Other Tales: Red Washed Earth

[Hela]

The TARDIS played out the life of a woman displaced by time and likely splintered into an innumerable number of alternate existences. In a multiverse, you certainly could find a degree of immortality, but if there were any number of you, how unique did that make you?

An Earth. Assailed by creatures.

A small group of elite soldiers fresh from a suicide mission. Unfortunately for them, their war wasn't finished. They had yet to fulfil the quota of suffering dictated by forces immeasurable and unknowable. It was the green lady, the purple demon, and the angry metal husband. Three splintered souls intertwined with the TARDIS and its American incarnation of the Time Lord who was bound to the ailing machine.

***​

In a swirl of white and blue lights, Piper and the four survivors from the lunar mission materialized, their bodies all literally collapsing onto the street as they appeared. Still on her feet due to a few years of adjusting to long-range teleportation, the redheaded lieutenant turned her eyes to the west, where she could just barely see the moon.

From the Earth, the chunk of rock looked as it always had—gray and cratered. No one would be able to tell that the entire planet had been saved at the cost of two soldiers and a mutant with the power to stop time. Piper wondered how many other souls had perished with that installation, but she had little time to dwell on it as fresh figures filled the skies, descending from the Red Stallion mothership that hung a few miles above Central City.

With the ship’s main weapon robbed of its ability to function, the invaders would be forced to take the city the old fashioned way. As Piper helped her wounded allies to their feet, the first of the Stallion ships started firing down at the city. The evening sky light up as the vibrant beams of energy slammed down into buildings, abandoned vehicles, and the streets. Almost immediately, entrenched defenders fired back with concealed anti-air weapons. Piper watched with a faint smile as the experimental weapons served to be on par with the alien aircraft. Several of the sleek Stallion ships spiraled and crashed to the ground. Those that survived veered up, trying to escape the range of the brilliant, white plasma bursts. Of that initial squadron, only a handful made it back to the safety of hangers.

Whilst the sight of the ships being downed brought a little joy to the faces of the grimy lunar survivors, their hopes for an easy victory were short-lived. The mother ship itself began to let loose from its surface armaments, raining down a horrifying sleet of energized shots that tore blasted those city blocks that contained anti-air turrets. The quintet was safe for the moment, as the nearest blasts made landfall a few blocks south of them.

Once the main ship’s display died down, however, they were faced with fresh horrors as more ships started to spew forth. Many were the same fighters that had participated in the earlier strikes, but several were a new variety. Piper had here guess as to their function, so when they started releasing drop pods and aerial soldiers, she wasn’t entirely surprised.

“They’re landing troops… this isn’t going to be a pretty battle,” Staff Sergeant Mitchell whispered as he tried to pull the group out of the street and to the cover a nearby abandoned shop. “With communications back online, we need to reestablish contact with General Gauger and the remainder of the city defenders.”

Piper pulled out her mobile phone and scowled at what she saw. “Cellular services still aren’t online.”

“Does that mean we failed?” Sigfried asked as one of the tranports took a direct hit to its starboard flank. The vessel suddenly and rapidly went up in flames as it plunged from the sky and slammed hard into a building a few streets over.

Must have been struck in the fuel tank or perhaps a fusion engine… Piper made a note not to forget that as she turned her attention back to a frowning Mitchell.

“The service providers are still probably offline, which means we’re going to have to go with a more reliable form of communication.” The noncom glanced down the street and scowl at something before turning back to the group. “We’re equidistant from two points-of-interest. We got the radio station and a nearby cellular provider. If we can reach either, we can hail the general and figure out a way to meet up with the bulk of the defense. The last thing we need is to survive an off-planet mission only to get cut off and encircled.”

“Can’t you just zap us to both of those places?” Sigfried inquired, looking over a Piper.

The redhead, who’s face was still stained with blood, shook her head. “I’m not familiar with this part of town, but I’ll see what I can do.”

Staff Sergeant Mitchell shook his head. “I’ll go solo to the cellular station to see if I can get the towers working again. I know the way and can get there faster on foot. Are you familiar with South Water Street, Piper?”

The lieutenant shook her head as a Stallion fighter blossomed into a vibrant yellow-orange explosion less than fifty yards north of their position. A few shards of twisted steel skittered on the street in front of the store. “Well—” Mitchell started before pausing to glare at a transport touching down on the next street west of them. “You need to head south about six blocks until you reach South Water, and then you need to take that west to Grand. There’s one of those edgy underground radio stations operating out of building there. The equipment is pretty small and mostly concealed, so it might escape interest. Do you follow?”

She honestly had very little idea, but with drop pods now touching down barely a block north of them, she didn’t have time for more questions. “Yes. Now let’s go.”

With a lax salute that seemed more like a farewell than military decorum, Staff Sergeant Mitchell checked the condition of his rifle and sprinted across the street to an alley. A few rounds from small arms peppered the street, but the noncom got through unscathed and was gone, leaving the other four to figure out their next plan.

“Hold on tight,” Piper muttered as she teleported the group. In a swirl of lights, they reappeared near the end of the street. Trixie let out a gasp as the demon fell onto her haunches and clapped a hand over her bruised mouth. Abigail, already pale, seemed also on the verge of sickness. “We’ll jump one more time and go on foot.”

Just as the words left Piper’s mouth, a fighter screamed down from above the city and released a quick series of laser bursts down into the street where the group had materialized. Before any of them had a real chance to react, they were scattered by the force of the dive bombing. The redheaded lieutenant felt something tear into her side as her feet left the ground. A beat later, she hit something solid and blacked out for a few moments.

When she came too, the formerly nondescript street looked as if it had barely survived the apocalypse. The handful of cars left parallel parked on the sides of the road were either upturned or smashed into the shattered asphalt. Massive pockmarks dotted the center of the block, and many of the neighboring buildings were in flames, missing chunks, or a little of both. The thick haze of dust and smoke made it hard for the woman to see as she pulled her body up out of the cratered sidewalk and took a few wobbly steps forward.

“Piper!” Although Sigfried was just a yard or two away from her, his voice seemed far off and almost mute. The youth, his clothes now bearing an extra layer of dust and some fresh fraying, ran over to the woman and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Piper!” He repeated as his friend’s dazed eyes seemed to roll back in forth in their sockets.

“Damn it.” Pulling the woman along, Sigfried weaved through two cars that had been hurtled into storefronts from the attack. Piper started to regain a little of her senses as he led her between the smoldering wrecks to where their other two companions were concealing themselves.

“How long?”

“Since the attack? Like thirty seconds. I saw where everyone was thrown by the explosions…we’re all fortunate none of those blasts hit one of us.”

“Agreed,” Piper muttered, her voice still slurred as she looked over at Abigail and Trixie. “We have to keep moving… otherwise we’re going to be torn to pieces.”

***

Kalen was silent despite the ruckus and general loudness of the Excalibur’s command bridge. In front of the king, the satellite feed of the planet’s moon was still open, showing the smoldering remains of the lunar base. Whatever blast had torn through the place had been absolute in its destruction. Part of the base now rested at the bottom of a gorge, while much of the remaining superstructure had been sheared away by the series of explosions and thrown out of orbit. From the reports, there had been no survivors.

Icarus… Another frown spread across the monarch’s blue visage as he stared a hole through the display. Somewhere in the ruins of that structure or in the field of debris lay the corpse of his eldest son. Intelligence on the presence of the saboteurs had been jumbled in transmission, which meant no one had been dispatched to assist the prince and his security force. This is my fault.

“The death of the Crown Prince will be avenged, Kalen, you should have no worries of this.” The sound of Varen’s voice caused the king’s fists to clench. The monarch knew that his friend and chief military officer would have received all correspondence from any of their outposts. Varen, with all his desire for a grand, mass-scale invasion, did not escape Kalen’s scrutiny.

“I just can’t believe such important intelligence would fail to be transmitted properly, especially with our complete supremacy over digital and radio networks.” The king muttered as his gaze moved to the unfolding ground and air attack on Central City. He knew full-well that his remark was intended to be leading, but he also knew that Varen was just as smart and quick-witted as he could be.

“I’ve purged most of the junior officers in that division. They were moved to the punishment brigades, and I am certain that as we speak they are regaining their honor on the field.”

What the General left unsaid was the fact that those same communications officers would be blown to pieces before they could be properly questioned. “Well it looks like you got your siege,” Kalen remarked as one of the skyscrapers on the screen was blown in half by a crashing fighter.

“Siege?” Varen said with an arrogant snicker. “This will be a massacre.”

Kalen scowled without turning to look at the general. Varen seems to be getting everything he wants lately… at the expense of everyone else. A glimpse at the feed from the moon only served to assure the monarch that he would have to keep a closer eye on his longtime friend.

***

The quartet fell back, their eyes wild as they scrambled for cover from the approaching foot soldiers. With Staff Sergeant Mitchell rushing to reach the underground radio station, the group was frantically trying to locate the cellular provider in the area. Unfortunately, they were all battered and bloodied, having barely escaped with their lives from several groups of landing enemy squads. Even Sigfried, who could normally appear flawless despite suffering grievous injuries, had the appearance of someone who’d be put through a meat grinder.

“There!” Piper screamed as she pointed to a building down the block. “A police office, we can bunker down there until they pass.” She knew it wasn’t the smartest idea to stop running from the army on their tails, but after everything they’d gone through, they needed to be able to pause. While she didn’t doubt Sigfried or hers ability to press on until they were on the verge of death, Trixie and Abigail were far more human than they were. The valkyrie, trapped as she was in a fleeting mortal shell, was ghost white from the blood still oozing from three wounds. Abigail, who was supporting the demon, hadn’t be shot but was on the verge of collapse from lugging the extra weight.

“Is this smart? Let me hold them while the three of you escape into the side streets,” Sigfried rasped as he and Piper paused to let the lieutenant lay down some suppressing fire.

“No,” Piper shouted, flashing a glare at the young man. “We stay together. We already lost Shane and the others, I won’t allow anyone to get killed or martyr themselves.” She could tell he was contemplating ignoring the order, but after another moment, Sigfried nodded and followed Piper up into the building.

Slamming the door behind them, the group threw up a small, albeit pointless barricade and rushed toward the interior of the precinct. Making their way around a large fountain that dominated the center of the surprisingly spacey lobby, they veered past a small secretarial station toward a set of double doors. The whole building seemed to shake as they crossed two small rooms and proceeded up a wide staircase to the second floor. They burst into a small waiting room with a pair of couches and a vending machine.

“What’s the next move?” Sigfried asked as he helped Abigail sit down on one of the couches. The blonde has lost all the color from her face, and the piece of shrapnel in her side wasn’t doing any wonders for her health.

Next to Abigail, however, Trixie Zulenka was frantic. Having not eaten or drank anything since being torn from her comatose husband, the demon was on the verge of collapse. The fact that she had taken a few hits and been slashed by flying shards of metal did little to improve her constitution.

“You need to eat something,” Piper wheezed to the bloodied woman as she helped her over to the vending machine. “Lovely selection…”

“Don’t bother,” Trixie muttered after lifting her head up to look at the machine. “I’m not going to survive this, and you know it.”

“Then just humor me,” the former medic shot back as she cracked open the machine with a swift kick. Bags of candy, chips, and chocolates spewed forth onto the ground, but before Piper could stoop to collect something, the building took a direct hit from a Stallion fighter’s payload.

For the second time in the last twenty minutes, Piper momentarily lost consciousness.

When the world returned, the soldier already knew something wasn’t right. The waiting room was out in front of her now, and her sides were flanked by puffy pink insulation. Grimacing, the woman tried to move forward, only to find that something was impeding her movement. A glance down through the thick, soup-like haze revealed that she’d smashed through part of the concrete interior wall and been impaled by at least three pieces of rebar.

With her eyes clamped shut, particles of white and blue lights flickered around Piper once, twice, and then she finally dematerialized. A beat later, she appeared just outside the spot where she’d caved in the wall. Ignoring the bleeding, she limped forward, her good hand outstretched and trying to clear away some of the fallout that clouded up what had once been the waiting room.

“Ab…” Piper’s frail voice trailed off as her legs gave out, and before she knew what had happened, she was facedown on what had once been a carpet. Spitting the blood from her mouth, the lieutenant planted bloodstained palms on the floor and pushed herself up. A few yards in front of her, she could spot a form lying lifeless on the scorched ground.

No. While her body was to the point of breaking, the voice in Piper’s head still had enough strength to will her battered self up to a fully vertical position. Lurching forward, she made it a few paces before collapsing next to the still body of Abigail Reckner. From the corner of her eye, she could see Trixie crumbled against a blackened chunk of wall that had survived the series of bombs. Part of the ceiling had fallen in front of the woman, who seemed to be trying to liberate herself from under a wooden beam.

“Abigail?” Piper pleaded as she placed her hands on the woman’s shoulders and jostled them gently. No response came from the corporal, whose normally vibrant eyes continued their vacuous gaze at where the ceiling had once been. Tears welled up in the corner of Piper’s eyes as the reality slowly started to set in. “...No!” The former medic’s pathetic shriek fell upon only one other set of ears, those of Trixie Zulenka, who had managed to free her crushed legs from beneath the beam.

“It’s… it’s not too late,” the demon whispered, her voice no louder than a mouse as she dragged herself over to Piper.

“I can’t heal the dead, Trixie!” The soldier rasped as she drew her lover’s body up into her shivering arms and squeezed her close, never wanting to let go for what could be the last time.

“Of c-c-course you can, y...you j-just need more strength.”

“What are you talking about?” Piper growled as she looked over at the dying demon.

“Remember Namek?” Trixie asked as she placed a bloody, three-fingered hand on her friend’s shoulder. “V-vad’s still alive...we can do the same thing as before.”

Piper knew exactly what the demon was talking about. Trixie had used the demonic technique to combine the two of them and Vad into a wholly unique creature born from their powers and linked to their memories. That same thing had murdered their would-be killers and proceeded to go on a rampage that reduced much of Ja City to ruins. Had the gestalt not exhausted itself in the defense of the child that now bore her name, Viper may have continued on her merry way.

“Will… will this one burn out like the last one?” Piper asked in a soft voice as she glanced back down at her dead lover.

“I don’t know,” Trixie spoke before having to spit up some more blood. “But with Vad all but dead, I… I can’t face the thought of dying this way when I know he won’t be there for me. Maybe this way...maybe this way he and I can be together in a way. And Abigail could live for all of us.”

It was then that Piper knew this decision was fueled in part by the other woman’s own desperation to be with the one she loved. “Just...just do it, Trixie.”

Tears mixed with blood on the demon’s normally beautiful face. “Y-y-you were always like a sister to me, Piper. Thank you…” With that last, compassionate remark, Trixie Zulenka slumped to the ground, never to rise again. Her corpse lingered for a few moments before silently disintegrating into a pink mist.

Half a continent removed from the fighting, Glaed watched somberly as the braindead form of Vad Zulenka twitched. The saiyan’s eyes snapped open for a brief moment before his body collapsed like a house of cards into a pink mist that lingered only a heartbeat. Knowing already what she’d witnessed, the alien strode forward and calmly turned off the machines that had been monitoring the saiyan’s vitals just a few moments prior.

At first, there was nothing, and Piper was certain that Trixie had died before she could complete whatever the process entailed.

“Where’s Trixie?” The redhead looked up to see a badly wounded Sigfried emerge from the haze. His features were marred by a bruise and some soot, and his trademark hooded sweatshirt was shredded and missing an entire sleeve. “Wait, is that Abigail?”

“They’re all gone.” The lieutenant muttered as she looked down to see a pink smog leeching up out of the floor. “Not this again…”

As Sigfried watched with horror, the pink cloud surged up out of the floor and forced itself through Piper’s mouth, eyes, and nose. She held onto the corpse and refused to scream, despite the horrible discomfort. In a few moments, it subsided, and she felt a wave of euphoria rush over her as the aches in her bones faded. Lifting her head up from Abigail’s chest, Piper looked at her glowing palm and smiled faintly. She placed the palm on the woman sternum and felt a surge of electricity pass through her and into the body.

With a gasp, Abigail opened her eyes and started to erratically suck in breaths of air as her lungs tried to get back into operating order.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” Piper cooed as she helped her lover up into a seated position. The redhead then looked up at Sigfried, who wore a horrified look on his face. Before she could address the youth, the lieutenant felt a chill run down her spine. Falling away from a still confused Abigail, Piper rose to her feet on shaking legs and looked over at her two remaining allies. She winced as wisps of translucent energy began to cloud her vision.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” With a horrified shriek, Piper threw out her arms as jets of purple-pink energy erupted outward from her sleeves and neck, consuming her body and half-blinding her companions.

