Chapter 8

Tony

On our way to the armored trucks, Alpha 0 kept within close vicinity over the sky. He kept the dropship in hovering mode to stay right above our heads.

Both armored trucks appeared in moderate condition. They're a bit scratched up but nothing too severe was done to the vehicles.

I aimed my AR at the vehicle’s doors just to be sure no Lok was hiding in there. Nancy kept careful with her rifle out. She extender her arm out to the door with the rifle still aiming through. She opened it only to see a dead Cobra resting down with several bullet wounds on his chest and forehead.

“He must have died before his squad left him,” Nancy said.

“Identify him,” I said.

She checked her pockets for an I.D’s but left the body empty. “Nothing.”

“Okay, he’ll be marked unknown for now,” I said. “Throw his body in the back.”

Nancy rushed to place his body away but I told her to stop, “No, let Jones do it. Let him get an idea of what a body looks like.”

“Oh,” he nearly vomited. “No, not me please.”

“You wanted this. Take the body in the back,” I said.

Out of hesitation, Jones grabbed the body off of Nancy and nearly dropped him on the snow. He was substantially weaker than Nancy and that’s ridiculous. It was so humiliating, Jacob insisted on helping Jones, put the body back.

“Everything good.” I put a thumb up.

“Fine,” Jones said while rubbing the blood off his gloves.

“Okay, you stay in the back seat with the body. Nancy and I will be in the front.”

“We’ll get the second truck,” Maurice said.

“Okay, be careful,” I said.

Jones shook as he attempted to step in the truck. We only set the engine on and drove off as fast as we could through the snow.

So far, all we needed to fight through was the open landscape of snow. Jones made an ugly face along the drive. He looked like an old man back there.

“Hold on, guys,” Dean called our comms. “There’s something ahead. Let me detail it for you.”

For some reason, Jones put his head down when we stopped. I’m surprised he hasn’t vomited yet.

“Are you okay?” Nancy asked.

“I don’t mean to be rude to the dead guy, but can we please throw him out?”

“You’re going to see a lot more bodies than that kid,” Nancy said. “We’re just trying to prepare you for what’s about to happen soon.”

“I think I get it, okay,” Jones said. “I just don’t know why we have a body sitting next to me.”

“Well, you’ll have to deal with it,” I told him. “Take an extra mission to learn how bodies smell before we arrive at our destination.”

“Tony, I just realized.” Nancy faced me. “How are we going to get him through the rest of this war?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered. “We’ll have to figure something out.”

“Hey guys!” Dean popped out. “We got an airship parked ahead of us and a few villages filled with Lox behind it. I’m going to burn down the village and you clear out whatever’s left then we act careful around the airship.”

“I got it. Should we move?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll burn it down before you arrive.”

From then we just listened to our pilot. Dean quickly burned fuel and set off ahead of us leaving a track of white smoke on top of us.

As we were reaching the village, all we could hear was the pounding of explosions and mini-Earthquakes shaking up the ground around. Dean’s dropship was clearly overpowering.

The only sound I heard after each shot was the violent screaming of Lox dying. “Vladamus is cursing us!”

And, “The Humans will pay for this!”

Then, “HellFire will massacre all evil!”

Just as got in range of the village, all we could catch was a scene of Lox losing their skin and flesh down to their decaying brown bones turning into charcoal.

They all collapsed to the blaze of glory that followed each step they took before losing their soul and heart.

“That’s the Lox?” Jones questioned.

“Yeah, but they’re burning,” I said. “They’re a lot worse when they’re actually alive and healthy enough to kill you.”

“We got about five houses,” Dean said. “One of them just collapsed. I doubt there’s any Lox in them. Check out the rest.”

“Stay in the truck,” I told Jones. “Nancy, we’re stepping out.”

Snow met our footsteps yet again. Our weapons decided to nail more Lox on the way out. They all cried to their mothers, if they had mothers.

Their demonic whaling and their growling when we stepped next to head. They were asking for a superior force to fall from the skies and give them the power they needed to combat us yet again, but unfortunately, the only thing they received was lead along their foreheads.

Two Lox burst out of a house, taking their time to arm the rifles in front of us while being followed by the blaze of doom. Nancy and I shared looks at each other until we finally decided to call it a day for the Lox.

Bang! Bang! Without our call, both Lox landed on the ground. On our backs, Jones aimed out an AR of his own.

“Jones, what are you doing?!” I said.

