, he observed, passing the charred remains of three more states. Lines and lines of traffic, going nowhere; a still-birth.

  Soon the Great Nevada Hole came into view. It had been created during the first Scourge attack on Earth, almost two years ago, when they had detonated a black hole bomb or at least something like it deep within the confines of Area 51. It had eaten up the entire state of Nevada, plus strips of California, Utah and Arizona before it had stopped growing; millions had died, including Jack’s Mum and Dad in Las Vegas. It had been Earth’s worst wartime atrocity. Until now.

  Jack watched several boulders tumble off the edge into the gulf, their disappearance marked with flashes of blue fire. Then he banked right and headed towards a vast military base that hugged the edges of the hole. It looked to be as big as ten cities combined. What was Stormborn doing out here?

  The co-ordinates led him to an abandoned guard post on the edge of the abyss. Seven figures stood a few feet from the precipice.

  He landed his spaceship immediately, sand rising to greet him as he disembarked. The air stank of burnt flesh and gasoline.

  He walked towards the line of figures, their faces getting clearer, more distinct with every step. Was he doing the right thing? Was this the only way to save Vyleria and Earth? His mind whirred like razor blades.

  End game.

  Chapter Forty-Four: Hidden Dangers

  Jack eyed Lava man, Vyleria, and the dreadnuts next to them.

  There was a long leash tied around Vyleria’s neck, its silver surface flashing with electricity; every time she moved her face flickered with pain. She was bleeding from a deep cut to her forehead. Anger flared within his heart, but he doused the flames immediately. He looked at Kat, Padget, Grunt and Xylem; they were kneeling in a line along the rim of the Nevada hole. They all looked to be unharmed. For now. He knew what was going to happen next, depended on it. They were at his mercy now.

  “Let them go,” said Jack, his voice quivering slightly. “It’s me you want.”

  Lava man smiled. Eyes like fire. “BEG!”

  Jack blinked, went to his knees. “Please, don’t hurt her,” he said, looking into Vyleria’s tear-stained eyes. “I’ll do anything…”

  “YES, YOU WILL!” thundered lava man. Jack inched towards Vyleria. “YOU WILL DO A LOT OF THINGS; BUT FIRST LET’S DEAL WITH YOUR SPACESHIP…”

  Jack touched Vyleria’s fingertips; she smiled briefly before a current of pain shot through her. She writhed in agony. “Vyleria!”

  “You are a weakling Jack, always pandering to your emotions.”

  Jack looked up at the sound of his name. A man with ash grey hair and emerald green eyes stared back at him. The scar that ran down the left side of his cheek resembled a lightning bolt.

  Stormborn. How had he not noticed him before? Then he saw the steel mesh of circuits weaving up his neck and across the right side of his face.

  “You’re a dreadnut?”

  Stormborn shook his head malevolently. “I’ve been upgraded, enhanced; no more failures of the flesh. I am superhuman now, nothing can stop me.”

  “Except for them,” said Jack, glancing at Lava man. “They still hold your leash.”

  Stormborn grinned. Teeth like serrated knives. “We shall see; in time I may even be able to become more like them.”

  “Dark matter? You’re mad.”

  Stormborn shrugged. “There’s a thin line between sanity and madness, I’ll still live longer than you though.”

  A smile flickered across Jack’s face. “It’s good that you’re like this, it washes away the guilt.”

  “YOU HUMANS TALK TOO MUCH,” interrupted Lava man. “IT’S TIME WE MOVED ONTO THE MAIN COURSE.”

  Jack spun around as a bolt of lightning jagged from a bank of clouds, ripping his spaceship in two. It collapsed to the boulder-strewn desert in a chaos of flames and smoke. One more carcass amongst many…

  “How did you do that?” said Jack. “Your ships couldn’t lay a finger on me in orbit.”

