The sky was clear, yet the thunder roared.

-He cannot be saved.

-There is still a chance.

-Look! Look at the stats!

=========================================

Maturity Level 1

Physical (Current/Max)

Strength 5/10

Speed 2/14

Life energy 3/29

Press here for more…

Psychology

Intelligence 7

Confidence 6

Motivation (8/7) - system update pending

Press here for more…

=========================================

-Look at his Wisdom!

=========================================

Wisdom 3

Conclusion:

Probability of Success of the Stated Mission: 0.5 %

==========================================

-Do you need to see anything else??

-I’ll hire an agent! No matter what the cost!

-Good, because it will not be cheap.

-He’s my son. What else is money good for?

-Even the best of agents cannot guarantee success.

-I know that.

-And if it does not work out, it may be the end of you.

-Yet… Living the eternity knowing I did not do everything I could is the pain I do not plan to bear.

Limux Grand - Quadrant 20TVS2

One hundred and eighty days into the invasion

The projectile blew a crater ten meters away from Timothy, and the energy weapons started to dance their deadly beams over the rocks around.

As the wave of explosion passed, Timothy stuck out his head and shoulders behind the pile of concrete rubble and fired.

Miths had placed a few gunning nests in the decimated buildings around, and he targeted his projectiles to hit them directly or bury them under the falling debris. As long as they died. He did not care how.

“What are you doing?” Xera, his First Sergeant asked.

“They found us! It’s now or never!” he screamed, and fired another array of laser chargers. His gun was next to empty. “We have to go!”

He struggled to get up. His once shiny black whole-body armor was now scratched, wrinkled, indented, and so badly damaged that it made clunking and creaking noises as he moved. How he succeeded in running in it was a mystery of its own.

“It’s only a hundred yards away,” he screamed to those that followed him.

They ran. The blast lifted the ground under his feet and he fell down on his ass.

Trooper Gera came from behind, the reflection shield still active in his hand, and placed himself in front of him, shielding him as well.

They hugged the wall of the bombed-out building and decided to take another respite.

“Dead?” Timothy asked as he saw Gera banging the hand bracelet that should activate his shield again.

“Yeah.”

“It served good. Saved my life there.”

“I have only twenty charges left,” Gera said. “That’s not even enough to power the shield back up.”

“I know.”

“Reinforcements? Any chance of that?”

“The way it looks from here,” Timothy said as he looked at the sky and the small red dot representing the burning of one of their giant battleship there. “They pushed the whole fleet away from the planet. It’s all on us now. Whatever they had, they've already sent us.”

“Only eighty yards to go,” his First Sergeant Xera said. "So don't you start getting soft now."

“My armor is still good,” Timothy said as he brought himself up. “I go first.”

“The hell it is,” Xera contradicted him and tried to get in front of him. The array of bullets flew right over her shoulders.

“Doesn’t matter. I go first. That’s an order, soldier.”

“Wait!” Trooper Meo suddenly said and stared at the seven-inch screen he carried in his hand. “I have twenty friendly droids flying our way.”

“I guess that’s our reinforcements,” Xera said.

“Let's just hope they don't get shut down first,” Meo said. "With the luck we've been having..."

“What’s their TOA?” Timothy asked.

“Forty-five seconds. Wait, I just lost one of them.”

“Do you have them under your control?”

“Yes.”

“Tell them to ignore the enemy fire and get here fast. And then plow everything they see in front of us till the Miths’ Comm Center, and then spread around and give us support. That should do the trick.”

“Yes, sir.”

As soon as the droids' noise appeared, Timothy got out of the protection of the wall, ready to go

Xera pulled on his shoulder. "Leave it do droids," she said.

"Can't. Miths have concealing shields. Droids can't find them till they start firing at them! That's why we lost so many of them. I need to draw them in!!"

He ran. Over ten yards of open field and then another wall of debris, firing at anything his screen inside his helmet marked as moving.

Sixty yards. Just a bit more.

Ten more yards of open space. He ran as he heard the droids firing from above, rocks of blown up concrete raining down all over.

Suddenly, the blast hit him in the leg, and he stumbled down.

He looked at Xera who suddenly appeared half-naked above him, lifting him up.

“Shut up! It was busted and I’m faster this way anyway,” she said and was ready to smack the smile off his helmeted face when she violently spun around behind him as the laser got her in her shoulder.

He turned to see one Mith standing unprotected in the ruins and fired at him, feeling the returning fire dance around his breastplate. But the above droid blasted the Mith to dust even before Timothy could make sure he was dead.

He stepped back and picked Xera up, caring her over his shoulder to the protective wall nearby.

'Your armor is now deactivated, and will not...' An AI voice wanted to give him a message, but it died down with it, together with all the other sensors in his helmet. That meant only mechanical protection. Any energy weapon would go through his armor like an iron blade through jello.

He looked at Xera. She was gushing blood from the torn shoulder. Timothy padded the back of his calf, but the box would not open. So he slammed it harder, and only then did it open to the first-med kit there.

