"When it's all over and the adrenaline fades, I always find myself asking 'was that it?' as if I hadn't spent the last two hours fighting for my life against people whose only way to survive was to take my life before I took theirs.

"And still, every time, I found myself standing in the smoke and debris and thinking 'was that it?' on legs that could barely hold my weight due to exhaustion." - Former Grand Most High Sma'akamo'o, from I Have Ridden the Hasslehoff

The first warning something was wrong was when the front door rattled in its frame with a heavy impact.

Ru'udamo'o looked over at where Su'urgimo'o was working inside of Speaks' thorax, his steri-gloves covered with brown ichor, then drew his pistol and moved through the hallways.

Twice more there was a heavy thud against the door.

Ru'udamo'o took cover behind the heavy desk. It looked like wood paneling, but Ru'udamo'o knew that Su'urgimo'o was paranoid enough that the desk was just wood veneer over battlesteel. He checked the pistol again and got ready. He could sight through the hole that was supposedly for the cables from a non-existent keyboard to a non-existent computer terminal, had a good clear lane of fire.

The door blew in and two blocky bipedal forms filled the doorway. They were wearing tan uniforms and packing blocky looking battle rifles. Neither had on helmets and both looked slightly damp to Ru'udamo'o's eyes.

Both of them tried to step through at once and jammed up, their wide shoulders locking them in place.

Ru'udamo'o pulled the trigger.

-----

Trucker ordered his tanks to shift their advance, to keep friendly units out of the firing line, raking the line of strange looking, almost demonic opponents with the fifty. Barbed wire was wrapped around the barrel of the fifty, spikes were around the muzzle, the weapon having slowly grown more and more savage looking during the attack.

"Manuel. Trucker," a voice said in his ear.

"Speaking," Trucker answered, motioning at his EW officer to isolate the signal in his ear. The EW officer, half of his face nothing more than dry bone, nodded and turned to his console.

"You cannot. Prevail," the voice said.

"Heard that before," Trucker answered, raking the side of an APC with the .50 cal and watching as the rounds punched clear through. He spent fifty rounds on the side of the vehicle, raking it at waist level for anyone standing in the back, chest level for anyone sitting down. He put the last four rounds into the area he figured the driver was in, then opened the gun and started reloading it.

"Your friends are. Defeated. Your forces lie. In ruins. You have been. Killed. Betrayed. Murdered by one of. Your own. You have no. Hope," the voice said.

"Heard that too. Now do the one where you call me a pathetic fool and tell me you've come for my soul," Trucker said, raking the fifty across another set of vehicles. Some of the rounds clanked, sparked, and howled off of armor.

A lot more didn't and two of the vehicles exploded in red and yellow greasy looking flames.

"There is no. Hope. Your 'Lady of Hell' lies. Defeated and. Broken. The Immortals are. Useless. Your Ringbreaker. Defeated," the voice said.

"Uh-huh," Trucker said. He pointed at the tanks to the side, then off to their side and then wiggled two fingers like walking legs before taking his fist ramming it into his fingers.

The tanks of 6th Regiment, 3rd Armored Guards, turned suddenly and ran over the fleeing infantry.

"Your false. God. Has been struck down. Its defenders were. Lacking. Only you. Remain. In. Hell. Cut your engines. Unload your. Guns. No harm. Will come. To you," the voice tried.

"Candy first, then I'll get in the van," Trucker said.

"Jocularity is. Not. Helpful," the voice said. "You have. No ho-"

The voice suddenly cut off.

"Boring conversation anyway," Trucker said. He pointed to the side. "JUST CRUSH THOSE PILLBOXES UNDER YOUR TREADS!" he bellowed out.

Above him, in the sky, Legion watched as the troops attacking Trucker's rear guard suddenly wavered and vanished, the massive gate they were streaming through blinking four times, then was replaced with a pink triangle with a white exclamation point in it.

On the battlefield below the enemy started throwing down their weapons and raising their hands.

Legion smiled.

-----

The naked version of the Detainee had dissolved into a thick mist that broke up slowly and vanished, leaving behind only the version of her wearing clothing. Menhit was sitting next to the dead woman, cleaning her pipe with a knife. Herod sat on the other side of the dead woman, holding her hand, staring out the window at the clear blue sky.

Legion and Daxin stood near Peter, who sat staring at the screen.

"So, it's done?" Daxin asked as Pete sat up.