  “WE IMPROVE, ADVANCE,” said Lava man, “MUCH AS YOU DO, ONLY QUICKER AND WITH MORE FINESSE; IT’S A SHAME THIS WEAPON WASN’T READY FOR THE RECENT BATTLE, BUT NO MATTER – WE WILL SOON BE AT OUR FULL STRENGTH AGAIN. THERE’S LOTS OF DARK MATTER IN THE UNIVERSE AND IT DOESN’T TAKE MUCH TO MAKE IT SENTIENT; IT WAS THE GALACTIC ALLIANCE AFTER ALL THAT STARTED THE PROCESS, GAVE US BEING, INTELLIGENCE.”

  “What?”

  “THEY NEVER TOLD YOU? FIGURES… TOO PROUD TO ADMIT TO THEIR OWN MISTAKES. THEY TRIED TO TERMINATE THEIR EXPERIMENT AT ITS GESTATION, BUT WE ESCAPED FROM THE RESEARCH STATION WHERE WE WERE HELD AND THEN WENT ON TO INFEST THE UNIVERSE LIKE A CONTAGION. IN TIME WE MAY EVEN BECOME STRONGER THAN WHAT WE WERE…”

  Jack held onto Vyleria. Tight. Like a vice. He looked upwards at a rapidly brightening sky. “No, you won’t.”

  A brilliant ray of sunshine suddenly speared through the space sludge. It shot outwards, spreading in all directions like an electric web. In moments the darkness drifted away, replaced by puffy white clouds and a deep blue sky. Jack grabbed Vyleria’s arm as a thunderous explosion rippled through the upper atmosphere, followed by a deluge of red rain.

  The ten dreadnuts that surrounded them dropped to the ground, metal skin and electrical circuits melting away. Stormborn fell to his knees, his face awash with fire. He howled in agony.

  “What have you done?” shouted Lava man, Vyleria yanked violently from Jack’s grasp.

  A spear of light arced towards Lava man from a spaceship skipping through the lower atmosphere, only for it to bounce off an energy field. He pulled Vyleria close, black fingers digging into Vyleria’s cheeks; her skin burning, searing, melting away. She screamed, yelled, cried for mercy. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” Lava man yelled again, fingers pushing into her jaw, mouth. “I DESTROYED YOUR SHIP, THIS ISN’T POSSIBLE!”

  “You destroyed ‘a’ ship,” said Jack, unable to take his eyes away from Vyleria, unable to believe what was happening.

  “What?”

  “Your hubris has gotten the better of you, Lava Man; it always did.” Jack was shouting now. “You failed to note your change in circumstances; when you lost your fleet you also lost your ability to detect objects in near-Earth space. Before I came here, I flew out of range of your radar for a few micro-seconds and cloned my spaceship. I then sent it on a mission to collect a solar flare, since the sun’s particles are the only thing in the universe that can kill the space sludge. The last thing the pilot of our spaceship did before she destroyed your black hole bomb was give me a weaponized anti-dreadnut vaccine. What do you think this red rai
n is?”

  Jack checked the readout on his holowatch, showed it to Lava man. Population eight billion. All human.

  Jack grinned. “It’s over Lava man, you are beaten; despite all you have done I am prepared to offer you full clemency in accordance with Earth law…”

  “So be it,” said Lava man, fingers grasping for Vyleria’s throat, flesh smoking, burning.

  “No!” yelled another voice, followed by the whip crack of a pistol.

  Bodies collided, voices moaned; the air crackled with pistol and laser fire.

  Darkness.

  Chapter Forty-Five: Last Goodbyes

  “I’ve got you. Just… just hold on.”

  Fingers strained for purchase, feet scrambled against rock, earth.

  Voices swirled in the morning air like sirens. Panic. Confusion. Pain.

  “I can’t stop the bleeding.” Someone was yelling. Kat? “There’s so much blood!”

  More voices, more screaming, the sound of something heavy hitting the ground.

  Jack looked at Vyleria, saw Lava man plummet into the abyss before his eyes. He disintegrated like a cloud of volcanic ash.

