TORONTO, SIX HOURS AGO.
"Ma'am, this could destroy the last of our forces in the West, this is all or nothing. What's your call?"
The conference room was filled with high ranking members of the Commonwealth. The maps, plans, and documents scattered over a large wooden table had been surveyed over a hundred times over and still the group had not come to a proper conclusion on what to do about an isolated Teutonic carrier in Washington.
The man who'd spoken had been the one to receive the news of the cullosos, and how it had been a staging area for the elimination of guerilla camps all across the state of Washington.
Grand Marshal Marcella Abbot simply sat at the head of the table with her hands clasped in front of her mouth. The men all around watched as they saw the middle aged woman's mind at work
A long silence hung in the air as they awaited her answer, each one having a stake in what was to come.
"Launch Operation Icarus." She said in a near whisper.
"Ma,am?"
"If we are going to stand a chance at winning this, gentlemen." She rose from her chair, hands splayed on the table like tarantulas. "We need a way to knock those butcher birds out of the sky, this is an excellent and possibly the only chance we will have to see if it can work, and maybe put a dent in these bastards while we're at it." The Marshel reasoned.
"We'll be lucky if our lines here in the east hold them for another couple months, we need to act."
SASKATCHEWAN, SIX HOURS AGO
In a bunker in Saskatchewan a man in a Canadian uniform was hunched over a computer when the phone rang next to his desk, interrupting his game of Fallout.
"Hello?" He drawled in a bored tone.
"Launch Operation Icarus." The voice said before hanging up with a click.
The soldier leaned back in his chair and took a long breath in before springing up and running through the complex.
"MOBOLIZE!"
FORTIFIED VANCOUVER, ONE HOUR AGO
"Where the hell are they?"
"No idea sir."
Marshall Fred Wong tapped his foot with barley contained impatience, a consistant tick since the two men had arrived at the airbase along with a cargo truck and multiple troop transports, transports filled with men just as eager to finally go on the offensive.
The Private raised his binoculars to give another look at the road, a minute progressed before the man gave his superior a report. "There they are sir." He said as he passed the looking device to Wong.
Dozens of tanks and armoured cars moved down the road towards the airfield, making the ground rumble.
"That's a lot of armour!" The Private excitedly cried.
"That's not what's going to bring that thing down, Lee." Wong stated before pointing with one arm while still holding the binos. "Those are."
Every one of the scores of armoured cars were towing a mixture of flak and artillery, all obsolete and not one seemed to have been manufactured after the 70s, some were even as old as the 40s.
Regardless it was more then the Commonwealth had fielded in the last year.
"All we need now is the weapon." Wong was heard saying over the quickly rising roar of engines.
MAX
I heard a cannon fire miles away, quickly being followed by many others which split the air like rolling thunder as explosions were seen peppering the giant troop carrier.
Radek was still holding me, completely unconcerned with his own wounds. The Bat was almost involuntarily curling his wings over us, like a guardian.
My guardian.
"Radek, it's fine. We need to get to some medical supplies." I made to get up but Radek fixed me with a concerned look. "Not another word." He sternly commanded and picked me up to bring us inside the cabin.
Just as we were about to enter a voice screamed at us. "PUT THE TROOPER DOWN! OR I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD I'LL PUT THIS WHOLE BELT OF ROUNDS IN YOU!"
As Radek turned I got a look at the source of the noise and my eyes widened.
"Mark?"
My squadmate appeared so much worse then I had seen him last. His dark skin was blemished with bruises and scratches and his trench coat was tattered, the chestpeice missing completely. Marks eyes were wild and the SAW he carried was down to its last belt.
"I see you have met our furry friends as well." Radek stated with a bored tone. "I am going to kill you now." He made to put me down and stride forward until I grabbed a hold of the top of his chestplate.
"Don't." I all but ordered.
Mark was looking between us with wide eyes, catching the way the Raven looked at me. "Ok, what the fuck?" He demanded.
Radek seemed about to give a snide answer when seven black quads burst from the trees. The Headhunters dismounted, ignoring the bodies in the snow, and all began to yell for me to step away from the Raven, something I was definitely not going to do.