Glaring through the bright glow, Sigfreid tried to take a step toward the woman-turned-pillar of searing energy when he was suddenly and violently thrown backwards by an explosion.

When he managed to regain his bearings, he realized that the glow was gone, and in its wake, much of the room was now actively on fire. In the center of the bombed-out husk of the police station, someone who was almost Piper was standing where she had been, her lithe figure draped in the shredded remnants of the lieutenant’s fatigues.

“Piper?” Abigail, likewise thrown back by the concussive blast, was already on her feet and making her way toward the center of the room. She made it a few paces before the woman held up a hand and froze her dead in her tracks. A grunt escaped the muscled soldier’s frame as she struggled against unseen forces. As Sigfried watched, almost-Piper walked over to Abigail and looked her over as if she were a complicated logic puzzle.

“I feel like I should probably have some idea who you were…” The new woman’s voice sounded close enough to Piper to make Sigfried shudder, but it was a little huskier than that of Lieutenant Juunanagou. Her eyes were green and, aside from a blonde highlight, her hair was that same shade of red. The facial features, however, weren’t as rough as Piper—the foundations were the same but they lacked the weathered varnish from years of turmoil.

As Sigfried mulled over everything, almost-Piper held out her other hand and pressed a finger against Abigail’s lips as the soldier struggled to speak. A grunt escaped from the corporal as she went limp and collapsed to the floor. Before the youth could react, there was a shadow over him and he couldn’t move his limbs.

“The sculpted woman’s brain says you’re Sigfried Hunin.” Despite his attempts to struggle, the shapeshifter found himself staring into those unnerving green eyes. As he stared at the harsh-yet-soft features, he realized where he’d seen them before.

Vad… I’d recognize that glare anywhere.

A smile spread across the woman’s visage as she released the young man and let him collapse back onto the floor. “Mommy, Mommy, and Daddy—that’s right.” The redhead smiled as she looked down at the tattered remains of Piper’s fatigues. “I guess that makes me Viper?” Sigfried looked up to see those eyes staring down at him and a twisted grin that resembled nothing he’d ever see on Piper’s visage. In the skies above, something exploded, catching the woman’s attention for a brief moment. “Well that certainly looks exciting!”

With that, she erupted into the sky, leaving a distraught Abigail Reckner and an unnerved, confused Sigfried in her wake.

 

[Hela]

The gestalt emerged from the ruins of building and into a skyline torn asunder by constant explosions. She knew from the memories of the two beneath her that she was looking out across the Earth’s largest city. From the look of things, most of it was under siege from the air and the ground. Ships crisscrossed the skyline and rained death upon whoever they get line up in their targeting reticles. On the ground, machines of war ground across the pavement, crushing anything beneath them as they unloaded bursts of concentrated plasma into anything that moved.

Throughout the chaos, the humans skittered around, trying to defend themselves. Try as they might, they were using inferior weapons, and their numbers weren’t concentrated enough. Most of the people down below weren’t even soldiers—they registered as drops of rainwater against a massive ocean. Fortunately for them, they were the gestalt’s people.

Viper watched silently as the scene continued to unfold around her. High up in the sky, a vessel the size of a large city hovered just below the clouds. She could sense the concentration of power inside of it—immense signatures that radiated ki signatures that blazed like supernovas.

In all the madness, she couldn’t help but grin at the frailty of these entities.

A ship veered toward her—its shimmering barrels shifting and clicking as they locked into her stationary position. Bursts of ki screamed toward, lancing through the skies like the fists of an angry god. The fusion held up a hand and withheld a wider grin as the high-powered weaponry washed over her without leaving the slightest inclination of a lasting impression. Something exploded around her, but she simply closed her eyes as a wave of heated debris washed passed her body.

On the other end of the exchange, the pilot inside the craft had one split-second of glee after the blasts exploded in the sky above the ruined police station. His mirth was cut short when he quickly realized that the energy source was unmoved and unimpeded. A beat later, he threw up his hands as a blinding green light tore through his cockpit and reduced him to ash a moment before tearing through the floor of his ship.

The Red Stallion fighter promptly plunged from the sky and twirled through the air above Central City before exploding inside an office building. Still brandishing a smile only a saiyan mother could love, the gestalt known as Viper cracked her knuckles and flexed her mind. Her ki senses washed over the entirety of the city, and in a matter of moments, she knew where these things were located. She could tell where they were traveling based on their current location and the routes they had taken. Years worth of tactical studies that she herself had never lived gave her all the intel she would need to intercept the aliens.

“Too easy.” The woman whispered as she descended to the streets of Central City. Her hands tingled with the warmth of ki as the column of warriors rounded the corner twenty yards in front of her position. Two armored convoys whirred and burped as their payloads sprayed at nearby targets. Viper knew that they were firing at nothing—simply destroying for the sake of it. Her hands shined with green light as they vanished beneath two growing orbs of ki.

“Destruction for destruction’s sake,” Viper snickered before launching herself into the platoon.

***​

Through some inane twist of fuckery, Sigfried Hunin was the last sane person on two feet.

The haggard youth stumbled forward with one hand pushing against the wall of the station. Over his shoulder, the unconscious form of Corporal Abigail Reckner hung, her short bob of hair swishing back in forth in rhythm as she was ushered from the war zone. The woman had lost consciousness shortly after the exeunt of the Piper-Vad-Trixie gestalt. Apparently, reanimation could fray someone’s nerves to their breaking point.

Somewhere in the distance, Sigfried heard the rapport of a building bustin’ explosion.

Something from the Stallions?

…or not-Piper?

The gestalt wasn’t physically close, but it’s power burned bright enough that the youth could sense it from nearly a dozen blocks away. Something like that had no right to exist in this world, let alone this universe. Energy seethed from the creature like the tendrils of some underwater leviathan.

Another explosion tore through the ground with too much ease. From the corner of his eye, Sigfried saw through a glassless window as part of a building across the way shifted before crumbling into a twisted memory. If he didn’t hustle, this police station would be Abigail’s tomb, and on this occasion, he didn’t think there would be any self-sacrificing medical officers to literally tear her from heaven.

Abigail muttered something, and Sigfried felt her muscles momentarily seize up. He half-expected her to start thrashing, but the flash of consciousness fizzled as she fell lax against his grimy back. Where did he go from here? Piper was his connection with whatever force was supposed to be organizing this defense. All he had on him was a few coins and half a stick of unchewed gum.

Piper was the one with the damn ideas and schemes and plans. Had she mentioned some kind of radio? Everything was moving too quickly, and Sigfried found himself too rushed to try and connect the dots. The lieutenant had been leading them to their next goal.

And then she went and merc’d herself.

Some level head she had.

KABOOM

The young man’s feet left the ground within a heartbeat of the too-close explosion. For a moment, Sigfried thought the motherfuckers had finally gone and popped the planet.

It wasn’t until he went crashing through a brick wall and into the fog-obscured daylight that he realized the poor Earth would have to endure a little longer.

Mouth tingling, Sigfried checked on his surviving friend. Her left shoulder had been shredded, but a quick exam revealed that her bones were all in the right spot. He could patch the bleeding later. For now, he had to keep moving. It was supposed to be sometime near eleven in the morning, but the skies above looked more like dusk than high noon.

He stumbled as he moved forward, his free hand shooting out for balance. In his head, he heard the dead lieutenant’s soft voice echo for a moment. “Radio station at the corner of …”

“That’s it!” Sigfried’s frantic eyes went wide as he side-stepped and almost collapsed into an alley littered with the smoldering carcass of a Stallion fighter. Black smoke belched from the engine compartment of the vessel, and the pilot lay a few yards away in a charred heap of flesh and armor.

Don’t get distracted. Think. Corner.

“South Water and Grand!”

Sigfried smiled wide as he glanced back into the street. Although the haze was beginning to thicken into a ash-colored fog, he could spot that he was already on South Water Street. All he had to do now was figure out which direction of travel would take him to Grand and the radio station.

“Call the General. Old guy. Gauger.”

The youth flashed a manic smile as he shifted Abigail from one shoulder to the other. He had a plan. He could see it to the end.

Piper wasn’t the only one capable of finishing plans.

***​

The cellular services had been up and running for nearly five minutes when General Gauger’s mobile phone started to ring. An attendant reached to the device across the map table toward the veteran soldier, who glanced up and furrowed his brow. “Can this wait, Colonel Mitchem?” There had been a cheer when a few of the younger officers noticed that their cell phones were finally working following the restoration of many other wireless services. Unfortunately at that time, there was no service networks through which they could try to reach out to their loved ones and compatriots.

“It’s Staff Sergeant Mitchell, Sir, I figured you would want to take this call direct.”

General Gauger nodded his head and reached for the phone. “Of course, thank you, Colonel.” The gray-haired general lifted the device up to his ear and spoke softly. “This is Gauger.”

“General!”

At the sound of the younger man’s voice, General Gauger felt one of the many weights slip from his shoulders. “You’ve succeeded in your mission, it seems.”

“Yes, the Red Stallion lunar station is finished, but there were causalities.”

The general frowned. How many young people would die before this conflict could be resolved? “Who?”

“Haskins, Valena, and Warnock, the anomaly Shane Warnock. If it’s any consolation, we killed one of their royal family members.”

“The King?”

“No, his elder son. Called himself the Crown Prince, at least. He might be alive if he can survive in a vacuum.”

The fate of some cape-clad imperial from a far-away sector was irrelevant to Amadeus Gauger. His concerns were the here and now. “Are you with Lieutenant Juunanagou and the others?” There was a pause that lingered a few moments longer than General Gauger wished. “Staff Sergeant?”

“Just me, General,” the man replied, his voice a little shakier than normal. “We separated after dropping into the city, and while I got the wireless networks running, I can’t get in contact with Piper or Sigfried or Abigail.” In the background, Gauger heard something erupt, and from the corner of his eyes, he saw the same explosion as it blossomed up a few miles in the distance.

“I’m going to send an armored convoy to retrieve you, Staff Sergeant. Can you bunker down in that location for at least…” Gauger checked his watch and then the available units. “Three minutes?”

“I’ll try, General Gauger,” Staff Sergeant Mitchell replied. “I’m low on ammunition, but I think the bulk of the enemy soldiers already passed through this part of town. Place is torn to pieces already.”

The general knew that the man would endure. Staff Sergeant Mitchell had a knack for achieving the impossible. “Where did the Lieutenant and her retinue go? What was their objective?”

“Radio station at South Water and Grand.”

A glimpse at his map highlighted how that intersection and its surrounding nine blocks constituted the current front. Nearly three columns of unmounted Red Stallions were driving through on their way to the bridge crossings north of the town center. If Lieutenant Juunanagou and the others had gotten pinned down in that location, the chances of them surviving without support was…

“Are you there, General? I’m going to head to rendezvous with the others.”

“Negative, Staff Sergeant,” Gauger stated without a slimmer of doubt in his tone. “You are to remain at your locus until our runners reach you.”

“But what about Juunanagou and the others?”

“We’ll send out some men to gather them, don’t worry.”

There was some hesitation in his voice, but at the end of the day, Staff Sergeant Mitchell followed orders, especially from Gauger. “On your orders, General.”

Ending the phone call, General Gauger set the phone down and ran a hand through his thinning head of hair. The colonel, who had remained within earshot during the conversation, glanced down at the same maps as his superior and scowled. “Your Lieutenant is in no-man’s land, isn’t she?” The general nodded his head. “Do you want to scramble anyone to head there?”

Gauger nodded his head slowly as he closed his eyes and ran through the lists in his head. The woman from space had vanished. Their off-world allies had likewise fallen off the face of the planet. Sending a few normal soldiers would be tantamount to a death sentence. The front line men and women had spent the better part of the last few hours fighting to survive and retreat to the more defensible lines among the ruins of the financial district.

“General?”

“There’s no one,” the man muttered as he opened his eyes. His gaze moved to a blossoming sequence of air-to-ground bombardments nearly twenty five clicks northeast of downtown. “They’ll have to fend for themselves.” No sooner had the words left his mouth when he and everyone else with their eyes in that direction were momentarily blinded by a brilliant flash of white. Gauger threw a hand up to shield his vision, but a few moments later, he was hit by a wave of warm air and enough concussive force to send him crashing back into the rooftop access door.

His ears were ringing, but he heard the colonel’s voice through the newly forming headache. “General, are you all right?”

“Y-yes,” Gauger muttered as he put his palms to his eyes to try and rub out the white spots. “What was that?”

“No idea. Had to have been something big going down, though. One of theirs, because we sure as hell don’t have anything with that much fuel or firepower on board.”

The general glanced up from his palms. “Then how the hell did we knock it down?”

***​

It was some sort of mid-sized attack vessel. The plating had been reinforced, and the ordinance cannons had been the size of a few buildings. Nevertheless, all that alien steel had folded like butter around the woman when she came flying up through its underbelly and out the roof. Although her journey through the three-story space ship had taken just a few quick moments, she had caught a few horrified glimpses of the crew as the green-glowing figure lanced effortlessly through their warship.

With its hull compromised, the ship spiraled down to the cityscape below and turned into yet another mushroom cloud. Viper didn’t know how long the city had been at war with the alien invaders, but the fight couldn’t last forever at this point.

She knew that Central City was the largest metropolis on the planet, and she knew that it was the planet’s de facto capitol. There were other details that she knew she had to have locked up under some filing cabinet in the vast, discombobulated office that was her mind. The three who had died for her to be born had left her decades worth of… stuff. Some of it, she could simply shove to the back room, like the non-demon girl’s mild bipolarity or her tendency to suffer from too much anxiety if the balance of her brain chemicals went askew.

Other information provided Viper with what she needed to know about this situation. She knew that these were Red Stallions. She knew they were here to avenge the loss they had suffered nearly half a decade ago. The trio of brains in the gestalt’s head had sacrificed themselves at various points to keep this little blue-green planet in the fight. A woman and a young man were alive down there because the medic had sacrificed everything.

A fighter came screeching toward the fused entity. Its lasers scythed harmlessly against the redheaded warrior’s body. If she hadn’t seen the vessel with her own two eyes, she would have imagined the sensation was someone attempting to assail her with a feather.

“Stupid,” Viper whispered as she lifted a finger and fired a concentrated beam of ki through the cockpit. The pilot, his eyes wide in horror the moment he realized the futility of his assault, was instantly killed by the burst of energy cleaving through his skull. His body slumped over the controls, and the fighter quickly went into its death spiral.

As the ship fell, the Viper looked out over the city. It was large by human standards. Central City was probably larger than the next few biggest cities on Earth combined. Furthermore, it was ringed by a vast sea of suburbs and exurbs that housed yet more souls who lent their hearts and tax dollars to the metropolis. At this moment, almost everything north of the midway point of Central City was reduced to various states of rubble. Of that landscape of broken dreams, there was almost half of it that was actively on fire.

While thousands of men, women, and children had been left slain in the path of destruction, there was also a fair share of dead invaders alongside them. While some of the suburbs to the extreme north had been surrendered without a fight, nothing else had been surrendered willingly. Entire streets had been laced with explosives and converted into enormous, fiery tombs for the attackers. The smoldering remains of alien ships was a testament to the tenacity of the conglomeration of soldiers fighting to survive the battle.

Viper lifted her eyes to the capital ship. The ship had to be a third the size of Central City, which put it on the same level as a space station. Its vast underbelly was the source of the initial wave of ships which had descended upon the cityscape.

Perhaps a thorn in its stomach would prompt the massive craft to withdraw?

A smile spread across the woman’s visage as she started to ascend toward the Red Stallion mother ship.

***​

The Utterance foundered for a brief moment.

She righted herself, but that fleeting instant was nearly enough to break the normally composed man who helmed her.

That handful of seconds where the power had died and the veritable sea of lights on the bridge had failed. In that instant, half a dozen of the officer one the bridge had seen their life flash before their eyes. More than two thirds of them had squeezed their eyes shut in anticipation of the next barrage that would compromise the integrity of the fleet ship and usher them into the eternal darkness of oblivion.

For his part, Captain Alexander gripped the controls and stared silently into the endless black. With no power, the visual display of the battlefield had departed, and with it, the reality that they were just one bad decision away from death. If they failed, the Nirvana’s task would become a hundredfold more difficult.

And if the Nirvana failed, the Earth would fall.

When the lights flickered before roaring back to life, Captain Alexander squeezed tighter on the controls.

“Thank you, old girl.”

Lifting his head back to the screen that now sparkled with rendered images and figures, the captain sized up the situation and spun.

“Status.” He barked to his engineering officer.

“Reactor Six, Cap’n,” the colonel replied as he scanned through the contents of his screen. “Bust a coil. They had to reroute power to some axillary systems.”

“Hull integrity?”