“I need to go back home stronger.” He lowered his rifle down. “If I wanted to be babied around, I need to learn to kill something at some point.”

More and more Lox stepped out of their huts. That time they had less heat bothering their skin. I shot up my assault rifle and backed up to Jones’ steps.

Under a full moon, the Lox changed their attitude and called out, “The Black Knight must fall before he reaches HellFire.”

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I was shot twice in the chest. Each bullet that landed, made me blink and lost my sense of environment. Jones was about to get me killed.

Nancy engaged in combat only to retreat to the cover our truck. I nearly tripped thinking about the dents left on my chest plate. All the Lox came out at once but even while I was being marked, I had my own strategy in place.

“Dean! Rain hell!” I shouted and bobbed and weaved back to the truck. Jones and I placed our boots back inside and shed snow behind our tracks.

Within a mark of a second, Alpha 0 dropped a crowd of bombs on top of the village. Blood and death filled the air. The tracks to be left for a Lok were non-existent.

It was a hole filled with moles after.

“To the airship,” I called out.

“What are you going to do with it?” Dean asked.

A cocky smile grew on my face and suddenly I have finally gone insane. “We’re going to hijack it.”

Chapter 9

Tony

Our suits have been keeping us under warm temperature this whole war, but now that we have come across the demon of the sky, I had nothing but shivers down my spine.

“That’s the airship,” I said. “I want Jacob to snipe down any Lox that come on our path. Everybody is going down that hill.”

“And when we get inside it?” Maurice questioned.

“Do your best knowledge to get it in the sky and tear any Lox in our path ahead.”

“That may sound cool,” Maurice said. “But how exactly are we going to do that?”

I didn’t know either, but ships like that aren’t controlled by one man alone. There must be someone igniting the engine and a few in charge of lifting the ship in the sky. It's not exactly easy to lift a ship that big either.

“You’re not going to answer me,” Maurice urged the question.

“We’ll see what we can do,” that all I could say.

“Is that really your advice?” Maurice heightened his tone.

“Hey!” I yelled. “That ship was responsible for destroy entire cities. We need to take that ship for ourselves and show some painful payback to the Lox and HellFire!”

Maurice stepped down the hill and said, “Well you should have stepped down first!”

Jacob laid down and pulled a bipod out of his sniper for accuracy. The rest of the team ran straight ahead hoping to get within two kilometers of the airship.

The ship may look so close, but we’re three miles away from touching it. Dean flew over the ship as Patrick mounted a machine gun to provide us gunfire as we trampled over the two feet deep snow.

“Nine-o-clock!” Jacob shouted and knocked the mask off a Lok ahead of us. He didn’t have to call it out, if he could kill it that easily.

I raised my legs up high each step I took, only to cover my entire boots in snow. My assault rifle stood close above my chest. No matter what training I received in the span of fifteen years, nothing prepares you for combat in snow.

Dean’s dropship reached closer above our heads and suddenly more Lox popped out from the airship. A dock opened and revealed two spiked tanks.

We all sunk under the snow as Dean lit up both tanks with only two laser cannons. Even with the laser canons on our side, the Lox still had to defend against us for another two miles.

“Get closer to the ground Alpha 0!” Patrick shouted.

Patrick faced away from us and straight ahead, he melted Lox with his machine gun, providing us a chance to move faster.

Jacob’s sniper in the background shot across my ears more than times than I could count and see a Lok collapse flat on their knees.

Soon the only space we had left of snow was less than a mile. Dean could not move his ship closer and that was a good thing. We were well below him and Patrick could provide us all the gunfire we needed from above.

Just as we were reaching the doors, the Lox decided to begin lifting the airship in the sky but they were well too late to do that.

Everybody ran through the doors, gunning down the long corridors. Steam pipes, red lights and barracks were all we could see stepping in. It looked like a navy ship from the inside.

“Watch each corridor, and call out when you see something,” I said.

“Hold on! There’s a map,” Nancy said.

A map detailed the entire airship from inside. They had a control room and two gunning rooms. Those must be where they control the cannon of the ship.

“The gun is in the front of the ship. We’re going to come across the control room first,” Maurice said. “There’s another dock close to the front of the ship. If we can open it for Alpha 0, we’ll get a good a fighting chance of taking out each Lok inside.

“Right, just focus on getting to the front,” I commanded and we rushed through the corridors.