"Stand down! He's not a threat!" I barked, managing to get them to stop yelling for me to get down. "Who's in charge of this squad?" I inquired. The group of hunters lowered their guns and a Man stepped forward, tall and dark eyed. He gave Mark a look as he passed, obviously he had not expected to encounter a situation like this.
"I am, names Wilkes. You apart of the local contingent?"
I gave a snort. "Yeah, so is Mark over there, we're all that's left at this point."
"That butcher bird yours?" Wilkes asked, gustering at Radek..
I turned to look at Radek, who was fixing each hunter with his own personal death glare.
"I can't control him if thats your question." I answered simply.
Another salvo of artillery and flak impacted with the Black Bird, causing the steel behemoth to bank slightly before righting itself. I heard Radek chuckle behind me.
"Something funny?" Mark snapped at Radek.
Radek just gave him a wolfish grin. "Something will be."
The Black Bird soon began to spew forth fighters and dropships, most likely creating a beachhead of troops at the Cascades highway.
"Look, we'd love to stay and chat but we need to move, now. I got no qualms with bringing you two along, hunters are in short supply as is, but he goes elsewhere." Wilkes decreed, pointing his finger at Radek for emphasis.
"Radek stays, he's too valuable to simply drive off." I argued.
"I let him come he'll do us in like these poor shits."
Wilkes toed the RFü's body. "Sides', I doubt he's got the... stomach, they got stomachs right? Anyway it just ain't a good idea so I dunno, tie him up or something."
A large gray hand placed itself gently on my shoulder. "Stay safe, little finch." With that he boldly strode past me and launched himself in the air before the others could react.
Wilkes shrugged. "That works too I suppose. Alright, let's move boys!"
They tore away, only two stopping to pick me and Mark up before following into the bush, the rolling thunder of artillery puncturing the air.
When we broke from the woods a sight that I hadn't thought was possible was unfolding.
We were fighting back.
Old Bradleys and Abrams were tearing across open road towards the landing zones for the Teutonic forces, armoured cars and troop transports speeding along side them.
We continued down the road until we reached a forward station, a congregation of transports in a semi-circle around a strange device of coils and wires. Wilkes and his team pulled up to one of two tents pitched around the device and dismounted, I noted another group of Headhunters already gathered in front of a pair of scientists.
"...heavily specialized EMP." One finished, earning nods and some exited chatter from the soldiers in black.
Whatever he was talking about seemed to please many of the troops.
I don't know why, but that device made me feel really uneasy.
Of course we were late to the briefing so I didn't get much info, but Wilkes got a rundown he passed on to us.
"Ok, so we got an escort job." He began. "First, we move behind the armour down the highway, if we manage to overrun them we hijack one of those vertical lift planes they like to use. Then, and I know this sounds bad, we board the carrier itself."
Dead silence.
No one gave a single vocolized word for a long moment, nothing.
"That thing a bomb?" One of the hunters finally asked.
"No idea, all I know is that it won't effect us." Wilkes replied.
"For all we know it could be a nuke." Another scoffed.
That brought more silence.
Thirty minutes later we were speeding along the highway with the device towed behind one of the quads, barely a mile behind the spearhead of armour. Every once and a while we came across crashed dropships and scattered bodies of Teutonic pilots and soldiers. We only passed one knocked out armoured car, the carcasses of a dozen Hawks strewn about it's vicinity.
We'd taken them completely off guard and it was showing.
"We've got boggies." One of the 15 other hunters informed through the radio.
We lined up to either end of the road and took cover behind our quads. "Small birds, draw." The voice instructed.
"Level up, sixteen degrees, 3 o'clock." This time it was Wilkes who spoke. We all pointed our rifles to the designated area, 12 Hawks began to fill my scope.
"Call targets."
We called our targets and I took aim at my own, a familiar looking Hawk with a lazy eye like he had brain damage.
"Fi-" the Hawks popped bright red smoke canisters attached to their bodies and our line of vision was cut off.