“Steady at forty-six percent, Captain,” the soldier replied. “But I must warn you that there’s not much more we can squeeze out of the generators without compromising our safety in some way.”

Captain Alexander’s expression was stone cold. “She will hold together long enough, Colonel. Believe in the Utterance.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” the engineering officer shot back as he went back to his screens. No more than two seconds later, a quick battery hit somewhere on the ship, but this time, the power didn’t falter. She would withstand yet more punishment—that much was certain.

“Communications!” Captain Alexander roared as he swiveled. “Hail the Nirvana.”

The woman didn’t bother to scream back an affirmation. Her eyes turned to her own set of controls, and after some furious tapping on the touch screen, an image of the equally battle-weary captain of the Nirvana appeared on the screen. The cyborg, his face sporting what seemed to be a cut of some kind, looked at his own display and smiled when he saw the bridge of the Utterance.

“Captain Alexander!” Michael shouted as he braced himself for another salvo. “We lost you on our sweepers for a few moments there.”

The captain in the bicorne hat shook his head. “A mere fluctuation in power levels — nothing to be concerned about, my friend.”

If the cybernetic captain of the Nirvana saw through his ally’s lie, he didn’t call him out on it. “We’ve started to receive word from the surface of the planet. Central City is under siege. Heavy losses by our side, but it seems like they are making the Red Stallions bleed for every square inch of pavement.”

That remark brought cheers from the bridge of the Utterance. Even the stoic Captain Alexander couldn’t conceal a smile. He even went so far as to try to lighten the mood. “Have you been boarded, Captain Michael?”

“If only,” the cyborg replied. “I slipped and smacked my face on one of the consoles. The embarrassment stings more than the cut.”

Captain Alexander nodded his head as he glanced to the three-dimensional map of the battlefield. The Stallions were once again building up to try another swarming attack upon the Utterance. Alexander’s other eyes moved to the vitals on his personal console. In over a decade of captaining the Utterance, he knew enough about the math that went into the figures she provided him with during combat.

“Any word on the capital ship?” Alexander asked as he looked back to Michael. “Is is still down below?”

“Still planet side,” the mohawked captain answered. “But… something’s going on down there. Our scanners have picking up the most unsettling energy spikes.”

“What type of spikes?” Captain Alexander spoke softly.

Michael shook his head. “No idea, Captain. An immensely powerful source of energy, but all we can tell is that it did not originate from the Stallion capital ship.”

“I see,” the captain of the Utterance replied as he turned to look at the maps. “They are coming again. I leave you, my friend. We shall resume this conversation once we beat back the tide yet again.”

“Of course,” Michael replied. “Nirvana, out.”

When the feed went dead, Captain Alexander turned to face the bridge crew. His expression had hardened once more. “Ready yourselves.” He spoke, his voice heard across the bridge despite the drone of electrical equipment and the roars of the outside world. “This is the moment from which legends are born.”
The vagabond youth collapsed into a heap.

Abigail’s half-conscious form thudded down next to him a beat later.

“Shit.” Sigfried’s voice was hoarse as he tried to catch his breath. When was the last time he had felt like this? He couldn’t recall the last time he felt so out of shape and so beaten down.

Then again, I can vaguely remember a few months ago.

Sigfried hated to be alone.

Caw!

The sharp noise pulled the groggy man’s eyes over to a nearby house. Blown apart by either an errant energy attack or heavy munitions, the building had been torn open, exposing the lives of its inhabitants to anyone passing by the ravaged street. Cream-colored wallpaper and outdated furniture told the story of a family or an individual trying to live close to their means. A few crisps posters on one of the walls sported a collection of heavy metal bands. A young teenager’s room, perhaps?

Sigfried’s eyes wandered until he spotted the bird resting on what remained of the kitchen table. The oversized crow flapped its wings and let out another sharp cry.

Hands scratched at a scalp that lay beneath a crown of perpetually unkempt brown hair. Was this a signal? An omen? Why was the haggard youth struggling to recall what his morning had been like?

“Focus.” He whispered as he clenched momentarily at his head. His focus again shifted to the unconscious woman on the street. Where was safety? Nothing was blowing up nearby, but Sigfried would be lying to himself if he said his hearing hadn’t grown increasingly impaired since the police station. The dull ringing made it hard for him to pick out the subtle nuances of the world around him.

Caw!

The oversized crow drew the attention of Sigfried long enough for him to watch it take flight. The bird swooped down into the road and traveled a block and a half away from the youth before pausing atop the twisted, charred remains of a streetlight. It let out a second piercing cry before twisting its head to stare him down.

Sigfried let his hands fall down to his sides as he waited for the bird to casually depart of start cleaning itself. Instead, it just kept staring at him with those black eyes.

“Fuck it,” he whispered as he turned and wrapped his arms around Abigail waist and plucked the woman up off the ground. He was reminded once again that she was probably forty pounds heavier than him as he pulled her up and over his shoulder. Either muscle weighed a shit ton more than people said or Sigfried had lost a lot more blood than he thought. Whatever the reality may have been, he knew he had to move onward.

Do it like Piper would.

Save the girl. Then, perhaps, he could make up for the one he hadn’t saved.

Sigfried felt a pang in his heart. The tears that stung at his cheeks weren’t brought about by the physical exertion or the loss of the redhead. There was something deeper that he didn’t understand—another memory locked away in the maelstrom he called a subconscious.

Maybe some boxes were better left closed.

***​

It had been a long, long time since King Kalen had heard the klaxons sound aboard the Ragnarok. When they first started to howl, it took the monarch a brief moment to recall what exactly they were. Once he did, he felt a strange mixture of frustration and amusement.

“Is that what I think it is?” He asked to the attendant standing nearest to him. “Are we under attack?” They had been peppered by a variety of surface-to-air ordinance earlier in the siege, but none of that had been strong enough to trigger any warnings of this variety. Had the earthlings been hiding some stronger weaponry beneath all the rubble of their precious city?

“It’s…” the officer furrowed his brow as he tap at his controls. “A boarding party, King. Seems like… one individual?”

At that, King Kalen felt genuine amusement. The defenders of this planet had sent one warrior to neutralize the Ragnarok? “Destroy them.”

Before the king could get a response, the lights flickered aboard the capital ship as something exploded deep within its bowels.

Fresh fury beset the monarch. “Dispatch the Legatus! I want this invader’s head!”

***​

Viper scowled as the Red Stallions tried to rush at her from both ends of the hallway. Had they not seen her dispatch the initial greeting party? Those muscled warriors—seeping ki from their skin as if they’d just taken showers in it—had rushed at her without bothering to assess the situation. To prove her point to these new arrivals, the gestalt flexed her metaphorical muscles.

An aura of green energy hummed to life around her lithe, unimposing figure. The heat caused the walls around her to wilt like dried flowers. The armed warriors gave only the slightest of pauses before they pressed forward with their fruitless endeavor. Viper didn’t give them long to second-guess their actions. She held her palms out in both directions and washed the hallways clean of Stallions with a pair of ki attacks. When the light faded, there was a whole lot of nothingness left.

Was this how it would be? Were these big, bad Red Stallions just a lot of bark and very little bite? In a way, that would make sense. After all, their most effective weapon had been to simply kill all telecommunications on the planet. That had created more than enough fear and panic to accomplish half of their fighting for them, after all.

It was then that Viper sensed the new arrival. She could tell immediately that they weren’t the same as the other ‘cannon’ fodder dispatched the deal with her. The warrior who casually walked down the remnants of the hallway to greet here was far more alien than the soldiers whose vaporized remains drifted in the air around them. This Stallion had rubbery pink flesh and wore very little actual clothing. Black boots, black gloves, and a pair of baggy black sweatpants were all this tall, gangling warrior had to offer. He wore no noticeable military insignia, and the only other accessory he had was a long, precious-looking sword strapped to his back.

“You’ve created quite a mess down here in engineering,” the creature spoke as he reached behind his shoulder for his weapon. “I will give you the opportunity to stand-down before I have to slay you.”

Viper smiled. “You and what army?”

At that, the Legatus flashed his own toothy grin. “I am the army,” he remarked as a soft white aura started to materialize around his thin body. “I’m quite confident that I’ve already dispatched the strongest warrior your planet could muster in its defense. If that woman couldn’t outlast me, then I doubt you will be able to do so.”

“Woman?” Viper inquired. “What woman? The blonde with the saiyan boyfriend?”

The Legatus shook his head. “Dark hair. Saiyan. Luna.”

That name was familiar. Viper sifted through the files in her brain for a brief second before the answer came to her. “Vad’s mother,” she spoke to herself more so than the alien warrior. “Yes, that woman had a lot of secrets inside that tortured shell of hers.” Viper lifted a hand that now glowed with a thick layer of translucent green energy. “I hypothesize that she had nothing on me, however.”

Vistin tilted his bald head to the right. The tentacle attached to the top of his head rolled off his shoulder and dangled lazily next to him. Viper wondered if the pink creature was going to offer a rebuttal, but instead, he simply tossed out a palm and fired a nearly invisible wave of ki toward her.

While she wasn’t caught unaware by the attack itself, the force with which it struck her took her off guard. She was knocked off her feet and sent crashing through a half dozen bulkheads before she threw out her palms and caught herself mid-flight. Even though she could already feel what would be the first of some bruises on her back, the woman smiled. “That’s the game you wanna play?” She asked as her adversary stared at her from forty feet up the ship.

Viper wasted no time. She had played her games dancing around with tanks and fighter jets in the city below. This was the major leagues, and she wasn’t going to sit her pinch hitter. Squeezing her hands into tight little well-manicured fists, she willed forth a latent power, tapping into the demon blood that danced in her veins.

The gestalt threw her head back as the wail of the Valkyrie tore its way free from her mortal shell. The woman’s hair and eyes faded to gray as shimmering ruins appeared down her arms. Those well-done nails jutted outward and became black, hooked claws in a matter of seconds. A set of mismatched ethereal wings—one that of an angel and the other closer to that of a bat—materialized from Viper’s back as the transformation drew to a close. A beat later, Legatus Vistin was rocketing through the ship toward her. When the Stallion’s fist came swinging for her face, Viper intercepted with her own right hook, and the impact of the two punches was enough to tear apart another section of the Ragnarok.

While the ship around them seized and shuddered, the pair of warriors were left glaring at one another from opposing ends of their impacted fists. Neither had moved from their original position, yet both of them had the first signs of tension strew across their dissimilar facial features. In his mind, the legatus knew that he had to move their battle before they did too much structural damage to the Ragnarok. The last thing he needed was to slay this woman and tear apart their entire capital ship in the process.

“You are meek,” he spoke through clenched teeth as he swung his sword. On cue, Viper grabbed hold of his wrist well before the blade could make landfall against her neck. In hindsight, she should have known that the attack was slower than it should have been, because a beat later, a blast of energy erupted from the Stallion’s maw. Not enough to burn the flesh, it had more than enough kick to send her staggering back.

Seconds later, Vistin was above her, and his laced hands clobbered down hard onto the space between her shoulder blades, sending her hurtling downward like a meteor trapped in a planet’s gravitational pull. The woman squeezed her eyes shut as she crashed through the remaining three engineering decks of the ship. Before she reached the underbelly of the ship, she managed to catch herself and land gingerly on the reinforced plating. Around her, timid engineers scrambled to get as far away from the woman as they could. In all their years aboard this vessel, they had certainly never had to deal with an intruder, let alone anyone capable of causing lasting damage to the titanic mother ship.

“You picked the wrong side,” Viper whispered under her breath as she threw out her hands and fired a gargantuan beam of energy toward the far side of the room. She heard screams but felt zero sympathy as the lights flickered once more aboard the Ragnarok. For a split second, she even felt the floor beneath her lurch, as if she had possibly knocked a handful of stabilizers offline. Despite its glory, this ship wasn’t indestructible.

“Which is why…” Viper looked up just in time to brace herself as Legatus Vistin crashed into her. The woman twisted with the impact, and while she couldn’t create separation from the Stallion officer, she managed to redirect their momentum so the lanky pink warrior went crashing through the underbelly of the ship first. Once they were free-falling toward Central City, Viper was able to get the separation she needed to angle a finger at Vistin’s chin and send a lancing beam of energy up through the alien’s skull, blowing out half of his head in a dazzling display of green-gray ki.

Vistin went limp against her, and Viper took that as a moment to glance up to see that the Ragnarok appeared to be gaining altitude. Beyond that, the skies above Central City seemed nearly devoid of the alien fliers. The gestalt could spot many of them returning to the ship. Was Stallion command withdrawing from the siege? What about the armies down below?

Viper grinned, but before she could relish, she realized that the once lifeless fingers of her adversary had once again tightened around her shoulders. Shifting focus to the Red Stallion legate, she scowled when she saw a spark of life in those black, soulless eyes.

“It will take more than that to kill me, Woman. I am Legatus Vistin!” With that, the rubbery warrior slammed his forehead into Viper’s mouth.

***​

Mikey scowled as the Nirvana absorbed another bombardment from the Red Stallion attack frigate that hovered a few hundred miles beneath them. Despite the shock, the cyborg knew that the ship, despite spending almost half a decade in dry dock, would shrug off the attack. The Nirvana had been an attack frigate itself, during the Red Stallion’s first foray into this quadrant. For some reason, the majority of the armored vessels aligned against the flagship of Civil Unrest were weaker than her. Even their current foe—a behemoth nearly a hundred yards longer than the Nirvana—was a lot of bark and very little bite.

Computer, in one of the more peaceful moments in the battle, had said something about the plating. Apparently, the Nirvana’s ablative plating was more advanced than anything the other Stallion attack ships had, with the exception of the Ragnarok, which had been nearly a mile of the plating stitched across its surface. The database aboard the Nirvana had the Ragnarok listed as a mining vessel, rather than a military cruiser. Clearly, times had changed where the interstellar conquerers hailed from.

Had he been given more time to think it over, Mikey was certain he could have solved the mystery. Perhaps this wasn’t the planned out invasion he had assumed it to be? Perhaps the Red Stallions they had slain during the golden days had been the tip of the spear, and this was simply the wooden shaft?

Nevertheless, the captain of the Nirvana watched with a small degree of delight as the attack frigate shuddered and cracked apart beneath the concussive might of three dozen photon charges. That was the tenth or eleventh such vessel to die in the space above Earth. Alongside the larger Stallion vessels were countless fighters, bombers, and smaller-sized cruisers. What had once originally been designed as a suicide mission had the makings of one of the greatest victorious in the history of Earth’s space warfare. How many more frigates could the Stallions lose before they would lose the advantage? The Nirvana had been one of only seven or so vessels of its size.

“We have something on our scanners, Captain.”

Mikey turned and waited for the report from the young woman who sat near the communications array. Long ago, that seat had been occupied by a woman of unbridled passion—a living spitfire. Had the years been kind to Aida? Mikey had, after the death of his allies and the abandonment of the mansion, lost touch with her. At the time, he had thought it for the best. He knew he wouldn’t have been able to focus on taking care of the place and keeping it ready for the future had he stayed with her. Had he traveled into the sunset with her, there was no telling if Piper would have ever found the place.

And had she not found the mansion, the Nirvana would still be locked away, miles below the surface of the planet.

Despite the weight in his heart at love lost, Mikey knew that his sacrifice had been worth it. Without this ship, the war would have already been lost. “Whenever you’re ready, Lieutenant Skleros.”

“The Ragnarok,” she spoke slowly as she clicked away at the inputs. “It’s pulling up out of the atmosphere. Quickly, Captain. It looks like the remaining Stallion fighters are already moving to cover its path of ascent.”

This was the moment.

“How long until she breaks out of the atmosphere?” He asked as he started toward the communications array. The battle-weary cyborg started to scan over everything that the screen could offer them at this time. Since the Nirvana still had Stallion encryptions, he had full schematics of their mother ship as it had been before being retrofitted for this mission. While he knew that a lot of extra surface area had been added to fit on advanced plating, there was no denying the fact that the Ragnarok had suffered some damage. “Is she limping?” He asked as he set a hand on the young woman’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.

Sensing that the contact was from exciting rather than tension, Lieutenant Skleros ignored it and simply nodded her head. “Whatever happened, it looks like she’s taken a lot of punishment. Depending on how accurate those old schematics are, she may have even suffered a popped reactor. She’s certainly not moving at her full speed, that’s for sure.”

“This is it, then.” Mikey muttered as he reached back his free hand and ran it across his mohawk. “We won’t get a chance like this again. Ever.”

The next voice came from the navigation’s console, where the young man there had craned his neck around to see his leader. “What’s the plan, Captain?”

