Chapter 1: A Time Long Past
There was nothing I could do except watch, watch as the roaring white hot flames slowly engulfed my home. The home I had fought for so long to defend, the home that cracked under the oppression of the war. A war that, despite the horrors it inflicted, never seemed to end. And after a millennium, a single small organization, not known to either of the prominent factions, was able to build and successfully detonate a doomsday device, without anyone noticing. Of course, we all noticed it after the initial reports came in of a massive wall of fire expanding across the planet, destroying everything in its way. The funny thing was, even though it was a world ending catastrophe, it was oddly comforting when I first heard about it, and the only thought that would form in my head was how the human race deserved every bit of it. I guess it was a bit ironic too, how the organization detonated the device on New Year's day, as if to say, here you go earth, have a new life.
I thought back to the day the war started, and not when the nations of the world picked a side in the all out brawl, but the day of the largest strike on the experimental research lab. I glanced back up at my computer, ensuring all systems were green before giving the all clear to begin the antimatter containment test. Reaching towards the intercom, my head was slammed into my desk as a massive explosion shook the entire underground facility. It was not the first time we had been attacked, but this certainly was the largest attack yet. Agencies for years have attempted to get their hands on the research we were doing down here, knowing that every last drop of it could change the world in their favor. I lifted my head slowly, afraid I might have a concussion, and not wanting to damage my brain any more than I already have. My computer now flashed with all sorts of warnings on it, but only one caught my attention. The storage containment field for stabilized antimatter was experiencing magnetic fluctuations in the main containment field. Bringing up a detailed map of the base which indicated what areas were damaged in the explosion, and what areas were compromised by hostiles, I plotted my path to the main containment room to go and fix the problem before it resulted in a massive antimatter detonation that would annihilate everything in a ten-mile radius.
Proceeding down the smoke and debris filled halls, moving slowly to not trip while staying low to avoid the black smoke curling about at the top of the passageway. As I was approaching the massive room where the containment tank was stored, another blast caused me to drop to the ground as the floor trembled as if it was an earthquake. Half crawling, I made it to the door and forced my way inside just to see a shockwave of energy swiftly moving towards me. Bracing myself against the wall, the shockwave slammed into me, knocking the air straight out of my lungs. Groaning, I made my way to the only other scientist alive in the chamber, demanding to know what in the world was going on. He answered my question with a few fragmented sentences, saying the containment field was failing and the harvester was overloaded and now seemingly gathering energy similar to the properties of red matter. Both he and I knew that if the red matter reached critical mass then the result would be much more catastrophic than an antimatter detonation, as red matter creates black holes. And that's when I came up with my brilliant life threatening idea that probably would have gotten me killed if I was not so close to the epicenter of the resulting explosion. I explained my idea to the other scientist, and seeing that was the only thing we could do with the materials and time we had, we quickly got to work. Lining up metal support beams and charging them with electricity caused them to create a moving magnetic barrier that would allow small amounts of antimatter to traverse through. With the rapid drumming sound that could only be associated with a machine gun, we quickly activated the machine, ensuring we didn't overload the magnetic field and cause a premature explosion.
Less than a minute into the processes, multiple bullets stray bullets made their way through the open door, causing both of us to duck for cover. The majority of the bullets missed anything important, but one or two it the red matter that was collecting, upsetting the molecular structure of the red matter causing a premature reaction that created a miniature black hole directly in from of my eyes. Alarms immediately starting blaring from the console, indicating that the magnetic field were all but no existent. I ran to the antimatter containment tank seeing If I could direct more power to it while the other scientist ran to behind the matter collector seeing if he could reverse the processes and deposit the upset matter back to where it came from. Less than a minute after the miniature black hole formed, the antimatter broke out of the tank and molecules were snapped in half, and the last thing both of us saw was a red and black flash before we awoke in a completely flattened and destroyed room. I was pretty sure that the blast should have killed both of us until the room caved in with a small squad of masked men rappelled into the lab. As they landed, they grabbed the scientist that was across the room and shot back up into the shadows. I watched still stunned about surviving the explosion when a hand grabbed my shoulder and started to pull me backward. I managed to glance up and see the commanding officer in the base, or what is left of the base, dragging me out of the lab as the memory slowly started to fade away. Sighing, I came to realize that the scientist who the enemy captured never actually left the shadows.
I flew at a steady pace, making sure that the wall of fire never caught up to me, all while taking long looks outside the window of my airplane. I looked at how barren the landscape was, filled with the sorrows of the countless generations of all life forms that died because of humanities war. I glanced at my navigation computer, making sure that the course I set was the right one. Flying alone like this, constantly checking the airplane's computers reminded me of a time when I lost my rear stabilizers and had to make an emergency landing after a combat mission. Flying steady, I cursed at a slower speed than I would have liked, but I couldn't risk getting detected. All at once, multiple lights and a single constant beeping went off in the cockpit of my plane, alerting me to multiple radar locks. Seconds later, a few more lights started flashing while a more intruding alarm went off, telling me that the SAM batteries had fired and I had multiple missile locks on my plane. Firing the forward bottom thruster, I flipped my plane 90 degrees upward in less than a second and fired the afterburners, rocketing my plane skyward. Gaining enough height, I flipped the plane downwards 180 degrees so I was facing the incoming missiles. Activating my twin 8mm Pulse Laser Cannons on the underside of my plane, I fired off multiple rounds, destroying the incoming missiles with pinpoint accuracy. Pulling my plane up as I soared towards the ground, I glanced down and saw multiple airborne radar contacts that I marked as enemy fighters.