  “Vyleria, I’m not going to let you…”

  Jack was cut short by a burst of bright light. There was a man on fire, his hands around Vyleria’s ankles. Flames grappled with his legs, arms, torso, twisting up his face like venomous snakes, stinging his eyes, clawing at his mouth.

  “Vyleria!”

  “Jack, he’s too heavy; I… I can’t get him off me. He won’t let go.”

  “No, you’ve got to hold on.”

  “Jack! I can’t hold onto you much longer.” Was that Padget?

  “No! You’ve got to… got to!”

  More twisting. More screaming. Gravity yanked at them like a hungry predator, the flames jumping from Stormborn’s arms to Vyleria’s legs.

  A peculiar smell filled the air. It made Jack want to scream, wretch.

  “Let me go…”

  “I… I can’t…”

  “You must.” She was crying now, pleading. “I love you.”

  “No Vyleria.”

  “Please.”

  “No!”

  “It’s been swell Jack, you’re the best boyfriend a girl could wish for, the only...” Flames licked at her hair, face.

  “NO!”

  Jack felt her fingers uncurl themselves from his, watched the flames consume her as she dropped into infinity.

  Chapter Forty-Six: Aftershocks

  “Let me go! Let me go! I can still rescue her, she’s not dead, she’s not dead!”

  “She’s gone Jack!” yelled a green figure in front of him. “Come back from the edge; I’m not losing you too.”

  Jack felt his legs turn to rubber, the energy seeping from them in a flood. At first, he thought that he was in shock, then he saw the second stun round connect with his abdomen.

  More numbness. A wave of dizziness washed over him. His vision wavered like heat rising from tarmac in summer. He felt weak, stumbled around like a small-town drunk.

  Darkness took him like the grave.

  Chapter Forty-Seven: Last Embers

  Jack re-played Vyleria’s last moments again in his head. So much fire. So much pain. So much blood.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  The green boy in front of him nodded, rubbed his eyes. “I’m afraid so, Jack.”

  “But what if she survived somehow, what if she’s on the other side of the Nevada hole right now, waiting for us?”

  Padget looked at Jack with a solemn look on his face. He shook his head, started crying again. “I’m sorry Jack, if the fire didn’t kill her, then the abyss would have. There’s no way out of that thing, it disintegrates everything it touches; you know as much as anybody…”

  Jack thrust his head in his hands, his body seized by violent tremors; the sounds that came from his throat were coarse, savage, almost inhuman. He stayed like that for a very long time.

  “How are you feeling Jack? It’s been days…”

  “I know… I just couldn’t… not after what happened… I…”

  “Jack, it’s okay you don’t have to explain yourself; you were in shock, you probably still are. You lost…”

  “Vyleria,” said Jack, trying to see her as the beautiful girl she was, not the tumbling ball of fire she became at the end. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “But I’ve things to do, a people and a planet to save.”

  “Don’t worry Jack, we’re taking care of it… rest.”

  “No,” said Jack, a little angrier than he intended. “I can’t stay here; I’ve got to get out of this bed. I’ve got to do SOMETHING.”

  “It’s okay Kat,” said Padget striding up next to her. His hand stroked her arm, shoulder.

  Jack looked at Kat and Padget. He used to touch Vyleria like that, used to feel her warm body next to his, her heart beating against his heart; he wanted to hold her now more than anything in the whole universe.

  “He’s free to do what he wants,” continued Padget, “besides it will be good for him, to see all the changes he’s brought about.”

  “Change?” asked Jack, removing his head from his hands.

  “Get up and see,” said Padget.

  Jack gingerly stepped off the bed; he felt weak, drained, like he hadn’t moved or eaten in days. He turned around. A huge green mound appeared in front of him, its grassy slopes decorated with woods, rivers, and a few flocks of sheep. Birds flitted through the air like firecrackers, a squirrel scampered up the trunk of an oak tree, and through it all the sun shone like a huge golden medallion.