“Full speed. We’re going to hit the Ragnarok with everything we have. Full battery. All tubes. If we have any kitchen sinks, I want those loaded into any free torpedo slots.” If not for the gravity of the situation, the joke may have elicited more than tense smirks from the young men and woman assembled on the bridge of the Nirvana. All of them knew the power of the ship, but not a single one of them was dumb enough to think this wasn’t the ‘suicide’ phase of the mission. Even so, no one balked at the prospect of charging into the Red Stallion’s mother ship. They knew what they were signing up for when the Computer had emailed the lot of them.

Another voice rang out—this one from a speaker just below the communication’s screen. Despite a more labored cadence, there was no denying that it was Captain Alexander.

***​

“Do you intend to loop me in on your venture, Captain Michael?”

Captain Alexander smiled, but there was some blood smeared on those crooked teeth. A lancing burst from the most recently slain attack frigate had sliced through part of the bridge. Before the contingencies had activated and sealed the environment, there had been a sudden loss of gravity and stabilizers. The captain, his eyes glued to the battlefield, had been unable to grab hold of something and went crashing into the steel wall to his right when the ship listed.

“Are all of your systems still online, Captain Alexander?”

“Aye,” the man spoke as he glanced over at the holographic image of the Earth. The Stallion’s lead vessel was outlined in red, and his own communication’s officer had briefed him on its movement. “The queen is withdrawing from the surface. Is she damaged?” Despite being a marvel of Earth manufacturing, the Utterance had far weaker scanners than the alien ship that now served as its partner. “The enemy is swarming to her as if she has been bloodied.”

Captain Michael nodded his head. “Yes, Captain Alexander, it appears that she may have suffered some damage to an engine or two. All we can tell is that she is not moving as quickly as she can.”

With his young crew desperate for hope, the bearded captain asked the question on his own mind. “Are they attempting to leave the planet? Have we won?”

The mohawked cyborg shook his head. “Central City is still under siege. Enemyy forces are still active in the ruins of East City and North City. We do, however, believe that the situation in Central City has turned against the Stallions. This is a tactical withdrawal, rather than a full scale retreat.”

“Then,” Captain Alexander muttered as he fixed one of his cuff links. Once the button was back where it belonged, he fixed his kerchief and returned his gaze to his comrade-in-arms. “Then we shall make it a rout. That is what you intend to do.”

Michael furrowed his brow. “Have you been listening this entire time?” He asked before turning a judgmental eye to his communication’s officer. “The Nirvana will go ahead, Captain Alexander. You and I both know that the Utterance cannot continue this battle. She’s leaking fusion fuel from three reactors, and you’ve already expended nearly all of your munitions. How much power does she even have left? You should be more concerned with making it to Namek for drydock.”

“Nonsense!” Captain Alexander barked as he clenched a hand around the sword he wore on his waist. His other hand crashed down against the back of his chair. “The Utterance will not limp away to lick her wounds while the Nirvana dashes herself against the unyielding horde.”

The cyborg shook his head. “I know the risks, but the Nirvana has a chance to survive a run at the Ragnarok. A full-scale bombardment. Just enough damage to force the Ragnarok back down to the atmosphere, where she can’t escape the Earth’s defense forces.”

“I understand the tactics of your maneuvers,” Captain Alexander said sternly as he locked eyes with the cybernetic officer.

The captain of the Utterance knew that the other man wasn’t quite as weathered as he seemed, but even so, Michael looked tired—not just physically but emotionally. The man had already lost so much in recent years. Captain Alexander was a student of history. He knew the Red Stallions’ initial invasion, despite the fact that it was uncommon news. He knew that the man who once called himself Android Sixteen had lost almost everyone he had loved in recent years. Some had died, but Alexander also knew that the sad cyborg had sacrificed his chance at a normal life to preserve the past. As a student of history, the captain could respect that decision, but that did not mean he would allow his world-weary peer to pursue this course of action.

“But you must understand, Michael, that your crew will not be martyring yourselves today. Not for us up here or for those down on the surface. You are the stronger vessel. Your presence alone will be enough to keep the Ragnarok from trying to leave the atmosphere, especially once we are finished giving her the ride of her life.”

“Captain Alexander!” Michael barked, his composure slipping away as he looked at the mustachioed man with the messy brown hair. “You are to remain here, that is… that is an order!”

Captain Alexander shook his head. “I’m sorry, Captain Michael, but you can’t pull rank with me. You’re just a freelancer, after all.” Turning his head to his crew, the man gave a nod before turning back to the screen. “It was a pleasure to serve with you. That chess game of ours will have to wait until we meet again.”

With that, Captain Alexander killed the communications feed.

The man lifted his eyes to steal a glimpse at the darkness of space. He had always thought the endless infinity was beautiful in a fatalistic kind of way. Twinkling stars beset against a blanket of nothing. How many of those stars had he visited? How many would he never have to chance to see? Shoving aside the mixture of feelings that threatened to unsettle his resolve, Captain Alexander smoothed over his unkempt hair and turned to gaze upon the somber faces that stared at him from around the bridge. Instead of speaking directly to them, the captain grabbed the handheld next to his station. He lifted the microphone up to his mouth and addressed the entire crew of the Utterance.

“Anyone may take this time to recuse themselves from the Utterance. You may report to the docks and evacuate aboard the life vessels. We took some hits to that region of the vessel, but there should be enough operating pods to usher most of you to the safety of the Nirvana. When I finish this message, we will start a full steam ahead course toward the Ragnarok. I intend to either shoot her out of the sky or cripple her to the point where she will not be able to escape the wrath of our allies down below. I will not demand that any of you join me on this endeavor nor will I judge those of you who abandon ship. It has been a pleasure to serve with all of you. Long live the Earth.”

Captain Alexander set the device down onto the console and slowly removed his hand from it. Turning his focus back to the navigation station, he took a few steps over and reached for the controls. The first lieutenant reach out to stop him.

“I’ll set the course, Captain,” the young man spoke as he looked up into the unwavering eyes of his leader. “I’m in this until the very end.”

“Aye aye!” Screamed the rest of the crew on the bridge as they settled into their stations and went back to their work.

The captain nodded his head as he stepped away from the navigations array and back toward his command station. “Full steam! Reroute any remaining auxiliaries to the operable engines. Prime all weapon systems. I want to go in hot. I want to blindside them with the initial salvo, understood?”

After a second chorus of ‘aye ayes’, Captain Alexander spun his chair around and took a seat. He had a short reprieve before they would be within range of the Ragnarok and her swarm of drones and warriors. As he watched the distance shrink, Alexander wondered what had become of Sigfried and Victoria. He knew that the unkempt youth was somewhere down on the surface providing his litany of skills in the defense of the planet. What had become of the pink-haired girl? General Gauger had managed to keep tabs on her, but she had fallen off even the deepest radar a few weeks before the attack. Victoria would have certainly been useful in a situation like this.

Unfortunately, we cannot shoot a meteor at the Earth. Remembering the insanity that was the battle over Namek, Captain Alexander smiled. They had defeated the ‘Grand Ship’ Myreen. They had helped save Namek from conquest.

None of that compared to what they were doing right now.

Right now they were defending Earth. They were defending everything they held near and dear to their hearts. They were defending the human race, its values, and its history.

Nothing could compare to what they were doing right now.

“This is it, old girl,” Captain Alexander muttered as he rested a hand on the console next to him. “Long time since those days you spent mining planets, isn’t it?”

“We’re nearly within range, Cap’n!” A voice shouted, prompting the mustachioed officer to spin around, nod his head, and burst from his seat. He drew the cavalry sword he wore at his waist and thrust it up at the holographic image of the Ragnarok and her hoard of defenders.

“Once we are in range, I want all the forward batteries on her. Fire everything until the batteries are dry, and then you can try firing the batteries themselves. Port and starboard armaments as well.”

“What about the defenders?”

“Anti-air turrets?” Captain Alexander inquired.

“Thirty percent are operative.”

“Do we have any pilots left?” The captain asked next.

“They’re waiting for orders.”

“Engage enemy fighters and then I want them to retreat,” he ordered. “Fall back to the Nirvana.”

“If they refuse?” Someone asked as a chorus of fingers typed on digital keyboards and manipulated a sea of controls around the bridge.

Captain Alexander didn’t answer the question. His mind was already moving on to other things. “Once we are within range of their heavy guns, I want all the shields rerouted to the bow. Whatever we have, I want it in front. The Ragnarok won’t have the space to maneuver around to rake us from the sides.”

“What about the attack frigates? We count at least four more remaining with the Stallion mothership.”

The captain of the Utterance smiled and glanced at his navigation’s officer. “Let them come,” he replied. “I want engines on full, and I want our course set right at the Ragnarok.”

“Battering ram?”

“Battering ram.” Captain Alexander spoke with a nod as the hologram of the battlefield started to light up with an array of laser bursts and photon bombs. The young officer stepped up next to the navigation’s console and grabbed hold of it with his free hand. His sword remained in the air as the Utterance shuddered beneath the opening salvo.

“Shields at thirty-eight percent.” A voice declared through the cacophony.

“Fire!” Captain Alexander barked as the Utterance released its first retaliatory strikes against the Ragnarok and the remainder of its brood. The screen showing the battlefield out in front of the bridge light up with a variety of colors as the flagship of the ECM fired all batteries. From her hanger bay, once full of hundreds of ships and a hustle and bustle of activity, the final collection of fighter crafts sortied out for their last mission. Not a single one of the men and women aboard the small swarm of spaceships that exited from the Utterance intended to leave once their initial firing run concluded. All of them were veterans from Namek. They would fight alongside Captain Alexander until they tasted oblivion.

Although wounded from battles down on the surface, the Ragnarok held back no punches at it charged up its main guns and opened fire on the Utterance. A condensed beam of energy scythed through open space before crashing against the front of the ECM ship with nearly enough force to stop it.

Captain Alexander gripped the console as the entire ship seized beneath his boots. Despite the spasms, the shields held and they were roaring forward at full speed once again. “What’s the wait on that main laser?” He barked, turning his head to his intelligence officer. The young woman had all the reports about the Red Stallions fed to them from Earth and from the Nirvana’s older databanks.

“Mining laser. We have maybe twenty seconds before it fires again, if it hasn’t been upgraded in some way since these schematics were released.”

“Shields?” The captain asked as he swiveled his head to address another officer.

“Twenty-two percent.” The young man’s face was ghost white. “We get hit by another one of those, and I’m not sure she’ll be able to take the black eye, Captain.”

“She will,” Captain Alexander replied sternly as the Utterance drove forward through the haze of smaller batteries lashing into her. The Stallions had figured out his play—their attack frigates were already peeling off in an attempt to strike him in the flanks. With some luck, he’d be too close before they had a chance to rake through his plating.

Not today. The young captain mused as he lowered the saber. His eyes turned to the numbers on the holographic projection—the distance they had to their target. On the screen, the front of the Ragnarok light up again as the concussive beam slammed into the front of the Utterance. The energy shield caved along the path of the beam, and while parts of the hull buckled, they did not fracture or split. She held, even as the shield reached critical levels.

The officer who helmed the shield mentioned a number, but Captain Alexander already knew that they wouldn’t withstand the next time that laser fired upon them.

Something shuddered deep within the Utterance of Kai. Torpedoes? The impact was enough to make the old girl stagger as she drove forward, closing the distance between herself and the Ragnarok. Captain Alexander stole a glimpse at the map to see that the frigates were within projectile distance, and in a few more seconds, they would be able to turn their laser batteries on her.

“Fire everything,” Captain Alexander screamed as jabbed the sword at the Ragnarok. “Overload the engines. I don’t care if they explode, push them for everything they have left and do it now!”

The Utterance of Kai sprung forward with enough of a burst to almost throw Captain Alexander over the railing that stood between him and the hologram projector at the front of the bridge. His eyes stole a glimpse at the visual projection, but he didn’t need to. He only had to look through the transparent steel to see the Ragnarok with his own two eyes.

She was nearly three times the size of the Utterance. In an ultimate shred of irony, the Red Stallion’s capital ship had also been some sort of mining vessel in her previous life. Like the ECM’s prized possession, the Ragnarok had been retrofitted to service the needs of her people.

From this distance, Captain Alexander saw the heavy laser charge up for another shot. He saw the white beam cleave through space and crash against the Utterance a few stories below the bridge. The ship shifted under his feet as she tried in vain to resist the blast, but after that final act of defiance, the hull collapsed. Fresh klaxons screamed throughout the ship as she barreled forward, her shield a memory and pieces of her already starting to flake off as she, despite the fatal wound, continued to charge her foe.

The transparent viewing steel fractured, pulling the momentary focus of all the people still on the bridge. They were all bathed in red light as the environment started to drain through the growing splinters. Smaller bursts collided around the face of the Utterance as the attack frigates tore into her sides with a salvo of laser fire.

Even so, they couldn’t stop her. The Utterance of Kai drove forward, even as fuel leeched into space around her and she lost pressurization and gravity.

The Red Stallions couldn’t stop the liberator of Namek.

They could only stare in horror as she came crashing down into the Ragnarok.

Captain Alexander, sword aimed at its enemy, squeezed down onto the railing as the Utterance of Kai and her stalwart crew entered the history books.

 

[Hela]

King Kalen braced himself as the dying ship slammed into the Ragnarok. One moment, that was a crumpled spaceship, and the next, it was an explosive spear wedged into the back of his vessel. The explosion threw the monarch to his chest and stomach.

If the systems on the bridge had been working, he would have heard the warning that the shields had failed. He would have got the notifications from engineering that the Ragnarok had nearly been split in half by the impact. He would have been told that they had lost nearly a quarter of their crew and would lose another twenty percent to the fires and depressurizations that would spread through the stern half of the ship at an uncontrollable and unstoppable pace.

The monarch, his head throbbing and his world spinning, planting a hand onto the floor. He had to will himself to his feet with much more effort than he would have liked. Through the din, he could hear the steady whistle of the bridge losing pressure. Weren’t the contingencies supposed to activate in a situation like this?

“D…” the words slurred in the king’s mouth. He put a hand against the side of his head and felt something wet and moist caked to his temple. When was the last time he had bled? “Descend,” he managed, his words a whisper as he stumbled backwards and turned to the station where the ship was manned. He couldn’t remember the officer’s name, but he would have to do so for the purpose of writing their postmortem commendation. The woman must have slammed skull-first into her own console, because she was sagged against the controls with her brain leaking to the floor.

Lurching like an animated corpse, Kalen made it to the controls and pushed the woman’s body from her chair. He dropped into her former place and winced as he tried to get his eyes to focus on the task at hand. These controls would operate even in the absence of electrical systems—they were hardwired to do so. Mining operations in their quadrant frequently had to contend with EMP discharges from planet-side equipment or nearby star systems.

Kalen tore away the electronic panel to reveal the emergency mechanical controls that were preserved underneath the modern circuitry. These were basic—just a few levers to control or redirect the path of the engines and the ship’s stabilizers. He just needed to get the ship to reverse and descend down to the planet. He needed to get back into the atmosphere before the lack of oxygen killed whatever remained of his crew.

The Ragnarok groaned as Kalen operated the emergency controls. Despite her reluctance, she started to descend, and fortunately for those alive aboard her, she did so of her own free will. Even with a broken back, her surviving engines were in operating condition.

Above the Ragnarok, what remained of the Red Stallion armada continued to play protection. Two of the frigates had been crippled in the shock wave. As Kalen guided his ship down, he hoped that the pair of vessels would be salvageable, but with no comms online, he remained in the dark as the Nirvana moved in to slaughter the disabled ships.

Even so, the Red Stallions were not finished, regardless of the outcome of the space battle.

***​

“Your flesh is frail,” the legate bellowed as he drove one of his pink fists into Viper’s cheek. The woman hurtled sideways, her lithe form effortlessly slicing through an entire city block worth of structures before she righted herself midair. Still brandishing a smug smile, she brushed away some of the thick dust that clung to her glistening clothes and skin.

Lifting a hand to her face, Viper ran a finger against her cheek and smiled when she observed the spatter of blood smeared on her digit. Popping the finger into her mouth, she sneered at the taste. “Fucking top tier,” she muttered as the air around her started to grow thick with the thrum of her ki.

Vistin was on her quickly, but even as he burst in from her blindspot, the gestalt got the drop on him. Her floating form pivoted too quickly for him to notice, and one of her painted hands clamped down onto his rubbery fist. “Calm the fuck down, Vis,” Viper remarked as she squeezed down with her nails, crushing the puttalin construct’s hand. “You’re as desperate as a bitch in heat, my guy.”

While there was likely something indignant on the legate’s mind, he received a violent palm strike to his chest. The impact amputated his clasped arm at the shoulder and sent him crashing through the asphalt into the sewers that ran beneath the streets of the once bustling metropolis.