"More or less," Peter said. He reached out and grabbed the beer bottle, taking a long drink off of it.

"What did you do?" Legion asked. "The troops in Hell are surrendering."

Peter started typing again. "Had Casey break a seal."

"Break a seal?" Daxin said. "Brother, with what we're doing and who we are, saying 'break a seal' makes me a tad bit nervous."

Pete looked up, grabbing the bottle and taking another drink. "Sorry," he said, wiping his mouth. He turned back to the monitor. "I had him stop processing on the Sentience Emulation Application Layer then disconnected the overlay they were using on their troops."

Daxin replaced the empty narcobrew bottle with a full one after popping the top and putting the cap in his pocket.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Then he deleted the weighted bias tables they were using, deleted their experience logs, and disconnected them from the input streams, meaning they went right back to what they were," Peter said. He took a long drink from the bottle. "Nothing more than an aggregate of interviews, social media posts, biographies, and guesses by the programmers."

"They weren't SUDS records?" Daxin asked.

"They were and they weren't. You take all of that and apply it to a SUDS record after it goes through the Sentience Emulation Application Layer, which anything from about twenty years before the Glassing doesn't need, and you get an emulation of a person as the programmer thought they would be," Peter suddenly laughed. "Sometimes you had the weirdest aggregate synthesis when the programmers were done."

Daxin sat down, keeping one hand on Peter's shoulder. "Like what?"

"I was part of a project to develop AG's of military leaders during the Second Mantid/Terran War, you know, the one where we one-percented the Omniqueen's people?" Peter gave a brittle laugh. "One of the teams decided that all of these famous generals would be more like their idealized versions of military leaders instead of what they actually were, which was pretty funny when they spun them up only to have the generals start ranting about all kinds of stuff that didn't even exist when they were alive."

"How'd they work out?" Daxin asked. He didn't pay attention to the door opening and three of "Dee's Boys" coming in and carefully picking up the dead woman. Herod glanced at Daxin then followed the three men and the dead woman out of the room.

"They were spun up, put in charge of troops, and promptly attacked one another over differences in opinions that they were too ancient to have actually formed opinions on," Peter gave another laugh. "It was a total shit show that cost humanity about a quarter million lives in less than an hour."

Daxin just nodded, pushing the bottle toward Peter. "Have another drink."

Peter nodded, swigging down a good third of the bottle before looking back at the screens. "He's done inputting the commands," Peter pushed his chair back slightly. "It's over."

"What if they come back?" Daxin asked.

Peter shrugged and tapped a screen that was showing multiple windows full of falling numbers and jagged line graphs. "They'll be really upset."

"Why?" Daxin asked, looking at the graph. "What is it?"

"Stocks and currency exchanges as well as asset brokerage houses," Peter said. "See, from realspace side there's probably hundreds, thousands of shell companies and the like between these guy's actual wealth and reality, but here," he tapped on screen. "They all use the same interaction layer for the top of their asset pyramid, meaning all I had to do was take all the data from there and start selling it off from the actual holding corporations."

He shook his head. "Parts of the Cygnus Stock Market are taking a beating, but," he tapped where multiple lines were starting to quickly go up. "Dumping fifty-five to ninety percent of some of these ancient omnicorp's stock onto the market might have caused a massive loss at first, but now the knives are out and the sharks are tasting bull's blood in the water."

"That's a hell of a thing," Daxin said. "This?"

"That's the corporate assets being sold off," he tapped a blue line that dropped then spiked. "That's where I sold off all of the physical assets, patents, trademarks, and copyrights of the medical and pharmaceutical companies they owned. They got snapped up in microseconds."

"Sounds bloody," Legion commented.

Peter shrugged. "It'll be less bloody than the fight here was."

Daxin leaned back in the chair, putting his feet up on the desk and lacing his fingers behind his neck. "So, you interrupted their brains, froze them out of the real world, and sold off all their assets?"

"And funneled the money to about three million charities," Peter said. "Not out of any real concern for the charity itself, just that if anyone will go to court and fight to keep a payment, and have all the good PR in the world, it's a charity."

Daxin chuckled, reaching down with one hand to scratch between FIDO's ears. "You hurt them worse than Casey or I ever did."

Peter shrugged. "Our Father gathered us to fight, each in our own way," he said. He closed his eyes and sighed. "I'm tired, Dax."