Firing off my afterburners again, I launched the plane forward to increase the gap between me the enemy planes. Before I could get out of their weapons range, one of them open fired on the rear engine compartment, damaging the left engine and the lateral stabilizers. Flipping the plane to face upwards again, I fired all of my bottom thrusters, throwing myself behind of the enemy fighters. Doing 270 degrees backward rotation, completing my flip, I locked on to two the left most fighter and fired off a missile while turning my attention to the fighter on the right. The fighter I was chasing turned his plane skywards, and me unable to follow the maneuver without my stabilizer, banked sharply to re-engage the fighter that I launched the missile at. The enemy fighter, completely surprised by my planes maneuverability, was in no position to dodge when I fired off a few rounds from my Pulse Cannons, shattering the enemy planes engine. Losing momentum, the plane started to drop like a stone as the pilot ejected. The sound of gunfire caused me to jerk my stick to the right, causing my plane to violently shudder from such a move without lateral control and as a few rounds ripped through my wing. The last enemy plane, pulling up after its strafing run, passed right into my crosshairs and I slammed my finger into the trigger on my stick, letting out a barrage of laser fire that completely shredded the enemy fighters fuselage. Returning to the task at hand, I slowly cruised back towards the landing strip that I was supposed to land at after my mission was complete. Looking back out my window at the wall of fire traveling behind me, I wished that the world that was left would not be so boring and those bursts of exciting action could still sneak into my life. Deciding it was about time to actually get moving towards my destination, I banked the plane and accelerated towards a point in the middle of nowhere.
Around an hour later, I brought my ship to a hover in the dead center of my destination, which was the calculated point where the flame wall would have completely traveled the entirety of the planet and would close its ring. Looking at the destroyed city to my right, I recognized the familiar landscape. As a deeply buried memory started to surface, I let it rise, deciding that I deserved the punishment my own mind was about to give me. We marched into the city center, keeping an eye out for any hostiles on the ground. I set up a command center in the park at the city center and ordered squads out to check the surrounding buildings for civilians and any hostiles that didn't retreat out of the city from our attack. Around an hour later the crisp sound of gunfire filled the air from all directions taking down the patrolling units on the outskirts of the city center. I ordered my troops to immediately get down as the bullets started whipping over our heads. All the renaming of us crouched in the foxholes we dug, unable to do anything with the amount of firepower buzzing over our heads. Within a minute, the gunfire stopped and we could hear the sound of soldiers approaching our position. Peeking my head out with my rifle, I fired off a few rounds at the men who were slowly approaching us, causing them to run for cover. Not a moment later, I ducked back into the foxhole as a bullets whizzed overhead from the other directions. Knowing that if the troops got close enough, they could easily finish us off with grenades, my other men kept up my tactic of firing off a few rounds then ducking for cover.
This continued for a few minutes before a loud bang went off and dirt rained down for a second, indicating that the soldiers were in grenade chucking range. Withing a few more minutes, all but three of the foxholes were vacated with the help of grenades. I, along with the men in the other foxholes, all stood up around the same time and let lose round after rounds at the approaching squads of hostiles, taking out at least one full squad before they were even able to fire back. Properly infuriated, our enemy pushed further and more aggressively, taking out the last of my men besides my right hand, the only one who could actually keep me sane in situations like this. That's when the grenade came flying at us and flipped my rifle in my hand so it acted sort of like a bat, and whacked the grenade back to where it came from. In the moment when I was preoccupied, the Commanding Officer of the encroaching forces snatched my right hand out of the foxhole and held a sidearm to his head. He yelled at me to stand down before he would end the man who he was holding I glanced down at him, noticing the look of a man who knows he is dead and is waiting for his body to catch up with his mind. I had seen it before many times, you find that the same look goes on too many people in a war, too many know that they will die before it happens, and too many died in agony, with no one to comfort them in their last moments. I dropped my rifle to the ground, hoping that maybe he had some humanity inside him and watched as his finger tightened on the trigger of the gun, watched as... I snapped myself out of the memory before anything else happened, but I already felt the pain of living through the tortures of war once again. I blinked the single tear out of my eye and stared at the approaching fire. I put up a shield with the dark matter in my body and hoped that it might allow my plane to get through the end of the world, as I needed something to do when I was the only thing alive on the planet. I concentrated, ensuring the barrier was solid as the wall of fire collided with the barrier. The world light up in a brilliant flash of blinding white light and seconds later it all went black.