Timothy grabbed the foam and sprayed it over her wound. He took his glove off and touched her forehead gently. She breathed heavily, and her dark skin looking somewhat pale on the account of all the dust that started to rain down on them.

Was it dust or the remains of their enemy? Fuck if Timothy cared.

“The foam will do the trick. But not if you move. You have to be still now.”

“I can still fight,” she insisted, but Timothy shook his head in denial and wrestled her gun from her nervous hand.

“Miths reinforcements coming,” Meo muttered next to him, taking the helmet off, the blood coming out of his mouth. “At least fifty flyers. If they get to the station before we do, this is over. Need to send droids at them. They can slow them down.”

Timothy took the control out of his hand, and punched the command, leaving only a pair of droids above them for air support. “You just relax and leave the rest to me,” he said. “Take off your armor and spray your wounds. Gera?”

Timothy looked to the side where Gera should have been. He lay there, gasping for air, his left foot missing, a pile of foam in its place as the trooper was trying to stabilize himself. “I can still shoot,” he said as he turned to look at Timothy.

“Sure. Shoot at anything that comes your way, and guard two of them, okay? Otherwise, don't move an inch!”

Another explosion from Mith’s projectiles shook the wall. The two droids above answered instantly.

“Forty yards to go. I can do this.”

“That is a suicide,” Xera said. “Two droids are…” she continued just as one of the remaining droids blew up from the enemy fire. “Not enough.”

“If I don’t load this up,” Timothy said tapping on the inch-wide drive that hung around his neck. “…it will be all for nothing."

He sighed as he looked her deep in the eyes, trying to find the strength there that he knew he needed. "Meck and Ice and Slowie and all the rest of them. All of them dead for nothing. And who knows how many more.”

His first sergeant had nothing to say to that.

“Fuck 'em all!” he said and jumped out.

He ran in a zig-zag, between the rocks, over the bombed craters,not trying to return fire anymore. Just running and trying to get to the next protective area.

Twenty yards.

Another explosion. It lifted him up. When it landed him down, it took out all his strength, his dreams, aspirations, and ambitions.

It was a sort of a hit that changes you, that makes you understand that no matter what you will never be the same.

He dropped his emptied rifle down and unpinned his armor.

Inside of his head, everything was spinning. But he had to go on. “I’m out. I’m going with the iron!”

He opened the compartment in his back-side armor and took out an ancient six-shooter gun and a foot-long stabbing knife.

Things started to blow all around him, and he got up to his knees.

Something happened then that he could not quite explain, not then not years later. In that mayhem, suddenly everything seemed to have stopped, the time has stopped.

There was a clarity in his head, absent of pain and fear. A calm reality of acceptance.

Somewhere from there, a little voice called on to him. “If you continue, you will die. Just hide and let someone else take care of this. You’ve done enough.”

But there was nobody else. He knew it. He knew it if he didn’t do it, millions more would die.

“Fuck it!” he said out loud. “Then I’ll die.”

He counted them in a blink before ducking down. Seven of them spread around there guarding the entrance. No heavy armered, but still seven miths and only six bullets left.

He looked up again. On the horizon, his eye caught the sight of their reinforcements flying down fast, overcoming his droids.

“Fuck it. So, I’ll die,” he said and started to squeeze the trigger.

His gun roared almost as loud as he did when he screamed his war cry out, out of the very bottom of his soul, the cry of the warrior, of a man who knows he is to die, his last hurrah.

The Capitol - Quadrant 0AA

Two weeks later...

Timothy got out of his fancy limousine as his comm rang.

“How are you doing?” Xera said from quadrants away.

“Pretty good, have to tell you,” he said with a grin on his face. “A fancy black suit on my back, new shiny shoes. I’m all good. All good.”

She chuckled. “Yeah, not everyone has rich parents to enjoy rejuve. I heard you were coming out today. Probably looking like a newborn.”

“Ya, ya, ya.”

“I doubt I’ll even recognize you when… If I ever see you again.”

“Oh, come on Xera, you already miss me?”

“I miss the others more than your stupid, arrogant ass, but…”

“I know. I… still can’t believe they are not here. That they will never be here.”

There was silence there, the kind Timothy did not know how to break.

“But at least we won.”

“Yeah, what exactly?”

Xera nodded her head. Nothing else needed to be said about that.

“Gera and Meo are recuperating slowly but steady, better than me.” She was going to say, we are all alive thanks to you, but then decided just to nod her head again.

“I heard. Talked to them a few minutes ago.”

Xera tried to smile. “Good. I know they are glad to hear from you. So what are you doing now?”

“I’m home at my parents' estate, and there is all this big gala party here.”

“You don’t say. The proud parents greeting their hero son back home.”

“They are just showing off. Trying to rub it into all the other ones who did not dare send their kids to war.”

“Pretty smart of those people, you’ve got to admit.”

“I know, but then… Well, with twenty-seven kids during the last few hundred years, my parents could always spare one, I guess. There they are, gleaming with pride, I better go and say hello. How will it appear to others if I don’t? I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Not too soon I hope. I have six months of vacation time before I start a new job, and I do not want to be disturbed.”

