“Dropship arriving in one minute, captain,” Irna said over the comm. link.

“Make it twenty seconds,” I ordered.

Thanks to the EMP Cannon, the platform’s computer was overloaded and rendered useless. Fortunately the crystal fuses in my suit’s systems were minimally affected. I ducked behind a destroyed human tanker along with a gunslinger for protection.

“Galazat, when will this nightmare end?” The private gunslinger was shaking in her boots, but her stamina kept her shooting at human stragglers. I had the same idea.

The comm. chatter wasn’t sounding good. Without being on the bridge, I was having a headache hearing the bad news.

“Captain, human communications is getting heated. Not only that, these persistent bipeds are trying to hack my virus,” Lieutenant Wringheart reported. “Their attempting to crack the code without an AI and failing. What’s the hold up down there?”

“Keep that virus running as long as it takes, lieutenant,” I ordered.

Wringheart sighed and signed off. Captain Obi was next, “Brill, my fliers are reporting mobilization from neighboring active bases and aircraft carriers. No missiles yet, sir. I’ll keep the skies free as best I can.”

“Watch for ground troops and bomb them when they are twenty miles from the base,” I dictated and he agreed.

Up at the Endeavor, I saw a single dropship falling fast towards my coordinates, just what I wanted. Comm. chatter increased in a second. Private Arilla Pico announced one dead, totaling to two lost souls. At the rate of humans turning into zombies, that number could quadruple in no time. Taking account of my added order, Obi reported civilian zombies from neighboring cities heading to the base as I waited for the ride. He had fliers in hover if the boundary was broken.

“We’re running out of time. Where are they?” I asked and a familiar voice heard me.

“Right here, Brill. Still alive.” Jaruka huffed on his way to me. He was more scuffed than before, he must have run into some strong humans, “Glad that platform didn’t flatten you, Brill.”

“Good, but where are the mutants?” I asked him.

He shrugged.

Thrusters from the dropship drowned out all sound for a second then hovered behind us. Gunslingers and wizards followed out to secure the landing zone. The leader of the squadron told us to get on, but I told him to hold for a second.

Jaruka poked me to turn. “There they are. Kantra has them.” Several yards away, Scott, his mate, and Commander Kantra ran for dear life.

The mutants looked out of breath from either running longer than Jaruka, or they had fought as well. The three jumped over human corpses to arrive at our location to catch their breath. “We made it,” Scott smiled. “Whoever your superior is better be worth it.”

“He is, one of the best,” I said nodding. “Get on the drop…”

“Wait!” The girl beside Scott yelled. I assumed that she was counting us one by one, her eyes suggested that she had realized a crucial problem. “Where’s Mike and Reba?”

“Who?” I asked. I then remembered that there had been two other mutants with us on the platform. Now it seemed that we had to wait, but I was stubborn and running out of time. Even when I was about to tell them to forget it, Scott patted the girl’s shoulder to look in his direction.

The two missing mutants ran towards us with a Tirazan heavy by their side. The man, supposedly Mike, was waving at us and saying something that I couldn’t make out. My battle suit increased sensitivity to hear him say, “Don’t leave without us!” I ordered a couple of gunslingers for their cover.

From the corner of an aircraft hanger, a human male walked into view. Zooming in, the old man looked infuriated and held a long ballistic-based rifle. He was three yards behind them and they didn’t see him. My heart dropped thinking the worst. I tried ordering the heavy to turn his lengthy body.

The male started firing bullets at them. First at the heavy in the head, immediately killing him.

Mike noticed. He dropped to dodge the bullets, pulling the fragile girl down too. He looked back and started firing with his rifle, clipping the man two times in the chest. Oddly, the man appeared maimed, but kept shooting. I saw several blood trails exit Mike’s back, and one through his head.

In a second, Scott went ballistic.

Slow motion—that was how I witnessed Mike’s death. Everything, down to my emotions, made me shake.

I saw my coworker, my friend, my pal, our protector, get killed by General Griffon. Reba wasn’t harmed—she had run the opposite direction for safety. Mike took the full blow. As slow motion did, he fell backwards, screamed, fought, and silenced.

I lost it.

Without magic, I took the closest M4 from the ground and started shooting at Griffon while running to Mike. My terran body made my balance better, the bullets straighter, and it was enough to collect on the asshole’s heart. How’s that for not handling a gun, Jaruka? Griffon dropped his rifle, clenched his chest, and fell over.

“Mike, hang on! I’m coming for you, buddy!” I slid on my knees before I got to him. Katie was right behind me and so was Jaruka.

The sight of Mike’s bullet-filled corpse made Katie and me scream in horror. Mike died with a face like, “Ah… crap,” or something. Blood poured from behind his head and stained the ground. We dropped down to check if he was still alive. I felt nothing, not even a heart beat.

