The enormous shutters were locked over the windows of the High Judge Sabre’s bridge for the transit; the Poslush Combine had learned the hard way that not everyone reacted well to seeing the infinite vastness of the cosmos compressed like it was in hyperspace. Overbattlematron Dao sat on her throne overlooking the bridge. Surrounding her were a dozen officers, each with half a dozen attendants on consoles relaying their orders. The whole chamber echoed with shouted orders and incoming transmissions, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary; for a ship ten kilometers long by fifteen wide, harboring some sixty thousand crewmen, managing it all was a hassle she left to the officers. She had learned that they performed better when she wasn’t breathing down their necks anyways.
“Ma’am, the cruiser Nostrodomo reports that the advance fleet has been attacked.” one of the attendants called, holding up a dispatch on a tablet.
“Are they damaged? Can they proceed with the invasion?” Dao asked back.
“They say that they’ve taken extreme losses, ma’am. They report some sixty percent of their craft to be incapacitated or destroyed.”
“That can’t be right,” Dao said, “what did CAST do? Ask them to clarify.”
The attendant saluted, typing the message into his console. A few seconds later, he reported, “‘Flagship High Judge Sabre, this is cruiser Nostrodomo. Coalition forces deployed extremely powerful explosives against friendly forces in large numbers. Carrier torpedoes moved too swiftly to intercept and were fired from out of weapons range. Several craft caught in one blast in areas. Majority of troopships destroyed; casualties estimated at twenty-five million total. Psychological effects maximal; estimated two hundred craft announcing intent to surrender.’”
Dao vaguely recalled reading about something similar in Tribulations of the Before, and it worried her. The circumstances that birthed Sunsword weren’t exactly ideal for the modern Poslushi. “Ask the status of their commanders.”
“‘Unable to locate flagship craft; assumed destroyed. Captain-General Rapier: died of wounds immediately prior to attack. Viceroy Wakizashi: Tethylen confirmed destroyed, assumed KIA. Captains-General Tachi, Claymore, Cutlass, and Machete all assumed KIA. Captain-General Dusack reported captured.’”
“Captured? Tell them to retreat if human forces are boarding our craft.” Dao said, surprised.
“‘Negative, flagship; craft is damaged, hyperdrive non-functional. Explosions appear to have released electromagnetic interference and damaged systems fleetwide; Nostrodomo only craft with functioning transstellar communications. Will relay command to fleet, but it is assumed that few can obey.”
Dao considered this for a moment. If what they were saying was true, then it wouldn’t matter how much resistance a damaged and demoralized fleet could put up; they would be slaughtered all the same, without so much as a hindrance to the Coalition. Of course, it was dishonorable, what she was about to do, but it would keep her men alive.
“Tell any craft that can retreat to load as many people onto themselves as possible and jump out. Tell the rest to surrender and that they shouldn’t try to resist if they’re boarded. We don’t need any more deaths today.”
The attendant paused for a moment, looking down while he considered it. Then, he saluted again and relayed it to the stricken ship. “‘Roger. It’s been an honor.’” he read aloud shortly afterward.
“Navigator!” Dao barked.
“Yes, ma’am!” the navigator jumped from his seat and stood at attention.
“Turn us around and set course for Omen; we need to regroup. Communications, tell all craft to follow behind.”
“Ma’am, the High Judge will be… displeased…” the comms officer said, “if we are found to not be pressing the attack.”
“Adjutant, I have eighty million men under my direct command at the moment,” Dao began, “if I am to face punishment for preserving them, so be it, and may the verdict of Her Dominance be just. She wouldn’t dare harm the Oxilini Brood anyways.”’
“Roger, ma’am.” the navigator said, punching in a few numbers. Then, with an enormous metallic groan, the flagship began to turn, stopping just short of the planet that would have been its grave, and then started the quick trip home.
—
The bouncing black van’s engine growled as it shot down the quieter nighttime streets of Manhattan. Behind it was a column of sedans in the same color, their windows all darkened. Far above the city, a lone helicopter bearing the insignia of the Department of Homeland and Aerospace Security peered down on them and on their destination. Today was going to be an interesting day.
“Juarez, Albuquerque, Guadalajara, you ready?” Andy Lovelace said, looking at the three men in the van with him.
“Ready, sir!” the three called in unison.
Andy removed his earpiece for a moment, grumbling something to himself as he switched the frequency. When he was satisfied with his fiddlings, he put it back in. “And, of course, the fed. How’s it going, Whitehorse; we ready to go?”