"I know, brother," Daxin said. He glanced at Legion and made a motion before going back to petting FIDO.

Legion had another one of him puff into existence, holding a plastic bag full of bottles and cans that he handed to himself and vanished.

Menhit looked out the window and packed her pipe as she used the zoom function in the smart window to bring something into sharp focus.

"They're down on the beach," she said. "Herod and those men are gathering driftwood."

"Can't believe she's actually dead," Peter said. He tapped a few more keys. "Here you go, production contracts with Confederate Space Force Navy for string drive components, up for auction."

Legion snorted. "I don't believe it."

Daxin glanced at Legion. "You don't?"

Legion made a face. "It's too easy. She dies right before we get in? Doesn't respawn?"

Menhit sipped at her pipe then tapped it against the side of her thigh thoughtfully. "You think she planned it out?"

Legion shrugged. "I think she's got a contingency plan. She's paranoid, by looking like she's dead she gets a head start on us when she runs."

Menhit frowned. "Runs? Why?"

Daxin took a drink off his beer. "You didn't meet her at first. Paranoid, crazy. She spent so much time running from people out to get her that all she knows now is running," he sighed. "In a way, I understand that."

"Are you going to try to ferret out her escape plan?" Menhit asked. She took the narcobrew that Legion handed her and took a sip off the dark brown bottle. "Thank you, brother.":

Daxin shook his head, still scratching FIDO's petting nerve. "No. Let her run. I told her before, nobody even knows or cares who she is."

"The Cygnus-Orion Galactic Spur has all the space she needs to run," Legion said. He sat down and looked at Peter. "Your friend's SUDs templates passed checksum. They're about twenty minutes from the cloning bank finishing up."

Peter nodded. "I'll need their help," he said. He looked around. "It'll take years, decades, of work here before we can start processing people back into realspace."

Daxin looked at Menhit. "We can't get back to Earth, not without The Detainee. What will you do?"

Menhit smiled, taking the pipe out of her mouth. "There were children here, they will need wisdom and guidance. I will offer it, and those who accept, I will live among them and guide them until I can return to my beloved Nubia."

Daxin nodded. He looked at Legion. "You? Back into the Black Box?"

Legion shrugged. "Not sure," he looked around. "It seems so strange. We accomplished what we were gathered together all those years ago to do."

"Redeem humanity and bring comfort to their spirits," Peter said softly.

The door open and Kalki walked in, dressed in comfortable homsespun clothing, his white goat dancing behind him.

"Casey and Peel have left through the mat-trans," he said. He looked around. "It is just us?"

"Just us Immortals," Menhit smiled.

"This was a long road," Kalki said. He walked over, grabbed one of the beers, then sat down. His goat moved over and rubbed against FIDO, its little tail wagging.

**FIDO like goat** the cyborg canine said.

The goat just rubbed her head against FIDO's chassis.

"She likes you too," Kalki said. He took a long drink then looked at Peter. "How are you, brother?"

"Tired," Peter said. He closed his eyes, rubbed them, then grabbed the bottle and took another drink, staring at the screen. "It's down to the buildings selling off. More than a few boards of directors are filing lawsuits to stop the massive sell-offs, but it looks like either five-sevenths to all of the board members are suddenly not answering or doing anything."

"Probably just got deleted," Legion snorted.

"What are you going to do, Dax? Back to being the Preceptor High Lord Marshall of the Martial Orders of Terra? Go full conversion brain in a jar again?" Peter asked.

Daxin shrugged. "I don't know."

Legion sat down, reaching out to firmly scratch the goat's back. "For the first time in thousands of years, we have no idea what to do."

He looked up.

"How weird is that?"

-----

Vuxten stared as one, two, then five Novastar VII power armors stepped out of the woods. He started to get up but paused, half standing, at a wave from the Digital Omnimessiah.

"They are expected," the DO said.

Vuxten sat all the way down as Peel exited the woods, brushing the mud off of her face.

All five armors stopped in a line and unfolded, releasing four men that looked like younger versions of Casey, only possessing both eyes. The four moved up to stare at the Digital Omnimessiah.

Vuxten watched Casey, the one with the eye patch, embrace Peel and give her a long kiss.

--guess Casey and Peel had a full clutch-- 471 joked. --didn't know they hatched as near adults poor Peel squeezing out Casey eggs--

Vuxten snerked and looked away.