"Fuck." Wilkes swore. "They learned."
The smoke rolled down the highway and soon became a fog around us. One of the 6 foot winged men landed behind our quad line, screaming one word like it was the only thing he understood. "DIE."
We all turned and unloaded at least 6 anti-material rounds into him, killing him outright.
"GODANM IT GREGOR." A voice bellowed out before seven or so Hawks charged head to head against us.
Up close it became apparent that these light airborne men had already seen action, charred armoured chest plates and missing helmets giving a bleak picture of their past actions.
Hawks used a type of calvary sword in close quarters, a weapon adopted alongside their cylinder arm gun sometime after their first introduction in the battle of San Francisco. These guys were close quarter nightmares, and from the looks of it they were desperate, hardened, and vicious.
One of the hunters got run through by a Hawk missing a chunk of his chestplate.
When the Hawks closed the distance our anti-material rifles were significantly negated. Luckily we were trained for this as a worst case scenario when fighting flyers, and we held our own in the onslaught.
Wings and limbs were blown off by point blank rifle fire as the hunters twirled and dodged the less nimble super soldiers. Some of us, myself included as my own weapon was longer then the rest, opted to throw the primaries down and draw pistols.
All in all we lost five of the original group in the process, pistols still cracking on occasion as we put the last ones down.
Mark and I took a quad from our dead and we continued.
"Found one, looks like they ditched at fast as they could." One hunter reported, finally finding our ticket onto the Black Bird.
At that moment when we boarded the transport ship and started engines I couldn't help but wonder where Radek was.
RADEK
"Radek? Holy shit! You, go get the rest of the Bats and bring them to the hanger, now!" Skala hollered to a nearby engineer.
Skala caught me before I fell on my face and held me close in a hug. My flight up had been exhausting, constantly fighting gravity and the pain of my wings until finding a peak close enough to jump from.
Pew's hands were almost shaking and I got enough strength back to return his embrace, I heard a cacophony as more Ravens poured into the hanger and two more pairs of hands joined in the group hug, holding just as tight.
"We thought you were gone, son." Bush managed to say as we stood there with our wings all folded over each other. We remained like this for another hand full of seconds before the vibration of a shell hitting the Bird reminded us of the situation at hand.
"Things look grim." I observed.
"Better now that you are back again, brother." Skala tried to joke, though non laughed.
It was then I noticed someone was missing. "Where is Emale?"
Santo and Skala glanced at each other and Bush simply stared at me. "Emale... He." Bush chocked out his next words. "He... they clipped him. Radek... they fucking clipped him."
My heart sank, another couple rounds impacted into the lower levels of the Bird, but I didn't process it.
All that mercy caught up to him, a kind and sensitive soul that only wanted to be loved was punished for simply refusing to be a killer. And they did to him what every Raven regards as a living hell.
They took his wings from him, and most likely threw him in a dark hole right after they did it.
Santo was the one to bring us all back to reality, his quit voice easily heard over the silence. "No time."
MAX
"Transport 205, this is tower. Come in Transport 205." A French women's voice came out of the radio.
"Tower, this is 205."
"Battlefield doctrine dictates immediate return only in cases of heavily wounded. Can confirm?"
"Affirmed."
"205, your flight path is not correspondent of protocol... 205 respond... 205 this is Tow...."
Wilkes left the radio on but ignored the now indignant voice on the other end.
"Docking bay's suicide. Ain't stupid." He explained to us as the aerial transport touched down on the Black Birds roof.
Wilkes came in too hard. The landing gears gauged at the metal and dug in, grinding along as it did, mangling the bottom.
"This thing won't get us back." Mark observed as we filed out and moved along the collosol inventions back.
"If we're meant to get back..." one trooper lamented.
"Keep moving." I cut in. "This trip shouldn't take long.
This thing was massive!
We had found a hatch on the surface that allowed us into the vents, the metal walls around us were anywhere from warm to scalding hot. We had been crawling for an hour.
RADEK
Darkness, it swallowed Skala and I as we entered 'The Brig'.