“Undercover FBI and DHAS units are in position for quick apprehension of anyone you choose to spare, Lovelace. Remember, save the scientists and political people for us; the rest are fair game.” Agent Whitehorse responded, his voice containing a curious military tempo, like he was sounding off orders. Andy could hear the buzz of the helicopter’s rotors in the background.
“You got it, rozzer.” Lovelace said, switching the frequency back. “Okay, sound off before we go into this thing. Everyone knows their parts in the play, yeah?”
One by one, the drivers of the cars sounded their assent as the van turned onto Waffen’s street. Normally, the presence of a motorcade of identical cars coming towards Waffen’s fortified hideout would set off every alarm in the building, but Andy had built the place himself; its sensors and security measures answered to him, first and foremost.
Rule one of criminal enterprise was never to have anything in your possession that you couldn’t get rid of at a moment’s notice if it became harmful. It applied to evidence, it applied to assets, and most importantly, it applied to people. In the criminal world, nothing was ever victimless; Andy had seen as people who thought they were Robin Hood, who thought they could just get the money and run, got cut down in the streets by the police all the same.
The outside of the hideout was normal; it was an office building, seven stories tall, with a parking garage underneath. Nothing suggested that it was the headquarters for a network of collaborators and domestic terrorists all over the nation and beyond. In hindsight, Andy really should’ve seen that the offer that Captain Hutchins had given him was way too good to be true, but, God willing, things would probably be fine. At least he had gotten the Russians off his back for a little while.
The van came to a stop just outside of the ground floor’s view, and so did the cars behind it. Andy was first to leave, leading the four out of the van and towards the office’s front door. At the same time, three men in each car disembarked as well, moving quickly and quietly to the trunks and popping them open. Andy and his squad checked and loaded their weapons while the rest retrieved rifles, submachine guns, and various other arms from the backs of their vehicles. Andy looked over his revolver with a loving gaze. It was marked with exquisitely-carved patterns going down the barrel and around its cylinder, and Andy admired those patterns as he loaded the slugs into it one by one. He wanted to talk with Hutchins before he gave her her deliverance, and this gun would make the centerpiece for one of his favorite stories to tell. It was terrible that people were always scared of him after he told it, but that made it more special; he could only tell it to certain people, generally when he was about to do certain things to them.
“Gentlemen!” Andy called as he donned his bandana and authentic felt ten-gallon hat. Of course, he wasn’t stupid, and that was why there was a graphene underlay underneath it that shielded his head, and that same material had been woven into his suit.
“Yes, sir!” all responded at once, putting on their own headgear.
“¿Quiénes somos?” Andy yelled.
“¡Somos Vaqueros!” they yelled back.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“And what does that mean?”
“We’re wild as the West!”
Andy nodded approvingly. “Everyone to your positions. We go on my mark.”
Immediately, the men dispersed, taking up positions all around the building. Andy, however, had the advantage of being known to Waffen, and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary as he and his bodyguards strode confidently towards the front door. Andy fished an ID card from his pocket and swiped it on the reader, allowing the four into the lobby, where two security guards flanked a reception desk, behind which sat a man that Andy recognized as Hutchins’ second in command, Lieutenant Haskell.
“Mr. Lovelace, how can we help you today?” Haskell asked, leaning forward in his chair. Andy said nothing as he checked his watch; only a few seconds to go. “Just a routine check; wondering how Hutchins and her crew are doing.”
“They’re doing fine, but they can’t see you at the moment. We’re in the midst of some very important work, and it would be best if we weren’t disturbed.”
“Oh, there aren't many more important things than what’s about to happen.” Andy said offhand, giving Juarez a very particular look.
“What? You said it was–”
BA-BOOM!
The sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun smoked in Juarez’s hands, and the two guards lay in pools of blood mixed with their own viscera. Haskell almost fell out of his chair as he grabbed his radio. “Hutchins, Andy’s here! He’s gonna–”
Haskell’s brains splattered across the wall behind him and he slumped from his chair, hitting the floor facedown. Casually, Andy put a hand to his ear as he flicked open the cylinder of his gun to load another round. “Go, go, go.”
The entire building shook with a loud blast from below as the heavy steel door that Waffen only opened for supply trucks was blasted open. At the same time, Andy watched the back door to the office get kicked in and a dozen soldiers storm through, eight heading upstairs and four joining Andy and his retinue.