“Flushed.” The gestalt smirked at her own joke as the limp arm she held suddenly perked up of its own accord. The end that had once been attached to the legate’s shoulder sharpened into a knife-like edge and tried to lash out at her throat. In an instant, the whole limb was melted out of existence by a surge of ki. “What a thirsty fucking bitch.”

Her body still wreathed in an almost opaque layer of humming green-gray energy, Viper looked down at the crater in the streets below and tapped her high-heeled combat boots together as she floated in place.

“If you make me go into the sewers, it’s going to be much worse for you, Vis!”

***​

Sigfried winced as something exploded a few blocks away. Even at this distance, he felt his balance wobbly as he lurched toward his destination. Not-Piper was off somewhere threatening to tear apart the city with the sheer fact of her existence, and up above, the skies were literally on fire. Glimmering chunks of hellfire rained down, and if it wasn’t for the perpetual stench of cordite burned into his nostrils, the vagabond imagined the whole place would somehow smell much worse.

Reckner weighed what seemed like a thousand pounds, but Sigfried pushed forward. His head was hazy, and even if there wasn’t a fullscale alien invasion going on, he wasn’t always the best choice for these aimed mission. Under any other circumstances, he may have flown the coop, with some electrical impulse in the corner of his reptile brain prompting him to quite literally fly away.

Yet, the half-conscious woman was a sobering anchor to the situation. She was like an Amazon-sized tether to not just the very-present clusterfuck but also to hazier things that slithered and skittered in the shadows of Sigfried’s amorphous mindspace. There was something so utterly fucked about the notion that it took planetary conflicts to give Sigfried the will to remain rooted in one place, but beggars can’t be choosers.

With familiar-yet-unfamiliar figures watching him from nearby rooftops, Sigfried stumbled and nearly collapsed just outside the entrance to the building that housed the radio equipment.

“This has to be the place,” Sigfried muttered as he took a glance at the adjacent structures. One of them had a sign on it that gave its address—900 South Water Street. Piper had mentioned this street, hadn’t she?

“Yes,” Sigfried whispered as he spotted the building at the intersection. Once more adjusting his grip on Corporal Reckner, the youth lurched his way up to the front of the building. As had been implied by the redhead, this was some sort of underground radio station attached, from what Sigfried could tell, to a nonprofit of some kind.

The building’s facade had been pockmarked in a few places from errant laser blasts or shrapnel, but by and large, it had not absorbed any direct attacks. After weaving his way through the front waiting room, Sigfried found a small office with a sofa positioned just near the top of a stairwell that just had to lead down to the actual radio station.

“I’ll be right back,” Sigfried spoke after gently maneuvering the woman into the chair. Once he was certain he hadn’t smacked the back of her skull against the wall, the young man stumbled backward and let out a sigh. “Who finds a woman this tall?”

One floor beneath the streets, the little radio station of 109.3 the Underground sat and hummed softly under an assortment of flickering fluorescent lights. The little crew that normally ran the operation had fled their posts in the dead of night. Paranoid by their natures, they had seen the signs and evacuated with their loved ones hours before the Stallion vessel had eclipsed the sun.

Their exeunt had been hasty enough to have left the machines still idling, and even after power had been knocked out to most of the city, their setup remained active by virtue of the gasoline backup generator.

The handle to the small station’s barricaded door jiggled softly as its locking mechanism held firm against the waif on the other side. Even when a shoulder slammed into it, the steel-reinforced wood merely jiggled.

A moment later, a silverback gorilla smashed through the door. The grumbling primate lost his momentum and went into a tumble, but by the time it would have crashed through the transparent ‘On Air’ box, the gorilla was gone.

It was Sigfried who smacked his head against the plexiglass chamber that housed all the audio equipment. Ignoring the new throbbing in his skull, he pulled himself up onto this feet and maneuvered around the cube to the doorway. Once inside, he shut the door behind himself out of habit and made his way over to the office chair.

“This can’t be that hard,” Sigfried muttered to himself as he looked at the array of switches and buttons. Since everything still had power, the youth imagined there likely wasn’t much to be deciphered.

After some searching, the disheveled young man discovered a tuning dial connected to the big microphone hanging down from a ceiling-mounted metal arm.

“Hello, is there anyone out there?” Sigfried muttered after pressing enough buttons to switch on the neon ‘On Air’ sign. When he received nothing but dead noise, he moved to dial to a different frequency and repeated his message.

***​

“General.”

Amadeus Gauger let his eyes linger on the makeshift maps for a moment longer before he turned to address an equally makeshift aide-de-camp who stood in the doorway behind him. “Yes …”

“I’m Corporal Haltress, Sir!” The youth said as he snapped off a tight salute.

“Where did the last one go?” Gauger inquired. The old man knew that the situation was lethal to all parties, but that didn’t make him any less suspicious of everyone and everything around him.

“KIA,” the youth replied without breaking his statuesque stance. “I was told to relay you a particular phrase,” the soldier paused for a few moments. “The sands of time for me … are running low.”

Gauger scowled as nodded his head. “Acknowledged, Corporal. How may I assist you?”

“We’ve picked up a transmission from behind Stallion-occupied midtown.”

“A recorded message?” Gauger had already been briefed on the various SOS signals that had been sent from citizens still trapped within the combat zones. For the most part, there was little that the army could do for them, outside of promise them that help was coming, but they could never tell them when that help would arrive. Gauger knew that for many of those poor souls, the Stallions wouldn’t be pushed back far enough to save them.

“They’re actually still on the line, Sir. It’s a live connection, from some minor radio station. One of those beatnik, hipster outlets.”

“And?” Gauger glanced up from the maps of the city and furrowed his brow, which had likely aged another decade over the last few hours.

The stare from the general made the young soldier struggle to maintain his composure. “Th-the caller… He asked for you. By name. He said he’s worked with you?”

At that, Gauger softened just a little, even if he felt new knots twisting in his stomach. “Who did they say they were?”

“He refused to say anything, Sir. Claimed that he couldn’t be sure we weren’t secretly Stallions.”

Gauger’s thing lips twisted up as he pondered which Stallion could be that paranoid. “Lead me to the comm room, Corporal.”

***​

“This is General Amadeus Gauger of the Central City Armed Forces.”

“Prove it.”

The rasping, almost erratic tone was really all the clues that the general needed to discern his caller. “Sigfried Hunin?”

“Prove you’re the old man.”

Gauger scowled. “Do you remember our conversation about politics, Sigfried?” The silence on the other end of the line was palpable, but once again, it told the ‘old man’ all he needed to know about the situation. “I know you don’t remember, and I don’t think you remember anything from that.”

“Don’t try to say what I do or do not remember.”

“Do you remember your politician friend? Mr. Munin?” Silence. “Or the woman who could fuel a cruiser with her own heartbreak?” Silence. “…How about the chef?”

“Shut up!”

Some of the soldiers in the comm room flinched, but Gauger didn’t skip a beat. “What’s your situation, Sigfried? Are you hurt? Are you alone?”

There was silence, and for a moment, the general found himself close to setting down the receiver and heading back to his war room. “Not alone. I have the tall one with me… Wreck? Rengar? …Abby?”

“Abigail Reckner?”

“She the tall one?”

Gauger, who had failed to reconnect with the Staff Sergeant or any of his field operatives, didn’t know how to feel about the news that Sigfried only had contact with one Sentinel. “What happened to the others? Lieutenant Juunanagou? The Zulenka woman?”

“Dead.”

A few nearby officers who were familiar with Piper recoiled and started to immediately talk to one another beneath their breath, eliciting a scowl of titanic proportions from their commander. “Excuse me, can you repeat that?”

“She’s gone. She… She kind of blew up. They both did. I think it was some type of black magic shit or something, because there’s someone flying around the city who looks like the pair of them but isn’t.” Sigfried left out the part about the woman having Vad’s distinct and unnerving stare. He didn’t want Gauger to think he had gone entirely off the deep end, even if he couldn’t be too sure of that himself.

Gauger had to settle the room. What he thought would be a simple call had spiraled. “You’re close to where the fighting reached its ebb. Do you have any intelligence on the reports that the main attack ship was struck by a weapon of some kind?”

“Yea. She did it.”

“The lieutenant?”

“That’s not Piper. Piper’s dead. That thing has kind of her face, but it ain’t here… there’s something feral about her. About it.”

“But this thing is on our side?”

“I guess?” Sigfried rubbed his temple with his free hand. He was getting a migraine. Was this guy just trying to milk him for intelligence? Was that the part of the military playbook they were in? “Can you send someone for us? This lady—”

“Corporal Reckner.”

“Yea. This lady’s hurt. I don’t know if I can’t keep carrying her around.”

Gauger knew Sigfried was capable of phenomenal things, but he also knew that the youth’s psyche was more unstable than an experimental isotope. If it tilted too far in one direction or frayed outside a carefully construed set of constraints, Mr. Hunin would vanish and resurface months later with a new permutation of his persona.

“I’m afraid that you’re too far behind the oblivion zone.”

“The fuck is an oblivion zone?”

“The furthest point of the Stallion ground push into the city. It’s where we managed to check them once they lost their aerial support. Heavy decimation. Entire city blocks reduced to smoldering, potentially irradiated heaps of industrial and commercial detritus.”

“You have no one around? Don’t you have helicopters? Spec Ops agents?”

“The Stallions do not have their fighters, but they still have heavy enough weaponry to make it a risk for our own craft. Anyone would be a fool to fly above twenty stories while there are still pockets of Stallion soldiers entrenched throughout the uptown region.”

Something shuddered up above the basement radio station. Sigfried’s attention snapped up to the ceiling, where he caught traces of recently liberated dust flitting down through new micro-fissures in the building’s foundation. “I can’t stay here, though.”

“Would you rather I lie and tell you that I’ll send someone there?”

“Honestly, I think I would have preferred that,” Sigfried rasped. “How… how ‘hot’ is the part of the city I’m in?”

“Should just be pockets of fighting. You said you’re hearing fighting nearby?”

“Yes.”

“Ours?”

“The fuck makes you think I know the difference, man! It all sounds like bullets and lasers.”

“If it’s ours, you can rendezvous with them. They would know secure channels to get away from the fighting. Back to safety.”

“You want me to stick my head out and see what colors they’re flying?”

“You might think otherwise, but I’m not in constant communication with every soldier out there in the war zone, Mr. Hunin. I don’t have eyes and ears everywhere.”

“You’re right — I don’t believe you. I’ll also let you know that I’m about five minutes away from making a string of increasingly terrible decisions.”

“Understood. Over and out.”

At that, Gauger hung up the phone and ushered his aide-de-camp with him out the back of the tent. The old general didn’t feel like answering any of the questions from his subordinates.

Once they were outside the comm tent, Gauger turned to the Corporeal. “Go to Field Ops and have them radio Staff Sergeant Mitchell. Tell him to push up enough to secure that station. He should be nearby.”

“So that guy was right?”

“Hmm?” Gauger lifted a brow.

“You do have eyes and ears everywhere.”

Gauger smiled faintly. “Yes, but not everyone needs to know everything, Corporal. You’re dismissed to your task, and I want you to remain in Fields Ops until the Staff Sergeant radios back that his mission has been successful.”

“Yes, Sir.”

***​

“This is Mikey… does anyone copy?”

The voice of the cyborg rang out throughout the control room of the mansion’s underground complex. In a way, the question was rhetorical, given that Computer was omnipresent throughout the aged buildings infrastructure, but even the sentient machine could grasp enough of the human condition to understand why it was asked.

“All of my system are within functioning parameters, so I as-yet live and breath, Michael.” The machine replied—its accent particularly laced with faux derision.

“What’s the situation like on the ground, Computer? Are you alone there? Have you heard from the others?” Usually composed even under the greatest of pressures, the machine could tell that the old cyborg was operating under a previously unknown tier of stress.

“It’s not good, by any means,” Computer replied. “But we’ve started to recede from the point of hopelessness.”

“Extrapolate.”

“The Stallions are being driven from the heart of Central City, albeit at a heavy cost of life and the city’s infrastructure. The situation there has caused the other active Stallion offensives to withdraw. I have yet to get a ‘bead’ on their flagship, but I estimate that they’re attempting to regroup and reorganize. Your victories up there have essentially clipped their wings.”

“It came at a heavy cost, Computer.”

“Captain Alexander and the Utterance are indeed gone, then?”

“Sacrificed themselves to prevent the Ragnarok from leaving the orbit of the planet.”

“So we have them to thank for the Stallions being grounded.”

“Yes.”

“A blessing and a curse,” Computer remarked. “As I am sure you also understand.”

“We have a chance to end this decisively, but now we’ve likely cornered the tiger.”

“A perfect assessment, Michael.”

“Can you tell me what you know of everyone else? Are they okay?”

“It’s not good.”

Mikey went silent for a long while before his response finally came in the form of an almost ghostly whisper. “… extrapolate.”

“As far as I know, nearly everyone has been killed in action in Central City, with the exception of Sigfried Hunin. I picked him up broadcasting at a radio station.”

“Did you just say everyone?”

“Except Mr. Hunin.”

“Piper?”

“Trixie and she were seemingly caught up in an explosion. Their ki signatures were seemingly replaced by another.”

Mikey frowned as he stared at the screen. “Replaced?”

“I think it’s some type of demonic melding technique, but my records on Demon Realm are years out of date. I believe it may have been some sort of suicidal maneuver, but it paid dividends, because that thing they created is what caused the Ragnarok to attempt to escape into orbit in the first place.”

The old blend of man and machine felt new twinges of anxiety as he scanned some supplementary screens on the bridge. “I’m going to bring the Nirvana down planet-side. We can put an end to the fighting in Central City.”

“I would belay that order.”

“Why?”

“If the Ragnarok or any other vessels attempt to escape, you are the last line of defense. Or, inversely, you are the net tethered around this world. We cannot allow them to escape. This cycle may not be allowed to repeat itself in another three or four years.”

Mikey scowled, but he knew that the trusty AI was speaking the truth. “Holding position. Keep me updated, Computer.”

“Of course, Sixteen. Over and out.”

***​

The Ragnarok endured.

A stone-cold bitch in her past life, the mother ship of the Red Stallion armada remained afloat and operational even after all the madness that had transpired just outside of the planet’s orbit.

The hulking, city-sized ship hovered above the ruins of what had once been North City. Down below was, for all intents and purposes, the last remainder of the Red Stallion forces. These were the reserves who had set up fortified positions in the southern remnants of the city.

Although alive, the Ragnarok had lost communications. She had lost navigation, life support, gravity, and shields. Had the terminals and consoles had enough power to work, they would have revealed a vessel that was capable of rudimentary flight and weapons, even if nearly half of her crew had been killed in the last hour.

King Kalen Grenaudin was trapped in the twisted remnants of the vessel’s command tower. He could have cleaved or blown his way through the wreckage. Hell, he was wholly capable of flying out through one of the various open wounds on the ship’s exterior plating, but he found himself still hunched near the emergency controls.

While the worst of the pain and discomfort had subsided, the monarch couldn’t quite process what was left in their wake. Grief? Rage? Misery?

How many souls had just been lost?

Was his family, already shaken by the death of his eldest son, still alive? Were they one of the hundred thousands of fresh corpses that would wander like driftwood around this damnable planet?

Something far away shuddered. A fresh whiff of scalding steel stung the king’s nostrils as he lolled his head around. For a bit, Kalen assumed that the ship was starting to collapse under her own dead weight, but then he saw that crew members were cutting their way into the bridge using handheld ki tools. As they breached through the obstructions, he managed to drag himself up off his feet—a kingly instinct, if nothing else.

“King!” Someone shouted near the front of the crew. “The King yet lives!”

There was a chorus of labored yet nevertheless happy ‘huzzahs’ as the crew tore through the melted steel and plastics with renewed vigor. Kalen, every muscle raw and his heart and mind both still reeling, stumbled to meet them.

“Are you injured?” Someone shouted as the crew moved to support their leader.

Kalen nodded before lifting a hand. “Yes, but nothing too grievous,” he added to curtail any despair among the small collection of soot-stained soldiers. “Does someone have a status report?”

“It’s bad, Mi’lord,” someone replied brusquely. “We have crews working across all sectors of the ship attempting to salvage what they can.”

“Causalities? Have we been able to reestablish communications with the reserves at landing site north?”

“They are currently outfitting themselves for the counter-offensive, King.”

Kalen scowled. “Counter-offensive? Who would order such a course of action?” The king swallowed the rest of his remarks, as he knew such realities did not need to be imposed upon the rank-and-file.

“The Marshall has been organizing the efforts, King!” Someone declared as Kalen stumbled forward, parting the engineers with a degree of ease despite his injuries.

