I did my best to hold the zombies off with my telekinesis, but the onslaught was too great. The Nova soldiers fought on, killing one zombie after another. I felt my suit’s power systems straining to keep my headaches down. Come on, just a little more. Irna called for another dropship as I saw it arrive but it had to keep its distance. A clear landing zone was impossible at the time. The waves of human zombies kept on coming.

Suddenly a massive explosion hit me in the back, followed by a very low sonic boom that was enough to knock me off my feet and break my concentration. Blue light washed over the whole base. No common explosion, human or Nova, causes that color. I got back up and whipped around to witness a twenty-story tall mushroom cloud. Most mushroom clouds are of deep orange, red, and yellow if memory serves. This was a mix of dark blue, light blue, white, and strips of black. Several lightning bolts came out, a couple hitting the Endeavor’s under side, but they didn’t cause damage. The sound from it drowned out everything. As it bloomed out, hundreds of zombie bodies flew from it and crashed onto the ground. I regretted leaving the Endeavor.

“Nuclear!” I screamed through the comm. to all ground-based troops. Decathan answered to prevent panic.

“It’s not nuclear, captain. It magical. Non-harmful!”

“Are you certain, Decathan? Better not be lying to me.”

“Trust me, the computers don’t lie. Somebody down there blew a gasket.”

But who? Nobody in Nova has magic that can display those colors, or that intense power.

Then I heard high-pitched screaming and whaling from all around, all coming from the zombies. Blinking from the cloud’s light, every single zombie writhed as they held their heads tightly. None of them showed any more aggression towards my soldiers or the surviving mutants, they only expressed pain. I looked at the nearest zombie, a young man in a black business suit (I was later informed they were Griffon’s agents), and he screamed as I spotted a bulge grow on the right side of his head. My suit picked up minute sounds of his skull cracking.

The trouble is: human mutants never express something as odd as that. It was new one for human behavior studies.

As I watched, the bulge grew to the size of my fist, or a baseball to human understanding. The zombie’s voice grew higher and higher with each passing second. Then the bulge burst, taking off a corner of his head, and his brains went everywhere. The face went blank and fell over in a heap.

All too soon, more zombies died, stretching over the base until no human was standing. An uncomfortable silence surfaced. “Irna, you seeing this?”

“I’m seeing it, captain, but I can’t believe it,” she said and nothing else.

“Better believe it, elf,” Obi said through the comm. “My fliers say the reinforcements from the South suddenly died all together. Captain, I’ve seen this before. A mind control was severed.”

“Okay, that’s good I guess,” I said awkwardly.

“Not just the base, guys, it’s the whole country.” Wringheart sounded more shocked than any of us, “All major cities had mobs of zombies attacking humans and mutants, then they just died where they stood. I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Dear Kai…” Pieces of evidence were converging in my mind and I gulped so hard the comm. transmitted it to all my soldiers. The reaper did all that? Can’t be. Could it?

“Wait, where’s Jaruka?” Irna asked.

A gunslinger suffering from a gash on her arm pointed, “I suspect he’s their captain.”

I had a sickened feeling in my stomach that the mushroom cloud was the answer. Worst of all, it was the location where the damaged dropship was. The sorcerer had me look further down. Amongst the cloud and scorched dirt, a blue dome stood unaffected. That had to be it.

“This fight is over. Get medic and salvage teams down here immediately!”

I saw my life pass before me, but they were memories dating from before my mercenary days. I hated my childhood, more than anything else. For many years, I had tried really hard to forget it, but it always came creeping back. That wasn’t what I wanted to remember last when I died. Any longer while waiting for death and those legends my people talk about might come true. I suffer, they feel happy, and nothing is fair.

Death didn’t come thank goodness. I set aside that worry and the only sounds left were my breath, Katie’s breath, the earth animal’s pathetic whimpering, and a low, pulsating hum.