Waffen never stood a chance.
As Andy descended down into their complex, they tried, oh they tried to stop him, but the Vaqueros were Andy’s own little death squad, hand-picked by Lovelace himself from the most ruthless and skilled men in his syndicate. The halls below filled with gunsmoke and fire, and the defenders fought for their lives, but while a couple had served in wars before, most had only a few months of training, while the Vaqueros were the closest thing the American underworld had to a special operations group. Andy tried to honor his end of the deal, but whenever one of their science teams tried to be heroes and grabbed guns, they were cut down all the same.
Eventually, however, while they were getting down towards the lab level, Andy recognized Captain Hutchins by her purple dress uniform as she was being escorted, probably towards some secret exit, by two men similarly dressed to Andy, minus the cowboy hat and bandana, of course. “Hold!” he commanded his men, putting a hand out. Dutifully, they lowered their weapons. “She’s mine.” he said, storming after her.
He cornered the three as Hutchins’ bodyguards tried to pull open a bulkhead, through which Andy could see a long, dim tunnel that he didn’t remember putting there. The guards reached for their holsters, but Andy stopped them. “Hey, hey. I’m just here to talk. You can try to kill me if you wanna, but it’s not gonna work. And, well, you’ve seen what I can do; I wouldn’t suggest running.”
The two men paused for a moment, then re-holstered their weapons at Hutchins’ signal.
“You’ve already dismantled everything we’ve worked for, so what do you want?”
“I don’t want much more from you, Captain. I just want to tell you a story.”
—
“What story?” Hutchins asked, just barely keeping her rage down. If she had the option, she’d be clawing out his eyes right about now.
“It’s a story about me, how little-bitty Andy got into this wicked world.” Lovelace said casually.
“What, so you’re going to tell me about your childhood? I should kill you where you stand!” Hutchins shouted back.
“Oh, yes you should, but we both know how that would end. Remember Van Zandt?”
How could she forget watching Andy blow his head off, moving almost too quickly to see? “Of course I do; don’t be stupid.”
“Good; we’re on the same page, then. Now, can I start?”
Hutchins gestured subtly to one of her men to get ready to draw and fire. “Sure, you snake.”
“Alrighty, Hutchins. So, where do I begin?” Andy said, putting a finger to his chin, “Oh, yes, that. So, I was born in a little town in New Mexico ‘round the turn of the century, back when it wasn’t all part of the Phoenix-Albuquerque Metroplex thingy. I had a big ol’ house with a big ol’ backyard, and my daddy worked real hard to keep it all that way, while my mama kept us fed and kept the house clean. It was a very traditional household, y’see? Now, I don’t remember much of my daddy–he was hungover at all hours of the day when he wasn’t at work–but what I do remember was how, when he got a little too much of that ol’ firewater at the bar, he wouldn’t never get caught drinkin’ and startin’ fights, but that was all ‘cause he saved it for home.”
Andy seemed a little distracted as he recounted this; this was Hutchins’ chance. Silently, she signaled, and her bodyguard went for his gun–
BANG-BANG!
The pistol clattered harmlessly on the ground, and the man holding it faceplanted on the floor, while her other guard slid helplessly down the bulkhead, leaving a trail of blood behind him. Andy holstered his still-smoking revolver. “I was talkin’, Hutchins,” he said, mildly annoyed, then continued on with his story.
“Now, I believe the word for my daddy, who he was, I think it’s ‘nymphomaniac,’ if I’m not mistaken. He really liked sex is what I mean, and when he came home all hammered, he didn’t really care if Mama wasn’t up for it, and he was pretty rough with her. When I got a little older, ‘round twelve or so, I thought that I could defend Mama, I could tell my daddy that ‘no, this ain’t okay, you can’t do this.’ And do you know what my daddy did, Hutchins?”
“N–no?” Hutchins stammered, still running off the adrenaline. He really just shot two people so casually, didn’t he?
“He locked me up in the bedroom closet, which had this door with slats you could see through, and he made me watch as he gave it to my mother in the mouth.”
Andy laughed a fell, hearty laugh. “Y’see, I don’t believe I was ever anything you could call normal. Y’know, one time, I found a little squirrel in the backyard and I was real curious to what he looked like under all that fur, so I caught him and I tied him up all tight, and then I took my little knife and I cut the pelt right off that little fella while he was still squirmin’. As it turns out, creatures are ugly when you take the cute bits off, so I never did it again, but I hope that makes you know, just for a little context, what kind of person I am.”