Timothy chuckled. “Can’t help you there,” he said as he hanged up. Then, as his parents were approaching him, he flipped to his bank account, linked it to Xera, and emptied it all there. Then he took a deep breath and shut down the comm so as not to have to deal with Xera telling him something about how she doesn’t like charities or something like that. It was not enough to pay for the rejuve, but it will give her a nicer vacation. Well, maybe not the vacation for the rest of her life, but far longer than six months for sure.

Then he put the best smile on his face he could come up with, one to match his parents, and went to greet them as everyone stood there, all dressed up in black tuxedos, waiting in anticipation.

A lot of people he knew came to say hello to him there, people he completely forgot about. But there were a lot of people in the estate he did not know at all, patting him on the shoulder as he mingled, saying kind words to him.

Father has been busy expanding his network, he told himself. I wonder what he plans next.

Timothy smiled and tried to be pleasant. And drank too much. What else was there to do?

A few rich young ladies decided to circle him, asking him with adoration how can anyone be as brave as him, and how was it on Limux Grand as if they could ever understand it. As if he wanted to waste time trying to explain. As if he wanted to be thinking of Limux Grand.

He entertained the idea in his head of taking them all to his quarters upstairs and fucking them for the rest of the night. But the picture of his dead friends jumped in front of it all. And, so, he chose to drink instead.

It was the voice of Wrought Farrow that drew his attention a bit later.

A rich industrial fella who ran some droid manufacturing corp. His mother ex-lover, his father’s opponent. He knew all about it.

“Can’t believe we made the truce with those animals. And they call it a victory?? I say, it’s a space shit!"

“Let it go, kid. He just lost a lot of money on the account of war being over,” one of his uncles said as he grabbed him by the arm, noticng the tension that formed on Timothy's face

It was probably the worst thing he could have heard - it only fired him up even more. Not just because it seemed to be about the money, not just because his uncle thinking that it was a valid excuse, or that he was thinking that Timothy on some level was a man that could ever accept all of that. Actually, was it that he had called him a kid??

Timothy frowned and shoved him aside, thoughts like Fuck your party, especially if you need to invite this scum here...

“So, you’re a big fuckin’ hero now, aren’t you?” Wrought said as he turned around after realizing Timothy had come up to stand right behind him. “And why are Miths still around then? If you were so fuckin' good, why didn't you kill them all?”

Timothy capped him right into his gut. He knew if he hid him straight in his nose, he would have flown backward, knocking some guests down on the way. And this way he had him at his arm's length.

As the man folded, Timothy used his left hand to land a punch across his eye, his arcade bursting open instantly, blood-spewing over others and that clean white marble floor.

The man lost the balance but did not fall down, lifting his hands up to defend himself.

Pretty good, Timothy had to admit. But his chin was exposed open and a right-hand uppercut did what Timothy was trying to prevent in the first place. It made the man fly straight backward, flying out of his shoes, knocking down two people who stood there behind him.

Timothy’s anger only flared higher, and he walked to the man and kneeled on top of his shoulders, placing his knees down so the man’s hands spread out. and started to really work on his face. He hid him till his nose was not a nose anymore, till teeth did not come out and spread themselves like a bunchof witching bones over the floor.

The man did not bag for him to stop. Surprisingly, did not even lose consciousness. And when Timothy thought that there was no more point in it and got up from him, he did just the opposite. He even smiled. Then his smile turned into an evil chuckle.

“You think this can hurt me?” he said through his toothless, bleeding mouth. “I’ll have you processed and jailed, and you’ll be fucked in jail silly while I go and get me one rejuve treatment. Now, to come to think about it, I needed a rejuve treatment anyway.”

Timothy walked quietly back to him and raised him up. “Rejuvenate this,” he said and then twisted his head with both hands so violently that it came more than a hundred and eighty degrees around.

Everyone stood in silence, and when Timothy let Wrought’s dead body drop down to the floor, it made the only sound around.

But Timothy was not done as he scooped all the saliva in his mouth and decided to spit on the dead man. “No more fucking plans for you, asswipe.”

Then he turned to leave the party as if nothing has happened, his hands bloodied and bleeding, feeling nothing at all.

“What have you done?” his father was the first one out of the crowd, shocked and confused, the half-full wine glass shaking in his trembling hand.

“To hell with him and his money,” Timothy barked back to him.

“You spoiled little brat! Do you know what you have done!?!”

“I killed one man tonight,” Timothy said as he stooped in his track and turn around to face his father. “To tell you the truth, far less than my average.”

His father’s rage reddened his face. “That’s that,” he yelled, spit from his mouth coming out together with words. “You’re not my son no more! I’m cutting you off! That’s it!!”

He looked at his father for a long second, truly not knowing what to say. So he smirked instead.

“Take him away! I’m done with him.”

Two security officers appeared behind his father, huge and threatening, and started to approach Timothy.

“A man has to be honest, hard-working, trustworthy. And you’re neither!” were the last words his father told him.

“You fuckin’ right, father, I’m neither,” Timothy said, nodding his head. “But what I am is a fuckin’, bloody killer.”

Then he pulled his concealed six-shooter from his back and pointed it at his father.