  Rockingdale. His home.

  Jack looked through the window again and saw an assortment of cars dazzling down the road, a few neighbours were on their way to buy the day’s groceries or else walk their dog in the park. It looked astonishingly peaceful, like paradise.

  “But how?”

  “You don’t remember?” asked Kat.

  Jack shook his head.

  “We took you in here after your… after your collapse.”

  “Then we’re in a…”

  “Simulation,” said Padget, stroking Kat’s arm again. “The real world isn’t half so lucky.”

  “Can I see?” asked Jack.

  Padget nodded. “But you’ve got to do it yourself; we aren’t going to spoon feed you with information. Come into the control room, you’ll know more about the world then.”

  Jack nodded wearily. He didn’t know what else he could do.

  He terminated the program and staggered out of his bedroom and into the long silver corridor. After walking a few paces, he turned right and entered the control room. It looked like a Christmas tree with all its blinking lights and flashing panels; then he glanced at the view screen.

  He stared out at a huge crowd, their faces lit-up by several floating balls of light in the sky. Then they began to cheer and scream and shout his name: “Jack! Jack! Jack!” He heard strange terms like ‘hero’ being chucked around, then there was ‘saviour’, ‘miracle’, ‘hope’. He even heard them shout “Jack Strong for President!” at one point.

  “What is this?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

  “You’re a hero Jack,” said Kat, a huge smile stretched across her face. “You saved them, you saved them all. You dealt with Lava man, the Scourge, President Stormborn; the anti-dreadnut virus that you detonated in the upper atmosphere worked perfectly, and of course you put a stop to the black oil. Billions of people on a myriad of planets are alive today because of you.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” said Jack, staring at the multitude of faces. “I’m not worthy of this adulation…”

  “Oh no?” said Padget. “Listen to some of their stories - as we have - then you’ll believe.”

  “I…”

  “Who wants to speak to Jack?” Padget asked the crowd. The crowd erupted into a chorus of “Me! Me! Me!” “Okay, you then,” said Padget pointing at a young black boy near the front of the melee.


  “Thanks Jack,” said the boy, his one shoe clasped tightly in his hands. He couldn’t have been much older than nine or ten. A woman with black curly hair smiled broadly behind him. “Because of you the nightmare ended, and I got to see my mom again, we are going to do so many cool things now.”

  “You,” said Padget, pointing at a grey-haired man with cracked spectacles. “Tell him your story.”

  “Thanks Jack,” smiled the man, his thin white beard ruffled by the wind. “My wife might not have made it, but I got my daughter and grand-daughter back and I’m plenty grateful for that.”

  “Me too!” echoed a round-faced woman behind him. “And me,” agreed another. Many others were nodding.

  “I’m not sure what to say,” said Jack, at first just to the boy and the older man, but then to the rippling sea of faces. “I was just trying my best, trying not to give in, to stand up to the bullies; I was lucky I guess.”

  “It doesn’t matter, you tried,” said a tall Hispanic man wearing combat fatigues. “And you succeeded and now most of us are safe; the Scourge can’t hurt us anymore.”

  “Yeah, we have peace now,” said a woman wearing a white flannel shirt. Her green eyes shone like sunlight reflected off a lake. “And sure, we might be on our knees right now, but in time we can re-build and prosper; we are on the cusp of a new age of technology and exploration, and it’s all because of you Jack.”

  The woman’s voice was answered by a sea of murmurs. “Okay thanks,” said Jack, not knowing what else to say in the circumstances. “I’ll try not to let you down, but right now we’ve got to re-build and get help to those who deserve it. Go back to your homes and families if you still have them, re-build your communities.”

  “But what if there’s no food, no electricity, no shelter?”

  Jack looked the swarthy, barrel-chested man in the eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it, I promise; what’s left of the Asvari and Earth military will help too.” The man made to protest. “You have my word,” said Jack. “All of you do.”