The Black Bird was in little danger, the steel was blessed and made with a make non outside of Europe could comprehend, though the floor often shuddered with every shell.
I couldn't care less about any of it, I only needed to see him.
As we descended the stairs a faint orange glow from a candle began to appear. The single stick of wax was perched above a door with a barred window, chains rattled inside the area's of confinement all around.
Skala rapped on the bar with an armoured glove. "Firefly, we found Radek."
A shape lifted itself from a dark corner in the cell, chains singing their tune of oppression as he lifted himself up to his full height. "You should not have come." He rasped.
I strood forward, more outraged and angry then I had ever felt before, but not at Emale, all my hate was now directed at whoever put my friend here to begin with.
I gave a single kick and crushed the door inwards, after another strike from my foot the door gave way, Skala didn't stop me. "Nonsense." I growled.
Emale limped out of the shadows with as much pride as possible. Though I held back a gasp as I saw him.
To "clip" a Raven is to disable his wings and other things aside from the bio struts by ripping out the neural network's hub, which is placed between the wings a little lower then the back of the neck.
They had done more then just that.
Many of his metal feathers were missing, ripped out as trophies from the grunts who most likely subdued him. His face was heavily beaten and a long gash marred his right cheek.
"...Emale... king, look at what they did to you." Skala seethed
The Frenchman looked to me. "I am useless to you both, if-"
"Do not demean yourself any further," I cut in as I lifted what I had been holding until now. "Can you run?" I asked.
"Yes." He answered with little vigor.
"Can you fight?" I sternly questioned.
"Yes!" Was his more determined reply.
I stepped forward to reveal what I carried, a tank full of flammable tar.
"Can you burn?" I requested solemnly.
I got no verbal answer, only a smile.
As we left the rows of cells Emale stopped and peered into one, and broke the lock with a hard yank. "Emale?" Skala began to ask as the door was torn off it's hinges. "What are you?... oh."
A figure rushed out of the cell and practically tried to meld herself to Emale with an embrace to match Emale's own famous hugs, one he gingerly returned. "Firefly." The girl in black all but radiated love for the pyro, I could only gape at the sight.
MAX
Finally we had found a latch to empty us down into a metal gangplank about 10 minutes ago. All 11 of us were as twitchy as squirrels on crack and not a single rifle lowered itself as we moved along the wide hallways.
The Black Bird was incredibly warm even in the hallways, heat radiated off the walls and floor like the whole then was alive. Red lights were all that drove the dark away as there were no windows.
Radek lives here? I thought disbeliefingly.
"Not that I'm complaining," a trooper said, "but where's all the Toutonics at?"
"The hangers might be it." Another answered.
The guy on point barked and we all instantly pressed ourselves against the walls. Contact! We won't come out in one piece in these confined spaces!
Three Bats rounded the corner with hydraulics whining as they jogged a few more feet before stopping and taking us in. We would have fired, but they did not look at all like they wanted to be here.
The one on the right was dragging his wings like they were dead weigh, a flamethrower attached to his fore arm was the only weapon he seemed to carry. The one left carried an StG 84 and had a harness filled with extra Mags for it, a baseball bat looped through his belt.
The pointman I recognized, although his helmet shadowed his eye I could see the MG42 in his arms and the patchwork on his wings, his shoulder cannon moving slowly from hunter to hunter.
"Easy." Radek said to us, trying to calm us down. He motioned for his friends to lower their weapons and me and some others followed suit, Wilkes and several others didn't. "Sir," I hissed. "Don't piss them off."
The anti-material rifle slowly lowered, and soon every gun was turned to the ground. It was Radek who spoke first.
"Alright." He took a long breath in, "We have someone with us you might have missed, she will come to you and is not armed." The Bat with a flamethrower turned his head behind him to look at something before steeping to the left.
Someone in headhunter gear walked towards us and I heard Mark suck in air with surprise, "Tris?"
Nothing registered, I felt myself drop my rifle and run towards her as she did likewise. We met half way and embraced tightly, I felt tears nearly spill from my eyes as I gave her the biggest hug possible.