***​

Hati and Skoll had tailed ‘the boss’ for the last few clicks. Ever since Sigfried had shambled out from the ruins of the police station, the pair had been part-shadow, part-reverse bread crumbs. They likely could have guided the youth more directly or with less subterfuge, but there was an unspoken truth that said they preferred the cloak-and-dagger approach. A feigned collapse of a building to mentally seal off a potential side street? A caw to draw forward a feasibly concussed young man?

The two knew all the tricks, and they had pulled out all the stops to make sure Sigfried made it to the radio station intact.

With that primary goal completed, they were hunkered down in a nearby apartment complex. While they had known that the enemy forces in the area were thicker than the army believed, neither of the pair had properly estimated how much time they had before the withdrawing Stallions would push through this previously besieged part of the city.

***​

Staff Sergeant Mitchell was less than a city block from what had become an increasingly fluid front line. If you had told him three hours ago that they would be pushing back these aliens, he would have called you insane. Yet, the departure of the mother ship and the crippling of their smaller attack vessels by unknown forces had turned the tide in their favor, even if that tide was still yet a trickle.

Up ahead, the Sentinel spotted the facade that housed the radio station. If Gauger’s intelligence was correct—and it almost always was, even in the current situation—Sigfried Hunin and Corporal Reckner were held up there.

“By chance, if your unit pursued a withdrawing Stallion detachment in the direction of…”

The general’s phrasing had been intentional, and the Staff Sergeant had immediately understood that, if they were obliterated, it would not be on the general.

“That’s the destination,” Mitchell barked as erratic bolts of plasma crashed into the ground in front of their entrenched positions. For the first time in nearly ten minutes, the amassed Stallions on the other side of the block were offering some sort of resistance, but it still felt almost … intentionally tepid. To make matters worse, the staff sergeant had felt this way when he was operating with the main bulk of the armed forces. In the back of his mind, he made a note to discuss the advance when he returned to the Central and South City forward operations. If his assumption was right, the wounded Stallion forces could very well be lulling them into some sort of trap on the northwestern sector of the burning city.

He had become entirely lost in his own thoughts when the ground suddenly shook hard enough to dislodge the noncom from his cover. As he crashed to the ground on his knees and elbows, Mitchell heard a cacophony of weapons discharging before all was drown out by the hiss of two shattered water hydrants.

Scrambling into a squat, the Sentinel returned to his smoldering station wagon and looked around through the newfound screen of mist and smoke to spot someone in his squad. “Status! Anyone!” He rasped as he adjusted his sunglasses and kept his finger floating above the trigger of his weapon.

A voice broke through the haze. “Something big crashed into the Stallion lines and down into the streets, Sir!”

“A fucking dinosaur!” A second soldier added as the Staff Sergeant scowled and pushed up out of his cover. While the sky was still thick with steam, he could spot the fissure in the street even at this distance.

“Hello?” He shouted as he lowered his weapon and tentatively started to advance. Behind him, he heard the members of his strike team quickly fall into position as they moved as one toward the partially flooded, partially collapsed intersection. “Mr. Hunin?”

An ear-splitting scree caused one of his teammates to lose his gun as something massive erupted out from the ground. Before anyone could draw a bead on it, the air was just as empty as it had been a moment prior, and the only argument against declaring them all momentarily insane was the haggard young man standing at a nearby storefront.

“She’s downstairs.”

There was some hesitation on the part of his men, but Staff Sergeant Mitchell gestured them forward. “Our wounded soldier,” he barked as his team made their way down to where a groggy and partially delirious Corporal Reckner was dealing with a concussion and a few other medical issues.

“Sunglasses guy,” Sigfried muttered as Mitchell walked over to him and gave him a polite nod.

“Hunin.”

“The old man seemed to not think he could do anything.”

“You know the general has a taste for the theatrics,” Mitchell spoke with a soft smile. “Is she still alive?”

“Yes.”

“Are you returning back to the lines with us? We could use someone with your… talents.”

“Nah,” Sigfried replied casually. “I’m needed elsewhere.”

The noncom frowned and tilted his head. “Another force? I was told that Juunanagou and Zulenka were MIA.”

“Something like that,” Sigfried added dismissively. His eyes were already elsewhere, and the Staff Sergeant could tell he was about to lose whatever interest the younger man had in him.

“Details? Do you know something we should know?”

A shoulder shrug. “Probably not.”

“Then what will you do? It’s unsafe to hunker down here, in case we get pushed back.”

“I’ve got a meteor to catch,” Sigfried muttered as the soldiers emerged with Abigail. The momentary distraction to confirm the identity of the woman was the split-second that the young man needed to vanish.

“Son of a bitch,” Mitchell muttered as he glanced around for some sign of the anomaly’s passing. Nothing.

Up above, a butterfly flitted peacefully from the scene.

***​

Legatus Vistin hovered a few dozen stories above the suburban streets. A few miles away, he could spot that many of the Stallion forces and machines were withdrawing out from the denser heart of the city and into these surrounding neighborhoods, which were sparsely occupied. Further ahead, a sizable force had been left behind to try and lull the advancing armies into a trap, and even if they were unsuccessful, they would fight to the death.

Frustration seethed within the puttalin monster’s body as he looked at the state of the armies. If he could just be down there, this battle would have never turned into a withdrawal. The entire city would have been razed within two hours of him setting foot outside the Ragnarok.

Instead, the officer found himself confronted with a monstrosity—a woman in form but little more than a raging animal beneath the surface. If this were any other circumstance, he likely would have been impressed and tried to recruit his adversary.

Under the present circumstances, he regretted to admit to himself that he was fighting for his life.

“Where are you runnin’ to?” The voice asked a moment before the first came blazing into his jaw. Reacting quickly, Vistin split apart his chest just as the knee swung upward. The legatus slithered quickly around the gestalt, hooked her armpits, and whipped her down toward the surface.

Without delay, he dropped down to pursue, but as he did, his lithe, rubbery form split apart at will.

As she fell, Viper almost casually fired a retaliatory array of ki bursts up at her callous adversary. Vistin broke apart, some of his parts coalescing and falling faster as a withered version of the legatus met the gestalt twenty stories over the once uneventful suburban streets.

“You do know we have to stop meeting like this,” Viper smirked as she punched off the putty man’s face with a swing of a fist that was coated in a glittering miasma of metal and ki. The form around her went limp as they continued their descent, and it wasn’t until she caught the movement in her peripheries that the fusion noticed she’d been lulled into a desperate trap.

The self-severed portions of the legatus suddenly jerked away from their own independent free-falls and crashed into the woman. Viper seethed as the material quickly started to spread, pinning her arms to her sides and vying to blanket her entirely in the moments before she slammed into the backyard of a long-since abandoned family home.

The figure that rose from that crater a few moments later was a staggering Legatus Vistin, who beckoned his remaining pieces back to him as he reached the rim of the smoldering pit. Shuddering with each step, the puttalin golem clasped his arms around his chest as he fought to overpower the warrior now trapped within him.

“You… lose…” He spoke through gnashed teeth as his magical ‘flesh’ digested the gestalt. “I will devour you and become an unstoppable force!”

But even as he smiled, Vistin felt that something was distinctly wrong with this process. The legatus couldn’t stop trembling, and he felt his skin starting to bubble and froth.

“N-no!” He growled his chest started to tear apart down in multiple locations. Hideous bursts of metal and ki sputtered from an increasing number of jagged fissures in his body. As fresh obsenities formed on the lips of the Stallion officer, his back was suddenly torn apart by the mismatched wings of Viper, whose arms came erupting out through his shoulders.

A moment later, a deluge of ki popped the structurally unsound body of Legatus Vistin into a hundred erratic pieces.

Her power momentarily exhausted by the display, Viper’s transformation slipped away as she took her own awkward, stumbling steps forward and dropped to a knee in the scorched earth. Sweat and fragments of other unknown slimes clung to her temples and other parts of her body, but the woman still wore a smug smile on her face.

“I’ve known dildos more resilient than you,” she rasped laboriously as she pointed a finger and evaporated a chunk of twitching puttalin a few feet away.

Despite the blustery pronouncements, Viper found herself forced on the defensive when a bladed arm calmly slipped through the flesh of her thigh, narrowly avoiding a major artery before she sprung forward. Twisting in midair, she managed to smack away the first burst of ki, but the second caught her in the chest and sent her crashing through the side of a tool shed and halfway through someone’s backyard.

Although momentarily shaken, Viper was back onto her feet as the snarling yet malformed monster burst through the remnants of the shed and leashed a dazzling array of energy attacks against her. A backflip removed her from the brunt of the outburst, but Vistin quickly course-corrected and met her in midair with enough force to shatter the windows of the nearby home.

Tangled together, the two jockeyed once more for position, with the woman frustrated by the ever-shifting arms of the creature. Even when she managed to cleave an arm off, a pair of appendages simply spurted from the wound, and all the while, the severed limb tried to grab her by the neck.

“I am inevitable,” Vistin growled as he got a fistful of the woman’s face and clawed deep into her skin.

“Fuck. Off.” Viper managed through the blood smeared on her face and the severed arm half-clenched around her throat. “I have bullshit tricks too,” she added as katchin blades tore through her knuckles and deep into the magical construct’s chest and face. A beat later, the four blades became glorified ki funnels as giant, burning holes were blasted out the back of the legatus’ body.

Even as his many grips went lax, the puttalin monstrosity managed to open his maw and release a burst of pink ki that crushed heavily against Viper’s face, driving her deep down into the suburban home, which promptly collapsed on top of her a few moments later.

As he grinned at his handiwork, Vistin caught sight of the motion far too late to stop the rhinoceros from goring him up off of his feet. The stampeding mammal drove him through a shed and the nearby privacy fence before the legatus was able to stretch his feet down into the earth and brace his impaled physique.

Yet even as he slowed to a halt and aimed to fire at the animal’s face, Vistin found himself suddenly falling to the ground. In front of him, there was nothing for a brief, fleeting moment. Then, without the slightest telegraphing, there was a gorilla roaring into his face and tearing chunks from his chest.

A scream leashed from Vistin’s rubbery maw as he stumbled backwards, his body venting steam as he grabbed the primate by one of its wrists. His other hand scythed toward the animal’s neck, but a scintillating burst of ki tore the Stallion general apart at the waist. That stunning moment of pain was all the gorilla needed to whip the puttalin golem into the ground.

Sigfried turned and saw the Viper standing a few feet away from him. The youth, taken aback once more by the gestalt’s nearly paralyizing gaze and aura, opened his mouth but found no words before a pink, rubber band-like arm snapped up from the ground.

Vistin, his fingers twitching as he clutched at air with a hand that had once been around the vagrant’s neck, remained unable to process what had happened as the boot smashed onto his face.

Grinding her foot down into the alien’s visage, Viper continued to sneer until the magical monster’s body started to melt down into the dirt and clay. “No, you don’t!” The gestalt barked as she widened the crater with a bellowing blast of ki.

Yet as she craned her neck to see the whereabouts of the shifter, a pink hammerhead crashed into her skull. A still reforming Vistin wheezed as he lashed out with his head tentacle, slicing a yawning cut across the woman’s chest. Viper stumbled back, but as the malformed golem moved to fire a retalitory strike against the ailing fusion, she caught the flash of red and yellow as Sigfried tried to put himself in front of her.

Legatus Vistin sneered as the foul little trickster threw himself in front of his attack. His lithe form did little to prevent the deluge that propelled his redheaded nemesis through a trio of backyards before a well-placed pool allowed her to drop from the crushing path.

“Time to end this foolishness,” the puttalin golem snickered as he glided along the path of destruction toward his felled prey.

As he neared, however, he noted that the gestalt’s ki signature, which had been ebbing throughout the course of their surburban scuffle, was suddenly more vibrant than ever.

“Impossible,” the creature growled as he clenched together a partially melted, partially deformed fist. Nearing the edge of the pool, he stared down and found that there was no body floating lifelessly in the half-evaporated water.

“Nothing’s impossible.” Vistin looked up and saw his foe floating just a few feet above what should have been her grave. While she still seemed to be the same, damnable woman he had been trying to murder over the last hour, the Stallion legatus noted that she was wearing the shapeshifter’s tattered hoodie over her lithe, muscled physique. “After all, I make this jacket look like hau te couture.” While it had looked like glorified rags on the messy haired form of Sigfried, the tattered hoodie seemed to almost ooze charisma now that it adorned Viper.

“Actually,” the woman turned her palm around to reveal a massive bruise acquired in one of their earlier tusles. With a smile, she made a fist, and when she unfolded it, her skin was somehow better than perfect. “I’m finding a whole lot less impossible with every waking moment.”

“How?”

Viper chuckled as she rolled her shoulders forward and stretched her neck. The hoodie, somehow not quite long enough to cover her entire abdomen, moved more fluidly than any bulky garment ever should have. Lifting a hand, the gestalt grinned as a crow seemed to float in from nowhere and land casually on her outstretched palm. The bird let out a caw and turned its face to the Stallion, and it was then that the legatus noticed the wrongness of the avian creature.

With eyes that burned green and purple, the crow’s black feathers concealed the fact that it was comprised purely of metal. Its wings screeched almost as sharply as its maw had, and without a delay, the bird dove at the Stallion general.

Vistin, unnerved but far from fear, pointed a finger and sent a beam of ki punching through the demonic construction’s body. The crow erupted with a clang of metal and a whoosh of erupting ki, but as the ruptured shards of its chassis hailed to the ground, a sneering Vistin realized that the skies around his foe were now littered with the birds.

“Murder is such a fitting term, isn’t it?” With a flick of her wrist, the woman in the Red Jacket leashed the murder of ki-infused, katchin crows at the puttalin golem. Vistin managed to shoot down more of them than she would have guessed, but he was eventually overwhelmed by the onslaught of the kamikaze birds.

From her floating perch, the gestalt watched with a grin as the smog and shards of metal settled to the ground. As she had imagined, Vistin still stood, but by this point, there was no denying that the monster had likely burned throughout whatever once-endless pool of magic fueled his nonhuman anatomy. His body, vaguely held together by little more than hate and force of will, shuddered as he slowly lifted his sole remaining eye socket to glare at her.

“Fun fact,” the woman muttered as she gently floated down to the earth. She extended her hand as the air around her started to thrum violently. “I thought I was one bad bitch before, but somehow… someway, I’m feeling even worse.” She smiled as the mismatched wings unfurled behind her. The tattoos of the valykrie flared to life as they materialized on her now ash-colored skin.

“I have existed for untold eons!” Vistin seethed. “I will endure! I will wa—”

“Done talking.”

‘Red Jacket’ Viper’s palm erupted as if it were an exploding star, and in a grotesque deluge of shimmering white ki, Legatus Vistin was purged from the Earth down to the very smallest atom of his existence.
Over the last few hours, Central City’s large urban districts had become the sight of the largest urban warfare engagement in the history of the planet.

After touching down near the northeast and north-central regions of the city, the Red Stallions had cut a swatch of death and destruction through nearly two thirds of the illustrious cityscape. Decades- and sometimes centuries-old architecture had been felled before the proverbial scythe.

From the heavens, the Ragnarok had ushered the Central City Air Force into a short and merciless death. While outgunned against the Stallion fighters, the pilots often made up for it with tenacity and pure, suicidal drive. Conventional jets and even the hybrid vessels with ki-based weaponry, however, had been little more than gnats fighting against mothership of the invading forces.

Humanity’s last stand had seemed to be just as final as the name implied, but at the darkest moment, the Ragnarok shuddered and visibly foundered in the skies above the dying metropolis. The enormous ship, which had been large enough to cast a shadow over most of the urban sprawl, recoiled and retreated from the battlefield.

The moment had been one of celebration and confusion among the soldiers fighting for their lives on the streets of Central City, but the departure of the Ragnarok did not signal the end of the fight. If anything, it triggered a second, more desperate stage of the siege which saw both sides turn to increasingly volatile and dangerous maneuvers. Yet, as the hours had stretched on, the Stallions visibly withdrew from the high-water mark of their advance.

After hours fighting violently in the clustered streets, Staff Sergeant Mitchell found himself and the column he had been assigned to nearing what was traditionally considered the limits of urban Central City. Not a single soul in that platoon, not even their lieutenant or the Sentinel sergeant, realized that they had been slowly marched into a trap.

Nor did they ever realize this, because they were still half a mile from the bulk of the entrenched Stallions when Viper released a torrential downpour of exploding energy spikes into the eight city blocks where the alien invaders had fortified their ambush sites. To the soldiers of Earth, it simply looked like a fireworks display in reverse, but for the surviving core of the Red Stallion invasion force, it was their death knell.

For his part, General Gauger, who theorized that the Stallions had some final gambit up their sleeve, saw the actions and immediately understood that this army had been given the gift of salvation at the cost of the city’s further physical destruction.