I cried hard for the first time in two years; Keeji cried too, adding to my emotions. I ignored everything around me. Griffon deserved dying for our loss. In one move I hugged Katie tight to let her cry on my chest.

My shoulder was tugged. Jaruka made me look up at him. The tears made it hard to understand his look, probably was sorry for the loss or desperate to leave Mike’s body behind, or how pathetic my people are to stay close our living possessions. He said it to prove his reason.

“Screw you,” I said harshly.

Jaruka shook his head and told the others to surround Griffon, that he was the mastermind. I ignored them for a little longer, reliving the memories hanging out with Mike and Ashley Sanders.

What snapped me out of it was Jaruka’s hard tug on my arm, pulling us from Mike’s body.

“No, let me go!” I protested.

“Not my call, kid, somehow Griffon survived your assault,” Jaruka grimaced. I stopped crying. What did he mean by that?

He let go of us and joined a twenty-man circle of aliens surrounding Griffon. The general was on his feet clasping his open chest, looking mad and vengeful. I was certain that I had killed him—he had ten to twenty bullets in his chest. Must be a really strong Marine to survive that. Brill walked past us and started speaking.

“Corporal Teal says you are the leader of this airbase. As by decree of the writ of the Republic, I’m arresting you for life endangerment, kidnapping, possession of illegal technology, and threatening to spark a war with the Republic.”

Griffon wiped blood from his mouth with his arm, “War is beyond me, gray. I will never go with you. This is planet will never leave me.”

“You have no choice,” Brill cleared his throat. “What I can’t understand is why you’re still standing and not a zombie.”

Griffon shook his head, and a wide grin formed. Something about it looked uneasy to me. There he stood, surrounded by powerful creatures, bleeding, and he was smiling about it. If I didn’t know better, I thought he was on something that increased his stamina, or craziness. He looked straight at me. I saw a sudden change on his face, the face of a monster. His eyes changed to the most vibrant of red.

From the chaos, he began laughing, and the laughter grew. As he did, I noticed a sudden change in the noise. Gunfire stopped. I looked at the closest fight and saw human soldiers just… standing still. The aliens settled and looked really concerned, like they had never seen this sort of behavior.

I looked back at Griffon. I felt evil, pure evil from him. He relaxed his arms, grinned as wide as he could, and said, “Then I’ll persuade you.”

His whole body was quickly engulfed in pitch-black smoke from nowhere and exploded.

I protected Katie from the blast as I felt it punch me in the back. Several aliens toppled back, including Jaruka and Brill, stopping beside us. Brill got up quick and ordered everybody to stand their ground, but how can they if they can’t see through the smoke.

“Jaruka, what the hell was that?” I yelled.

“Beats me, never seen this before,” he answered, and it sounded true.

The smoke started to clear and the alien ship showed. Then a monstrous roar came from nowhere. The sound, mixed with a T-Rex and some sort of demon, made my mana heart vibrate like it wanted to blow out of my chest. There was primal fear rippling through me. That roar lasted for ten seconds and ended with what sounded like garbled gasps from a crocodile.

I heard Katie hyperventilate and saw her eyes sullen, “We… we got to run,” she whispered. If only we were able to.

The smoke disappeared, but I wasn’t prepared to see an eight-foot tall, fifteen-foot long monstrosity. Its black back faced us, showing off three rows of black razor sharp spikes. It didn’t bear a tail per se, but a limb protruding from the middle of its back, five feet long, ending with an ivory-made blade, too close to be a scythe. It quivered and whipped about like an agitated cobra, then I it seemed to grow a bit, then recede. The creature stood on four, overdeveloped muscle-bulged black legs with its weight mostly on the hind legs. Each leg ended with a five-fingered hand with talons enough to slice through bone and metal like butter. The monster shuddered, and each spike and scythe quivered.

It growled and turned, staring dead at us. My mana heart was vibrating my body and Keeji screamed until he fainted in my mind. The head started with a reptilian jaw line with insect-like teeth so sharp it could bite and rip through a tank. The eyes were glowing bright red with a black dot in the middle. The mouth opened and inside also glowed as red as a fireplace. Around the carapace-covered head was a cowl made of its own flesh, or armor, or whatever it had for skin.

Please don’t tell me that’s Griffon, I thought.

The monster sucked in air and bellowed, sounding just like Griffon with a growl mixed in. , “I will regain control, NO MATTER THE COST!”

“Holy…” I started, but the same heart-stopping scream prevented me from finishing. Its open mouth stretched so wide that it could have swallowed me whole.

Suddenly green flashes hit the creature and it wailed from alien plasma. Jaruka and Brill pushed Katie and me down for protection. Jaruka screamed, “Reaper! Everybody target the bug and open fire!”

The area lit up with lasers and magic to almost blind me.