“A psychopath,” Hutchins’ eyes widened. She had seen the killer in him before, but she didn’t realize what that meant. Andrew Lovelace was like a nuclear test; he was pretty to see, but never from too close up.
“You could call me that, I guess,” Andy shrugged, “I don’t think it’s very polite, to be honest, but you can. Now, where was I? So, one of these days, when my daddy’s at the bar, one of his buddies tells him that as part of the act of intimacy, he had learned that you could choke someone, so he goes home, drunk as always, and he tries it out.”
Andy’s eyes darkened, and he said his next words very carefully. “I’m a hard man to faze; I’ve never really felt much from much’a anything. But my mama, when my daddy put his hands ‘round her neck… she screamed. She screamed so loud I could feel my bones rattle; she screamed so loud I had issues hearing for a month. Might I add that I was watching this happen? I didn’t learn my lesson the first time, and Daddy seemed aggressive, so I got the same treatment as last time when I tried stoppin’ him.
Andy’s dark disposition disappeared in an instant, replaced with something happier, something worse. “A few seconds later, when he took his hands off and she didn’t wake up, he sobered up real quick. But there were two things that he never realized. First, he never knew that I discovered that he kept his revolver–though it’s been souped up since then–in the closet behind a picture,” Andy said, pulling his gun from his holster, “and second, he never realized what–and I do mean what–he was raisin’. So, whenever he got his senses about him and let me outta the closet, I took this here pistol and I pointed it at him, and that coward thought he could beg for his life.”
Finally, all expressiveness dropped from him and there was nothing behind those eyes, and yet they pierced through Hutchins with untold intensity. It was the gaze of a man who was never whole to begin with, the gaze of a man who had never known empathy or remorse. “So I put this pistol in his mouth, like he did to my mama, and right as the waterworks started up, I pulled the trigger. And I couldn’t figure out which of my daddy’s drinking buddies gave him the idea, so I did the same with every single one of them. If I wasn’t an ambitious little fella, I’d have just become one of them run-of-the-mill serial killers, but that’s boring; it’s not efficient, it doesn’t have any benefits that go beyond the simple satisfaction. So, Hutchins, I’ve one last question for you.”
Andy’s facial muscles tightened; he was smiling under that bandana a little too widely, and it wasn’t reaching those dead, emotionless eyes. “What, pray tell, does the little pig say?”
Hutchins was visibly shaking now, pushing herself gently against the wall in fear without thinking about it. “What?”
Andy’s tone turned mocking. “‘Please, sir. I have a family.’”
Bang.
Something drip-drip-dripped onto Hutchins’ dress coat, and she suddenly found it impossible to breathe. She fell to the floor, writhing and clutching desperately at her throat as viscera gushed from a severed artery. Andy spun his revolver around his finger, then holstered it one last time. “I hope you have a family to mourn you, Captain.” he said flatly. She was tearing up; there was no doubt that she’d be crying for her mother if she could.
“It’s always so sad to be forgotten.” he said, walking away, leaving Hutchins to drown in her own blood.
—
Andy watched from the top of the office building as the last few survivors they had chosen to spare ran out in a panic, only to be pounced upon by plainclothes police. He had to admit it; watching the other side do their work was satisfying.
“The girl you want is about twenty, gray hair, lab coat, real cow-dung disposition. I mean, come on; I’ll admit that I’m a little self-centered, but the girl wanted to destroy the world ‘cause she got kicked outta college.” Andy said into the radio.
“Roger that. Yup, we’ve got eyes on her; she’s coming out of the exit below you.” Agent Whitehorse replied. Andy inched towards the precipice and looked down, seeing Dr. Zimmermann as she sprinted out of the building at full speed, heading down a street whose officers were preoccupied securing everyone else. Just as it seemed that might get away, a man stepped out of an apartment doorway and threw an expert jab straight at her face. She tried to stop, but it was too late, and when she ran into his fist, she promptly dropped like a sack of potatoes.
“Oh-hoh-hoh-hoh!” Andy laughed. “She’s gonna feel that one in the morning!”
“We’ll stake out for the rest, Lovelace. Good work; we’ll make sure that the press knows about your heroic actions.”
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Andy said, switching off his earpiece and walking back towards the stairs.
All in a day’s work.