"How? Oh my God, your okay." I babbled as we held each other.
"Emale found me, if it wasn't for him I'd have frozen to death." She exclaimed.
I glanced over my shoulder to see the said pyro look down as his companions simply gave him looks that stated "You just had to do it, huh?"
Wilkes cleared his throat, "look, we got a mission... so, we need to get by."
The Bats glanced at the device one of our troops had strapped to his back, suspicion began to hang in the air.
"Weißt du, was das ist?" Radek seemed to ask his flammable friend.
"Bombe?"
Wilkes began to whisper in the ranks for our German translator, but before he was any use the metal men cought on and changed languages like it was switching channels.
"Changer en français, ils écoutent." Emale spoke this time.
"Nous devrions les tuer maintenant..." Skala growled.
"Sauf Max, tu la touches tu meurs." Radek snapped to Skala
Suddenly I remembered that Tris knew French. "What're they saying?" I inquired as we sank back into the bristling pile of black and weapons. Tris looked at me strangely, "ol' one eye seems to really like you now." Radek barked something else in French in response to Emale.
"Tris," I picked up my rifle, "What are they saying?" I repeated.
Tris shrugged, "The usual shit, if they should kill us or not." She translated with a bored look. "You and me are safe though." She added.
Wilkes raised his gun a little, barly an inch, but I noticed and so did the trio of killing machines before us. All conversation from them abruptly ceased as Radek stared at the Headhunter for an awkward and tense moment.
Then Skala opened his mouth and they continued the discussion, in Polish.
Everyone collectively groaned as the atmosphere filled with slavic chatter. The floor shook with the shock of another explosion. "Oh for fucks sakes. We don't have time for this!" I yelled at the three, ending their conversation right there.
RADEK
I was about finished retelling how Max and I had killed the Deathpack when I was rudely interrupted. Of course we were stalling at this point, killing them was impractical and these hunters had to be prevented from reaching the hanger.
We were all that remained on the Black Bird itself, most other Ravens and Hawks were groundside or engaged with enemy aircraft but we had little intention of doing anymore battle, but that did not mean we were going to destroy our kins home, which I suspected these black clad soldiers were here for. But then again it wasn't our problem anymore and this was hardly a home.
I motioned for the other two to keep going to ahead of us, reasoning that a trio of Bats was making the trigger happy spec ops nervous. "Where are you going?" I asked.
"The bridge." Max answered calmly. "You guys deserting?"
I looked at her then, green eyes sparkling with intellect and her brown hair was all over the place, I knew then what I had been feeling all this time.
"Yes... do you want to come?" I mentally punched myself for sounding like an idiot.
She stared at me blankly and opened her mouth to say something but I had already whirled around and followed my friends down to Sepp's office.
MAX
Radek's form quickly disappeared behind a corner, letting a sigh of relief emenate from the small crowd at my back, although I felt something else.
"Alright let's move!" Wilkes barked.
The claimed trek to the bridge was a half lie. Wilkes had told the Bats the misinformation for the obvious reason to that the Ravens would grow suspicious. Whatever this thing was Wilkes had apparently figured out but wasn't telling, all he would say is we needed to get to the center of the flying warship before activating it.
It wasn't a very long jog through the hallway before we heard jet engines entering and leaving the great behemoth.
We split our forces, my half spilled into the hanger while the other continued to the bridge.
The hanger was about as massive as many of us expected. Toutonic flying wings had enough space in the entrance for both in and out traffic, parking themselves with dozens of others and then leaving again in droves after refueling or repairs.
Without wasting any time we ran down and began firing on the ground crews and pilots who had just noticed us, scattering them and sending any planes that could out of the building. We set down the device and I began to play around with its three step controls, a women's voice coming from its small speaker.
"Activate phase 1, night of silence."
I pressed the first button.
RADEK
Skala and Emale had wasted no time, as was evident when I arrived at Sepp's office.