***​

King Kalen Grenaudin stumbled down through the corridor and shoved aside the pair of confused guards who stood outside one of the last operational observation platforms on the Ragnarok.

“Varen!” Kalen barked as he pulled himself together and strode across the room to confront the Marshall. The king, his hands clenched and an arm partially cocked, stopped in his tracks when he saw his wife and standing a few yards away

“We had feared the worst,” Zaitchev intoned without turning around to face his liege. “The cost of this war has been higher than anticipated, but we are not spurned yet.”

Kalen steeled himself as fresh anger welled up inside of him. How could this man—this friend of his—fail to see what this vengeful operation had cost them? Before the monarch could advance, his distraught wife moved to him and collapsed against his chest.

“It’s terrible, my love,” Calpurnia lamented. “Caruso.”

That remark pulled the king’s focus down to this wife’s tear- and makeup-stained visage. “What of our son?”

The Marshall was the one who responded. “He’s dead, Kalen. He was down in Hanger Bay C overseeing some returning fighters when the whole area lost hull integrity and crumbled apart just prior to reentry into this planet’s atmosphere.”

“What was he doing there?” Kalen demanded. “He was told to remain at his original posting near the protected portions of the ship.”

“The situation degraded,” Zaitchev remarked. “Assets had to be reorganized to prevent further collapse.”

“You knew we had just lost our eldest son, and you sent my other son to an unstable portion of the ship?” Kalen fumed as the Marshall turned to him. There was a barely contained smirk on the red-skinned soldiers visage as he looked at the distraught queen and her irate husband.

“We have all made sacrifices for this operation, Kalen.”

Kalen frowned as his body started to shudder with anger. “These are not sacrifices, Varen. We are feeding our people into a meat grinder for what? Can’t you see that this ill-conceived revenge quest has destroyed us?”

“Ill-conceived?” Varen now started to scowl as the other guards and crew on the deck started to share unsettling looks from their positions. “Our honor is at stake!”

“Honor?” Kalen scoffed. “Where will honor get us when we are all dead?”

“Without honor, what worth is there in life?” Varen retorted. “Admiral Akio died with honor, as all Red Stallions may hope to die! Have you lost your vision, my king?”

Kalen, his wife still pressed against him, glared. “You’re insane, Varen. You want to destroy our people and for what? Perhaps the Council was right in seeing the folly of this mission, for it has only debased whatever fragments of your character existed.”

“I would rather die a warrior than some bureaucrat,” Varen sneered as he held up his hand and summoned a pulsing mass of ki. “I would have thought you, Kalen, would see eye to eye with me on this.”

“You sent my sons to their deaths! You pushed for an assault on a city that was better defended than we could have ever imagined! You failed to account for Akio’s lost ship… And our people have looked to you as a military genius?” Kalen spit to the ground as the beam of ki suddenly screamed forth from a snarling Varen’s thrust hand.

Kalen tensed, but he felt himself moved as his wife swung her body in front of his. The blast knocked the royal couple across the observation deck and into the far wall as workers and soldiers panicked.

“Make your choice!” Varen screamed as he cut down the nearest hesitant worker with a swing of his ki-infused arm.

As the Marshal cowed the assembled masses, a winded Kalen found himself lying on his back with the broken, dying figure of his wife laying atop him.

“Why?” He groaned as he looked into those sad, weary eyes.

“You must stop him… for our boys,” Calpurnia muttered. “I love you, Kalen.” With that, she went limp against him.

“She was a feckless bitch,” Varen shouted as Kalen pulled himself up to his feet and turned his gaze back to someone who had been not only a mentor but a friend to him in the past. “You can’t stop me, Kalen. I’ll make sure they know you died a hero.”

***​

“With all due respect,” the colonel declared. “We need to march on their positions now, General. We’ve already given them too much time to entrench themselves up there in the ruins.”

It had been a few hours since the last spatters of gunfire had been heard throughout Central City. While there was still some looting and likely a few rogue Stallions, the city itself had been essentially secured by the military forces. Now, they turned their sights toward planning what they had hoped would be the final stages of the operation.

General Gauger didn’t laugh, even though he wanted to at that moment. The white-haired general turned and glanced at the young, beardless colonel and smiled faintly. “Reports indicate that the Stallions still have enough ground forces to mount a very serious assault. With all due respect, Colonel, Central City’s forces are battered and broken. We need to give South City time to fully mobilize.”

“Bullshit,” another junior office barked. “Those islanders will drag their heels. The only thing they’re good for down there is tropical drinks, naps, and liberalism.” A few other officers fought back chuckles or flashed momentary smirks at the remark.

“Your city—our city,” Gauger spoke softly. “Is lucky to be alive. We can thank the kais for that.”

“He’s right, you know,” someone shouted. “We were walking into a trap out there in the boroughs before someone lit up those entrenched Stallions.” There were some murmuring that bordered on discontent, which only seemed to both the young major. “You know it’s true. We swept that area, and it’s not like those Stallions blew themselves up.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that we are giving the enemy ample time to regroup and entrench.” Someone shouted.

One of the few female voices from the crowd rang a little louder than the others. “None of it will matter if we don’t have the firepower.”

A number of the officers close to Gauger turned to see a muscled, heavily bandaged nomcom gently jockeying her way through a group of men smaller than here. Corporal Abigail Reckner scowled as she made her way closer to the front of the ‘meeting’.

“We have no ordinance that can crack the hull of that ship,” she declared, which got a few mostly incoherent and resentful responses. “Maybe we did three days ago, but we have a handful of ground-to-air fighters and a few heavy pieces of light artillery. When they struck, the Stallions knew what to target. Central City has no air force and no artillery. You march there, and you might overwhelm their ground forces but that big ass ship of theirs will scythe you down without breaking a sweat.”

“What do you know!” Someone shouted before being joined by a few fellow officers who were more frustrated at the situation than anything else.

“I’m one of two people in this damn room who went to one of their bases and lived, so I know a hell of a lot more than any of you,” Reckner barked as the building suddenly shuddered beneath them.

“An attack!” Someone rasped as panic started to spread amongst the officer corps of Central City.

A voice spoke from the front of the room as the wall literally peeled away to reveal a hetereochromatic woman in a tattered red hoodie and black body suit. Dog tags hanging just below her collar bones, Viper turned her eyes to Gauger, who seemed to be the only one in the room not actively pulling away from the scene or reaching for their guns.

“Don’t worry,” Viper cooed as she glanced out at the two dozen officers. “I come in peace,” she added with a wink as everyone in the room felt their sidearms wrench out of their holsters of their own volition and zip up into the air of the room. “But, y’know… a girl can’t take chances.” Viper concluded before hurtling the guns out there the entrance she had torn in the wall of the structure.

“Hello, Viper,” Gauger spoke as he extended a hand to the woman. “I believe we have you to thank for a number of events that turned in our favor.”

Viper looked down at the extended hand and smiled before ultimately turning her focus to the rest of the group. “I’m going to finish what I started,” she deadpanned. “I’m going to gut that ship and bring it screaming to its grave.”

“Who the fu—”

The gestalt thrust a hand out and closed a telekinetic force around the man’s throat. An instant later, he was choking for air and dangling three feet above his collected peers.

“Mommy is talking,” Viper shouted before ragdolling the soldier across the room. “I don’t care what any of you do. Kai knows you were more than willing to send soldiers like my dear mommies marching to their deaths, so I understand if you march what’s left of your armed forces to die in the shadow of the Stallion mother ship. But if you want to take my advice, you’re better off waiting until the credits start to roll.”

“Is she insane?” Someone whispered, catching the ever-impressive ears of the gestalt, who started to laugh.

“Oh, Honey,” Viper cooed as a pair of liquid bat wings started to bubble out of her back. As they did, the lower half of her body was suddenly gone, and in its place, there was a metallic dragon that seethed purple ki from within its scaled carcass. “It’s a miracle I can create coherent thoughts, let alone not murder all of you for giggles.” That last comment elicited some gasps and uneasiness from the majority of the officers, but some—like Gauger and Reckner—stood unflinchingly as the gestalt reverted to normal appearance.

“See you boys and girls at the finish lines.” With that, the Viper floated back and up out of the room, leaving the collected officers with a new assortment of topics and issues to complain about as the general mood of the meeting broke down into an incoherent assemblage.

Reckner and Gauger made eye contact as some of their peers moved through the torn wall to collect their sidearms. The pair met once the room was nearly emptied of soldiers.

“Do you have experience with that entity?” The general whispered as he tried to avoid drawing any attention to their hushed conversation.

Without making eye contact with the general, Abigail shook her head. “Just that the other one ran roughshod over Ja City.”

“Reports say she destroyed everything that stood in her path… friend or foe.”

“Those reports are correct.”

“Do we have a backup plan in case this one burns through the Stallions and gets bored enough to turn on us?”

Abigail cracked a smile as she met the general’s weary eyes. “General, I can assure you that… if that happens, our best bet would be to run as fast as we can.”

“We have no contingencies.”

“That thing wearing part of Piper’s skin is unstoppable. This one is somehow worse, too. Did you see that jacket?”

“Familiar, wasn’t it?”

“Hunin hasn’t reported in, has he?”

Gauger shook his head. “Mitchell said he went AWOL to go help not-Piper.”

“So that thing took his clothes? A trophy?”

“I think it’s more complex than that… I think it is Sigfried.”

“Can it even do that?” Abigail scowled. “Just absorb people into itself? What kind of twisted powers are that?”

The man shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not sure. Sigfried had some unique gifts, and it’s possible that the young man didn’t know the half of what he was capable of. He may have done something subconsciously.”

“Then may the kais have mercy on our souls if that thing grows tired of just fighting the Stallions.”

***​

The Ragnarok hovered a hundred feet above what had once been downtown North City. In its place, there was widespread devastation from the blast that had cratered two square miles and sent out a shockwave of force that had compromised nearly eighty percent of the city and slaughtered nearly two thirds of its population. Those who had survived the blast were murdered by the Red Stallion squads who had swept the area when it was being converted into their forward operating camp.

Now, that makeshift camp was abuzz as soldiers raced back and forth to prepare themselves. Down on the ground, there was very little understanding about what was unfolding up on the Ragnarok. Rumors had circulated that the king, the marshal, or possibly both of them had been critically injured protecting the ship. All the troops on the ground knew was prepare to march south as soon as they had finished readying the reserve soldiers and equipment.

Little did they know, an army comprised of soldiers, heavy weapons, and aerial fighters from Satan, South, and Central City was rapidly approaching their location.

Far ahead of that conglomerate, a solitary figure went undetected before shifting into the size of a mosquito and slipping soundlessly into the colossal vessel.

Clad in her Red Jacket, Viper stood up from the ground and stared around the engine room. Klaxons were screaming throughout the ship, and there seemed to be no one around, based on a cursory scan of nearby ki signatures.

“Trouble in paradise?” The woman asked to no one as she sent a beam of ki screaming through the engine bay.

 

[Hela]

Grand Marshal Zaitchez scowled as the ship suddenly shuddered beneath his feet. “What was that?”

“We’ve been hit!” One of the crewman screamed as screens went red throughout a number of screens and panels throughout the observation deck.

“How?” Zaitchez barked as he stormed over to one of the control booths. “The humans don’t have this sort of firepower down on the surface.”

“Scans aren’t reporting anything,” someone else whimpered as Varen felt fresh shockwaves in the metallic floor of the Ragnarok. “We’ve lost all our engines!”

“Saboteurs?” The Marshal demanded as he moved to communications and tore the junior officer from the seat. “Are the traitors still locked up?”

“Y-yes, Marshal! I just checked seconds before the engines failed. The king and the others are tightly secured.”

“Show me!” Varen seethed as he threw the young soldier with enough force to dislodge the anchored chair. A few moments later, the panicked communications officer had the video of the brig where Kalen and the other traitors to the cause had been imprisoned pending their executions for treason at the conclusion of the war.

“Backups are failing, Marshal!” Someone shrieked as systems started to go off-line throughout the observation deck.

“What does that mean?”

“We’re going down, Sir, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it!”

***​

Mikey watched the situation as it unfolded from just outside the Earth’s gravitational pull. He had dismissed all the other bridge officers for the remainder of the day. Most of them had been working at their posts for the last forty hours, and he wasn’t sure how much of the younger crew could manage without collapsing at their consoles.

“How’s your view up there?” Computer’s voice inquired from the captain’s comm.

“It’s almost over, isn’t it?” The old cyborg muttered as he watched the feed from above North City. “The Ragnarok is losing altitude, and her engines are… shot.”

“To say the least,” the machine intoned. “It’s her, you know.”

“I wouldn’t expect it to be anyone else,” Mikey replied. “I know she didn’t grow up with him, but she’s like her old man. He would have been the first person to dive right at the hornet’s nest.”

“There’s no denying that he died for his friends.”

“A few times,” Mikey chuckled as he walked back to his chair and sank into the familiar cushion. “I’ll remain here throughout the day, Computer. This business ends today.”

“Acknowledged, Michael.”

***​

Viper erupted up through the roof of the ship. Her feet landed softly on the uppermost surface of the foundering vessel as it continued to lose altitude above the ruins of North City. Unbeknown to the gestalt, there were countless Stallions still panicking to escape the crumbling, falling vessel. Not many of them would escape, but a few would be pulled alive from the wreckage over the coming days.

Her ki sense thrummed as the woman casually strode down the ship and shot bolts of energy down through its hulls at whatever seemed to be alive. Throughout the Ragnarok, its crew and the soldiers stationed within scrambled to escape by any means possible. While some scrambled fighters or small pods, there were countless others who opted to simply dive from gaps and tears in the hull. Those who tried to fly through natural or mechanical means didn’t get very far before they found a purple-eyed crow cawing at them through the cockpit dome.

“Nowhere to run,” Viper laughed as a number of those sneering birds erupted, spewing energized barbs of katchin into the bodies of the pilots.

As the ship neared its final resting place, she hopped into the sky and spun upward before watching the flagship of the Red Stallions crash down to the surface of the Earth. Once a sturdy vessel that struck fear into dozens of systems, the Ragnarok split apart on impact as countless fuel lines and auxiliary power cells ruptured throughout its body.

Marshal Varen Zaitchez emerged half a mile or so from where a floating Viper was gleefully scanning the wreckage. The marshal barely had a moment to sort out the situation and establish meaningful contact with the ground crews before the combined Earth military forces launched their attack on the outskirts of the Stallion’s positions.

In the haze and din of the ship’s collapse, even the entrenched forces were unprepared for the onslaught as it crashed into their positions.

“No…” the Marshal muttered as the air around him began to simmer. “These cowards do not deserve our blood! Rally!”

“Only place you’re rallying too is the afterlife,” a calm, seductive voice remarked as the smog was driven out by a whoosh of air.

Turning sharply, Varen scowled at the woman who stood casually above the hatch he had used to escape the vessel just moments earlier. “Who are you?”

Viper glanced around before placing a delicate hand atop her bosom and tilting her head. “Me, Sugah? I’m just the one who clipped your big ole birdies wings.”

“Impossible,” Varen growled as his red-tinted flesh seemed to deepen in hue.

The woman in the red jacket rolled her eyes. “You know how much I can’t stand hearing that?” Wings unfurled from her back as the gestalt casually ascended to her powered up state. “You’re not the leader, so why don’t you step aside and point me to where your king is at, Hun.”

“The king is indisposed,” Varen seethed. “I beat him down and threw him in the brig.”

“How loyal of you.”

“He was a fool! He sought to end our conquest before our final victory! He betrayed our honor.”

“Oh, great,” Viper rolled her eyes once again. “One of these fucking types. I love it.”

“I will decapitate you and brandish your head as I break your pitiful armies,” with that, the Marshal burst forward and leashed a fist at the woman’s cheek.

The strike almost caught Viper off guard, but she managed to slip out of the trajectory at the last moment. As the marshal’s balance wobbled momentarily, she slammed one of her palms into his chest. The large, red-skinned warrior stumbled back, but he quickly righted himself and shrugged off Viper’s ensuing sidekick.

“It’s been a long time,” the man muttered as he cracked his neck and rolled his shoulder joints. “Aside from that sappy fool Kalen, there haven’t been many idiots who could stand to Marshal Varen Zaitchez of the Red Stallions.”

“Cool,” the woman in the red jacket muttered as the air around her started to visibly seethe with her rapidly increasing ki. Her second set of mismatched wings unfurled as the demonic soldier shrugged off his officer’s coat to reveal a dark body suit that tightly molded to his fit features.

“You will be my finest trophy,” he declared as he threw back his head and let out a scream that caused the ground around them all to suddenly crumble downward as if it had been struck with a bomb.