The Lox knew we were inside. This was their territory. They had control of us now.

Along the side, we heard Dean’s dropship and Patrick’s gun, hailing down Lox out in the docks. They weren’t too far from us.

“You’re reaching something,” I heard someone’s voice but I wasn’t sure who it was. “I told you I’d show up when you’re reaching your toughest times.”

Suddenly, I could not see and everything had turned pitch-black. “Liam! Right now’s not the time!”

“I’m just warning you. I keep my word.” He popped in the room in the form of a shadow, hovering over the ground with one leg. All I could see was the red ring in his eyes and the teeth when he opened his mouth.

“I’m someone you’d really want to listen to before things get bad,” he said.

“Okay, well what do you want? I’m in the middle of an airship with my comrades. I need to be awake!”

“Oh, don’t worry about being awake,” he said and smiled. “I’m controlling your body while we’re here so you don’t die outside. I’m doing you a favor and you should be happy.”

“I don’t understand what you want!” I shouted.

“I made it clear what I wanted multiple times, Tony. It annoys me when I have to repeat my offer to you. Just leave! Leave forever! It’s nothing too difficult to understand!”

“Why do you want me to leave, huh? Why?!”

He shot closer to my face with a blade and said, “Don’t scream at me, Tony. I’m not someone you want to scream at, buddy. Actually, you’re nowhere close to the man who should be confronting me.”

I could smell the blood in his breath. It smells like death and toxicity in one package. He probably murdered more than I have.

“It’s fascinating when I have pathetic humans like you question my authority,” he slid the blade along my neck. “Little Nancy was one of them. Oh, yeah, she’s going to regret that soon.”

“Don’t get anywhere close to Nancy,” I said and bit my lip. “Bad things will happen if you do anything to her.”

“Yes.” he licked blood off the blade. “Bad things will happen. I have a name for them. Death, blood, violence and destruction. All of that everywhere you go. The Tony from the future knows a lot about that.”

Liam then circled around to my back and touched my neck with oily fingers. “No Tony from the future could do anything to me anyway. I told you my name but you still don’t know what I’m capable of. You wouldn’t even dare get close to me or even look at me, if you’ve seen what I could do to anyone. Even the Gods!”

“I don’t care,” I said. “As far as I know, you’ve only been a bug in my head, bothering me almost every day. I don’t want you around.”

Then he closed in on my face, “You’ll want me around sooner or later. Every mistake you will make, I’ll be watching and soon you’ll give in. I know you will.”

I attempted to speak against him, but I ran out of breath. My lungs felt tight and squeezed in. Eventually I saw a mirror of myself collapsing to my knees and Liam stood behind me with a long spear bigger than me and I shot it through my spine and out my chest.

“Wake up,” he said

And I heard it again, “Wake up!” and I saw Maurice and Nancy waving their hands at me.

“I’m here!” I said. “Don’t worry.”

Even though I wasn’t awake for the time, it’s like my head was spinning with what was happening while I was with Liam. I knew what was going on. We just took over the airship.

“We need you and Patrick to run the guns,” Maurice said. “The rest of us will handle getting the ship in the sky.”

I ran to the gun room without question. It was off knowing what was going. Actually, that was too uncomfortable. I was waiting for a moment to get stabbed in the back.

“You good, Tony?” Patrick asked.

“Well on it,” I said.

All I did was stare over at the controls and automatically knew what to do. The cannon needed to horizontal before extracted out. The gun must not be on heat before extracted. When we began aiming, it needed to lock onto its target before firing.

We looked over and everything turned red. Was it Liam? I could breathe normally and lights were flashing. God damn Liam again. He was doing it again.

“We’re being targeted!” Patrick yelled.

“What?!” I questioned it and questioned if I should be afraid. We looked over our roof and we saw it. Another one. The demon that took over the skies. Another airship.

There it was charging its gun in the most terrifying way. We saw a ball of lightning form at the end of the cannon and all I wanted to was run and survive, but that wasn’t happening.

“Let’s watch the world burn together,” Liam said in my head.

The ball of lightning shot across the sky and landed itself against our ship. In slow moving time, my armor ripped out of the body. My helmet cracked in half and everything was distorted. I could not hear words and explosives going off but I could see them.

In moments, I was facing the snow and blood presented itself out of every part of my body. My hands trembled without my control and soon footsteps determined my fate.

“That’s the Black Knight,” the Lok said. “Set him up to burn.”