I opened my eyes and was blinded by blue light, then slowly adjusting to make out objects. I gasped seeing a mushroom cloud hovering over me. I thought back seeing the first images of human nuclear weapons. Blinking, I noticed a barrier between me and the cloud, although it wasn’t a barrier that any Nova soldiers could do. It pulsed a couple times a second, emanating from a single source: Katie’s unharmed right hand.

“Wow,” I whispered.

Katie’s eyes were straining to blink and her body shook as she kept the barrier steady. She was still on top of Scott with that dog next to her. From her face, it seemed she was about to loose energy, or about to laugh.

I looked down her outstretched arm. From the middle of her upper arm, tattoos littered her skin. They pulsed in a wave from her upper arm, to her palm, and exited in energy wisps, spreading out to form the barrier. My glands felt the energy, powerful yet peaceful. As I looked at the cloud, I had a real understanding of how powerful their magic was. All of Nova’s firepower could not scratch the reaper, but Scott went ahead and blasted that demon to kingdom come. Too bad that he didn’t see his unplanned attack follow through.

“I-I did it,” Katie said in an almost happy whisper. “I made a shield.”

I nodded, “Yes, you did.” My mouth felt dry. “So… that’s terran magic. Great.”

“Is that a problem?” The dog asked.

“No. Just makes things more complicated for others.” Meaning Denverbay and his stuck-up Council members. To think of how the Council would deal with terrans was beyond me.

I heard Katie asking why, but my attention was focused to see the reaper’s corpse. To my horror, shadows moved in the smoke. The familiar rows of spikes came up and my insides felt sick. A low growl and huff came from it and I cursed, “No way it could survive that.” Katie gasped and kept the shield up while fatigue began waning her focus.

More smoke cleared from the reaper. It looked like luck was barely hanging on a string for the demon. The reaper bled from missing chunks of muscle, the biggest was a major blood vessel on its underside. Sure enough, some were being healed, but stopped by some unknown force. “Like a god, yeah right,” I said. Its head and cowl lifted. I only saw its right side. It choked on its blood and coughed it out. From its glowing eye, I recognized defeat.

Major defeat.

It turned its head, looking at us, the eye shifting to sheer anger. “Oh… damn.”

The entire left side of the reaper’s head was missing. It used its right hand to hold in what was left of its brain. The cowl that covered its head was half missing and flopped to the side, exposing its hidden, disfigured face. Even as the smoke cleared, it was as if its body parts were loosely held together by skin and connective tissue.

“GRUL…gu… akndsjiygu.” It’s obliterated jugular spat out blood when it talked, but it was still able to breathe. I didn’t care to understand what it meant.

Then in a blink of an eye, light surrounded the mangled body, and it disappeared, leaving behind missing pieces of its body. Those pieces were somehow igniting themselves, leaving no trace of evidence behind, except for the reaper’s scythe.

“Now that… was disgusting,” the dog commented.

Shadows came to us, slowly becoming my friends running toward us with a platoon of medics.

“Katie, you can settle now. We’re safe,” I told her. Took her a second to calm down and break down the shield and slump over Scott’s body, too tired to talk and too worn out to check Scott’s pulse. I lay back, finally feeling the harsh hunger that I had set aside for two days. Then my scrapes, bruises, and sore feet hit my pain receptors all at once, resulting in my body becoming useless and hard to move. Brill came and hovered over me.

“Brill, I’m done. Take me home.”

“Certainly, my friend.” He looked up at one medic, “Get these four to the medical bay. Send the unconscious one to Decathan for priority one surgery.”

“But sir, they are humans. They could kill us.” One newbie medic said.

“Not follow my orders and I will court marshal you myself!” That order motivated them to do their job.

Katie, Scott, and I were placed on separate gurneys and were carried to a new dropship. The dog followed without any injury. One look at Scott and the magical medics were already stabilizing him for surgery. You did well, kid. Once on, I felt the dropship lift off and headed straight for the Endeavor at full throttle.

I never cared to look back at Terra Firma.