Emale was cackling like a mad man as he doused flames on the pile of documents, pure glee was etched across his face. This was step one of the plan and it was simple, destroy as much documentation of us as possible. That was where Emale came in, and where he exeled.
Our existence on paper was fickle at best, deaths had been faked and our names were rarely mentioned, to burn this pile was to erase all trace of us, and with all trace gone they could never find us.
Then something odd happened, I heard the radio at my chest crackle and then give a single pop. Skala uncrossed his arms to look down at his own, the same confusion marring his features.
"I think the radio is dead." I said plainly, Emale laughing in the background.
"Oh... well shit." He reacted.
MAX
Gunshots broke and rounds impacted into the plane we had sought cover behind. "Hurry up the danm sequence!" Wilkes screamed over the sound of P38s.
I began working on the second steps, waiting for the device to cool down, making me uneasy. Anything that dispensed enough energy to "cool down" was not something I wanted to squat next to.
Marks SAW decimated the ground crew and the team spread out to lock the hanger down. "Clear!" Was the call given shortly after.
Wilkes seemed agitated as time progressed, I was beginning to have a really bad feeling in my gut about this device.
"Wilkes, what does this thing do?" Tris asked, feigning off-handed interest.
"It ain't your concern, corporeal. All you need to know is that this baby right here," The soldier patted the device. "Is what's gonna knock those birds out of the sky." He grinned.
Honestly given the circumstances of how we found Tris, coupled with how they had found me, and the obvious connection we felt to our own "Butcher Birds" should have given Wilkes pause before saying what he did.
I looked at Tris and she met my eyes, hands drifting close to the side arm someone gave her. Then the machine interrupted whatever the situation was leading to. "Phase two, Morning of weakness." With that the second sequence ended and a pulse was sent out with enough force to knock us all down on our ass.
"There goes their failsafes." Wilkes chuckled.
RADEK
The burning ended well.
All our past accomplishments and sins had been completely wiped from physical record, the fact I hadn't died in Estonia, Skala's vicious war/hate crimes, and Emale's general existence was all behind us. No one would even be able to figure out I ate that ferret last winter.
Things were going too well it seemed.
As we three walked the halls back to the hanger I received the same omen to all danger.
An itch abruptly began in my eye socket.
"Run." I softly commended.
Skala light harrtedly laughed. "Radek what-"
"RUN!" I roared.
We crashed through the halls the hallways and gangplanks, our moods changing rapidly to that of panic as the other two felt what I had before my itch.
An ever so slight lock in our support struts.
MAX
"What do you mean "failsafes"?" Tris demanded as soon as we recovered from the pulse. "What is this?" She gestured at the device, exasperated.
"Non of your concern."
"Wilkes I swear if this is what I think it is..."
"Oh, well what do you think this is exactly, trooper?" Wilkes mocked.
Just before she answered three Bats came crashing into the hanger, two firing off suppressive fire like it meant life or death.
The squad found cover behind the planes, cursing under the hail of MG fire punctuated by an StG 84. We scrambled from the device and left it in the open as Wilkes, Tris and myself sought out another plane as a barrier to the storm.
I noticed right away that the rounds were discriminatory, firing anywhere that wasn't me and Tris's plane. I poked my head out and what I saw on Radeks face terrified me.
In all my days fighting these winged men I had seen a variety of emotions displayed by them, from hate to anger to sadness, but never this.
That was fear etched on an apex predators face, and that was cause for concern.
"Danmit. You stupid girls can't follow a fuckin order!?" Wilkes blustered over the bark of the guns. Tris had her attention on something else and I followed her gaze to one limp winged pyrotechnic slowly making his way to the device, approaching it like it was nuclear.
"Icarus." Tris breathed in realization.
"You want somethin done..." Wilkes growled as he darted out and slid in front of the device, a good six metres from Emale who was weaving between planes to get to us.
I couldn't move. My thoughts whirled in slow motion as I tried to get myself to react.
This thing was going to do something everyone had only dreamed of until now, it was going to win us the war. But it was going to kill Radek.
It was going to kill Radek.