Back-flipping into the air, Viper had barely had time to complete that motion and reorient herself before Varen slammed into her. While she remained upright, the impact sent her hurtling backwards until she crashed into part of the Ragnarok’s collapsed super structure.

“Done already?” Varen declared as he floated up into the sky. As he ascended, the officer’s physique became almost incomprehensible beneath the ethereal flames of ki that coated it. “Come now… I’m only getting started.”

“And I thought I was one to talk a lot of shit,” Viper shouted as she kicked away from the collapsed coning tower. The woman roared through up through the sky before simply seeming to vanish from existence.

Varen scowled, but he had little time to understand what had happened before the massive winged monster dropped down onto him. Claws hooked into his flesh as a beak almost managed to close down around his head. He got his hands in the way and kept those jaws from closing even as he was driven down into the sky and into the earth just within spitting distance of the flagship’s corpse.

Clenching his teeth, he let out a gurgled roar as his energy level continued to soar. He got the advantage against his bestial assessor, but as he was slamming the dragon’s head down into the ground, it shattered into a thousand fluttering moths. Staring at his now empty hands for a few moments, Varen glanced up and scowled as the red-haired woman seemed to form from the insects.

“Parlor tricks aren’t going to be my undoing, Witch.”

“Don’t knock it till you tried it,” Viper winked as she settled down onto the ground and proceeded to seemingly melt down into the earth.

With his scowl as an essentially permanent feature of his visage by this point, Varen clenched his fists and slammed his heel into the ground, releasing shock-waves that fissured the earth.

“Enough games,” the marshal growled as he let his eyes drift in the direction of the pitched battle between what remained of the Stallion army and the combined Earth forces. He was needed there—the real battle.

He started off in that direction when a hand sprung up out of the ground and grabbed him by the ankle. While he half-expected some juvenile remark, he instead was simply yanked down into the earth up to his hips. The woman seemed to materialize from the ether in the dirt in front of him, and she grinned as she floated up and to the surface. Her palm shimmered with ki.

“I will wear your skull as an ornament,” Varen muttered as the blast crashed into his chest and face. A second slammed;p into him, causing him to snap back and crash his back against the now splintered ground. A third clipped his left shoulder but carried enough force to shudder him once again.

As Viper pulled his twitching fingers back to charge another strike, Varen’s power spiked once again as he leaped up from his momentary earthen prison and leashed his own burst of red ki into her sternum. The woman spun back and caught herself just as a kick landed perfectly on the left side of her jaw.

Varen snickered, but when he moved to pursue the woman, he realized she had vanished once again. Pausing midair, the red-skinned warrior remained tensed as he waited for the sneak attack. While he half-expected the ground to once again assault him, this time it was the air that conspired against him. A screaming bird dove onto him from what otherwise seemed to be its flightpath.

The crow cawed mercilessly as it tried to punch its unnaturally hard beak through the skin of his shoulders. Snatching the bird, Varen brought it closer to his face and quickly saw that this was some type of abomination wrought by the woman. The bird’s eyes glowed different colors, and while it looked like it was made of feathers, a closer look revealed that its parts were metallic in origin.

“What sorcery is this?” He asked smugly as he squeezed the bird. Rather than cry out as it was smashed, the crow seemed to stare at him with an almost… smug expression. It wasn’t until the crow exploded like a shrapnel grenade that Varen realized the error of his ways.

With a screech, the marshal lurched backwards as his hands mauled at his face in an effort to remove the handful of barbed feathers that had narrowly missed puncturing either of his eyeballs. He had nearly completed that venture when he heard the rustle of feathers and broke into a blind sprint as a bird exploded behind him.

After recovering from a quick stumble, Varen kicked off the ground and into the air as the flapping of wings followed his ascent. Rage gurgling through his titanic form, the Red Stallion marshal clenched his fists tightly enough that his skin split apart. The aura that had simmered around his physique erupted into a torrent of ethereal flames as he pivoted around and let out a brutal scream that sent out shockwaves that detonated the murder of crows.

Thrust backward by the blast, Viper scowled as she brushed away the flakes of smoldering katchin from her arms and legs. As she lifted her head back up, she was greeted with an elbow to the skull. Careening toward the surface, the woman in the red jacket twisted in the air and blocked Varen’s diving kick.

“You are nothing,” the marshal barked as he dropped down beside Viper and easily outmaneuvered the series of strikes she sent toward his head and chest. “I have been forged in a lifetime of violence and war!” A rib-sundering blow landed on Viper’s chest as she dropped into a free-fall that nearly knocked her out cold.

Regaining her bearing just in time to orb free of a falling hammer strike, Viper reappeared higher up in the sky. Her chest heaving beneath her tattered fatigues and bodysuit, she squeezed her hands into tight fists. Breathing out slowly as the bones in her body knit themselves back together, Viper suddenly experienced perhaps the only moment of singular clarity in her existence.

For an entity whose mind and subconscious mind seemed to be made of several independent yet symbiotic pieces, it was as if all those gears and bits of machinery hiccuped once before running in perfect unison. Perhaps, in an ironic twist, it was the myriad fractured psyche of Sigfried Hunin that stuttered the gestalt’s system in just the right manner.

Whatever the case, in that instant, Viper saw the true extent of her existence. She saw every little vile, awesome atom that made up her terrifying physique.

“I understand now,” she smiled as she reached down and unearthed the breadth of what had been hidden under lock and key in the warped and amalgamated nethers of her mind. Throwing her head back, Viper let out a Valkyrie scream as she pushed herself into realms previously unfathomed.

Twenty stories below the woman, Varen had barely missed splitting her skull in half, and he had been scanning the wreckage of the Ragnarok for some trace of his crafty prey when he felt this world’s sun grow hotter on his back.

“No,” he muttered as he realized the sun was starting to descend to the horizon in the west. Twisting around, he had no chance to react as the blast of energy drove him down into the shell of the Ragnarok and through twenty feed of dirt and rock.

More humiliated than crippled, Varen let out a bellowing roar. The monstrous warrior’s energy surged outward with enough force to blast open a crater through which he erupted up from like a bat freed from hell’s embrace. As he rose up through the ravaged decks of the ship, his eyes remained glued on the gestalt that shimmered in the skies above the derelict.

The man knew that something wasn’t right, but the reptilian portion of his brain was in the pilot’s seat. His lips curved into a deep scowl as he felt the air itself start to singe his visage amid his ascent. He had nearly made it into range when the six-winged woman finally turned her opaque, gray eyes upon him and willed him back down.

Driven down toward the earth once more, Varen suppressed a guttural roar as his muscles shuddered in rebellion against the gestalt’s power.

Her gray skin now almost entirely adorned with glowing runic markings, Viper’s eyes shimmered like diamonds as she flexed her three pairs of mismatched wings. Jacket fluttering against her physique, the gestalt dropped down next to Varen, skirted a handful of vicious strikes, and drive her fist nearly clean through the flesh of his abdomen.

Doubled over instead by the force of the blow, the Marshal of the Red Stallions howled for the briefest of moments before an elbow smashed hard down onto his spine and shoulders. While he prevent himself from once more crashing into the ship below, Varen could not protect himself as a lancing burst of ki slice down the side of his arm.

With just a few fleeting seconds to realize that he had nearly lost the limb, the soldier twisted and threw up his forearms as a literally snaking blow maneuvered through his bulky limbs before crashing into his chin.

Feeling almost sluggish as he once more spun to catch himself in the air, Varen caught an elbow a few inches from his bloodied chin only to watch as six fists came crushing down along his face and chest.

“This is nonsense,” the soldier seethed as he burst back at his enemy and cleaved through an ethereal replica of her with a fiery kick. His eyes had barely had time to widen in response when she drove her heels down into the center of his ribcage.

The gestalt grinned, but even as she continued to toy with the formerly smug bastard, she knew that this couldn’t go forever. At this high a level of performance, she already felt as if her insides were slowly tearing apart (perhaps literally, given the parameters of her creation). In a subdivision of her mind, ghosts in her shell were already running through the parameters and devising the end.

It was one such an ‘aha’ moment that pulled her focus momentarily back to a part of the ship that had been scorn down nearly to its belly. Down in that nearly open air portion of the Stallion vessel, a massive piece of lethal machinery sat intact, awaiting merely a power supply and a functional operating system to be rendered active once more.

The woman sneered, but that momentary lapse was all that the ragged Varen needed to land a clubbing blow down against her shoulders and the crown of her head.

Viper crashed through the hull of the Ragnarok and found herself propelled backwards down an additional score of decks. By the time the gestalt had righted herself against the momentum of her adversary’s vicious attack, she had nearly traversed the height of the partially crumpled mother ship.

With a scowl, she lifted her head up to stare through the twisted layers of steel and sparkling electrical conduits over her head. Her back and limbs hummed with not only genuine heat but the throbbing of scrapped and scalded skin. Her mind—ever the sharp tool—was running overtime as she tried to reassess her approach. Three races worth of military training processed at rapid speed before Viper noticed where she had fallen.

“Main weapon bay.”

Her voice was a bit haggard, and it offended the woman just a little bit to hear it. That frustrated ebbed a little as she set her eyes upon the massive cannon that dominated the back third of the enormous bay. While she had near bore witness to it in her own short lifetime, Viper knew that she was staring at ‘the Hammer’. This was the weapon that had shattered North City at the onset of this invasion, and this was the means through which the Stallions had intended to break the heart of this world.

“But Mommy and Mommy saw fit to end that, didn’t they?” Viper muttered as she orbed over to the based of the cannon. From a cursory glance, the Stallions must have retracted the monstrosity after the destruction of the moon facility that had served as the main power relay for it. After all, without the Hammer able to fire, it would have remained an easy target on the belly of the ship.

As she stared at the inert device, a slow smile spread across Viper’s visage. Slithering across the room, the woman allowed her body to collapse into a thousand tiny mites that vanished into the network of cabling and substructure that housed the systems of the device.

The Marshall came tearing through the far-side bay doors just as the woman partially reformed atop the barrel of the dormant cannon. Her arms and legs, which still seemed to be melted into the machinery, twitched as the dead mechanisms and systems started to hum to life.

“You… you desecrate the husk of our flagship?” Varen growled as he tried to take a step forward and found himself nearly knocked backwards by a wave of force that shuddered out from the now seething monolith of machinery. “What would you do next… dig up our honored dead?”

“Don’t give me more ideas,” Viper sneered as the massive cannon started to crackle. Leylines of purple and green ki started to glimmer within its husk and along the sea of supporting machinery that had once coordinated its complex operations. Now, through force of will, Viper stirred the Hammer to life.

Perhaps not yet understanding the gravity of the situation, Varen remained stationary as he watched the partially formed woman in the red jacket vanish behind an increasingly translucent glow of energy.

“I will not stand for this,” Varen seethed as his own aura once more burned high around his towering physique. Yet, he found himself repulsed and thrown backwards the moment he tried to progress. In fact, he was sent careening nearly to the other side of the hanger bay, and by the time he had righted himself, the realization seemed to have arrived through the haze of war gripping his mind.

By that point, the Hammer was already releasing its final and most deadly of strikes. The burst of green and purple ki shattered the barrel of the mighty weapon on exit, obliterating any remote chance that the weapon may have been repaired. There was a fleeting instant when Varen thought his impressive speed and strength could carry him away from the blast, but then the beam seemed to erupt out in all directions.

In his final thoughts, Marshal Varen Zaitchev cursed the Earth and all its foul progeny.

***​

The last remnants of the army from Mondas fought a losing battle nearly fifty clicks from the wreckage of the Ragnarok. Out-gunned, outmaneuvered, and out-manned, the surviving Red Stallions had pinned some desperate hope on their leadership snatching victory from the jaws of the defeat.

General Amadeus Gauger had been nearer to the front-lines than any of his aides had wanted, but that moment was one that he would not forget for the rest of his life. In an instant, it felt as if the world itself had ended. There was a flutter in the hearts of every soldier and officer who thought that the weapon was firing at them or some landmark on their world.

When ballistics and aerials revealed that the blast had fired through the ship and seemingly been aimed at the Stallion leader locked in a struggle with an unknown entity at that location, a wave of jubilation spread throughout the command camp.

Gauger, who knew that not-Piper Juunanagou and not-Vad Zulenka had been fighting at the location, couldn’t help but offer a soft smile even as he tried to rub away the flares from his eyesight.

Another soldier, fighting as close to the frontlines as she could manage given her injuries, likewise knew the exact cause of the terrifying blast that would ultimately leave a scar on the planet visible from beyond its atmosphere. With no sixth sense and no vision of the greater good in her mind, Abigail Reckner could do little but weep at the idea of what had happened as the tremendous battle that had unfolded in the distance fell silent.

When the Ragnarok exploded outward with a literal discharge of energy the size of small mountain range, even the most stalwart of Stallion soldiers discarded their weapons and threw themselves down to their knees. On some level, they understood that their last hopes were spent. While many of them had never quite understood what this war into distance space was supposed to accomplish, all of them clearly realized that the fighting was over.

Inside the Ragnarok, Kalen felt the death knell of the vessel as it seemed to literally tear itself apart despite being inert. More than that, the king experienced the death of his childhood friend.

“May you find some peace,” the king whispered as the small group of traitors holding him and the loyalists captive laid down their arms.

“I submit myself to a swift death,” one of them declared as he turned to Kalen and fell to his knees.

For a brief and fleeting moment, Kalen considered ripping out the soldier’s throat. “On your feet, Soldier,” the king barked before turning to look at the others. “I have no words of comfort for any of you. The war is lost. We are lost. We go now to surrender to the authorities of this world. I will stop no one who wishes to slip into the shadows and go their own, but this is the path I have chosen.”

“But what will we do now, my liege?” Someone muttered weakly amid the dark and dusty carcass of their flagship.

“Start a new chapter, perhaps?” Kalen replied in hushed tones that could nevertheless be heard by all the survivors. “I have lost my friends, much of my family, and nearly every piece of our culture and society save whoever has survived this calamitous crusade. I do not seek to see our extinction at the cost of our pride.”

That elicited a few nods from the survivors.

“As I said… none of you will be forced to join me. You are free to choose a path of your own.”

Not a single soldier opted to abandon their king as they made their way from the Ragnarok.

In silence, what was essentially a funeral march began its exodus from the derelict ship. At their head, their king marched with his head held high. For Kalen, there would be limitless time in the future to mourn the death of his wife and two sons.

A few steps behind the king, his surviving progeny walked in silence and mirrored her father’s stoicism. Princess Teagan, never a warrior and furthest from the mind of anyone when it came to ruling the people of Mondas, swallowed down her own anxieties at the idea that she was now the next in line to the throne.

And what throne would that be? In her young mind, she saw a dozen different futures for herself and whatever number of her people had survived this foolish mission. Would the future bring captivity for them all? Would she ‘rule’ from a plastic throne in some Earth zoo? Or perhaps her kingdom would be the backyard of some high-tech gulag for extraterrestrials?

Would there even be a ‘people from Mondas’ in the months ahead? Would surrender shatter whatever loose bonds had woven together a tapistry of distant races into the Red Stallions? … Were there any actual stallions who could have survived this string of calamities?

She felt sick.

She felt as if the universe had gone from being a limitless journey to quickly closing in around her and the tired, exhausted column of future prisoners of war. Hand clutched tightly against the clasp of her tattered cloak, Princess Teagan struggled to hold back tears.

Little would she ever know, the towering and seemingly indominable figure who strode before her was not only sharing in many of her thoughts but likewise struggling to not allow that sadness escape.

As the small retinue emerged from the vessel’s ravaged bulkheads, they found themselves confronted by a woman in a red jacket. Viper had picked up the survivors shortly after managing to peel herself free from the molten slag of the Hammer. At first, she had assumed they would rally and became some more names for her ever-growing list of carnage.

Instead, they had walked in silence and without weaponry, leaving behind enough high-tech pieces of equipment to make a last stand against anyone who wasn’t her.

“The king, I presume?”

Kalen nodded as he placed a fist over his heart. “King Kalen Grenaudin of Mondas. I presume you are the one who slew Varen?”

“Was he the angry red guy?”

The monarch nodded.

“No heavy loss.” Viper muttered as she stared out across the group of future refugees. “You all don’t look like you’re geared up for a fight.”

“You are correct,” Kalen remarked. “I am here to surrender and advocate for these individuals and any other present and future prisoners of war held by your leadership.”

Viper, who was noticeably disheveled and concealing one of her hands, nodded in response to that equally unkempt monarch’s remarks. “I’ll escort you to the talking heads.”

She gestured with her head before glancing down at her right hand. A scowl spread across her visage as she stared at the purple cracks in her skin and the green ki that bled from them. “This planet’s better off without me,” she spoke with a devious grin as she stepped up to join the Stallions into their march into captivity.