It can't kill Radek, I still wanted us to have conversations in the woods together. I still wanted the warmth he generated when I had no one else to get me through that fight in my dream. I wanted to fight with him and have him as a guardian, keeping the wolves at bay. Somehow through this all he had changed in my perception of him from a vicious boogeyman to a lonely person who everyone only viewed as a weapon.
I drew my gun and pointed it at Wilkes, the gunshots had ended as both sides noticed the standoff. Tris had drawn her own pistol, although she was more concerned with making her way to the French Bat.
"Wilkes, move another inch and I'll shoot." I warned.
"Icarus armed. launch evening of David."
Wilkes simply looked at me and then back at the machine, I saw Radeks wild eyes and Skala raise his gun to stop him but it was too late. Wilkes had smashed his palm on the button as hard as possible, blood spread high as we loaded him with lead.
It all happened so fast.
A red wave of energy dispersed and as it did so all lights in the hanger went out, Emale staggered but didn't fall, Tris clinging to him like a lifeline. The other two were not so lucky. Skala dropped like a sack of stones as soon as the wave hit him, all that metal that had made the Bats nearly invincible was now nothing but dead weight as his support struts ceased to function.
Radek collapsed shortly after and I ran to him, the hunters simply loitered around, not sure how to proceed.
Explosions from the floor vibrated and the airship began to list as it fell from the sky, whatever had protected it now deactivated. Radek was attempting to move, snarling against the weight with rage in his eyes.
"Radek! Oh Jesus are you ok?" Radek seemed to snap from his struggle at the sound of my voice, but he only stared off with wide eyes. "The others! Any that were flying are now..." he then looked at me.
"Get yourselves out of this place, the Black Bird runs on four massive engines and we are falling fast! An explosion of that volume will decimate anything too close!" His face turned forlorn. "I am so sorry Max. Forgive me."
Radek then somehow managed to move, only an inch but even that was supposed to be impossible. "The spell should still work. Pump system primitive enough to survive virus. Shoot me." He gasped out in quick fire succession. "NOW!" Radek bellowed. My hands were shaking, this was fucked up beyond any reason. I raised my pistol and fired into his body, tears in my eyes.
"I'm sorry." I gasped out.
RADEK
Pain and then life saving rage entered my inkblood.
Even now the spell wanted me to hurt her, end her but I had no intention of that.
My eye blazing pure blue I heard my mother speak. "Get up Radek, get up."
With the shrieks of limp steel and hydraulics breaking I lifted myself up and tore as much metal as i could from my body, I lifted my gun and fired a round into Skala, hoping he would stay level headed under the drugs.
I looked at her then, the girl who had saved my life when all I wanted was to end hers, even with all that battlefield grime she was beautiful. How had I not noticed these things, I would never know.
Skala shot up and charged the cluster of hunters, roaring. They opened fire and he tore into their ranks, only sparing the black one named Mark. Now we were three for three, and as the ship fell we all understood what to do.
"Heute night."
Not today.
Emale was the first to jump, holding tightly to the girl as he did. Then Skala, still roaring, grabbed his charge and followed. Now it was just me and Max, realization downing. "No! Radek, no!" She yelled with wet tears streaming down her face.
She made for the hanger opening, trying to jump without me but I was too fast and I wasted no time before the cold blast hit our faces.
As we fell through the sky the drugs wore off and I made sense of what Max was saying to me.
"You stupid, stupid bird brain." She sobbed. "Fucking danm it all. I... I love you. Fuck I said it, and now you're gonna die." She managed to gasp out. I simply looked into her eyes, content with everything.
"Fucking why did it have to happen like this?"
I gave her a reassuring smile. "Survive for me, tell our story." Wind whipped past as we grew closer to the ground and I shifted myself to be beneath her, wings trailing behind and around her as I hugged her close. I didn't hear my mother's voice anymore, nor any of the others, simply quite.
This was it, and I was ready.
"I love you too." I whispered into her hair and gazed up into the blue winter sky, the same one as every other day. What a wondrous sky.
"As beautiful, and as utterly usless, as a poem."
Then my world went black forever.