A man does not simply stare death in the face three times. Third time round, he snarls at it.
What he had to hand was scant comfort when its blackened, utilitarian blade was pitted against the gleaming sea's crest edge of the ludicrously elegant sword weaving through the chill air inches from his face. Yet, oddly, he felt he would rather have none other to hand, right there, right then, then that knuckle-barbed trench knife that had ended a dozen enemy lives with all the silence of a night breeze. Never mind that both his rifle and sidearm were lost to the endless snow, long empty of bullets, or that he had not a single 'nade left on his belt. He would've stabbed any man who'd been there and offered him a missile launcher. Damnit, this was how it began. This was how it would end.
He snarled into the face of death and found it faceless. Its voice rang thick with the accent of the invader – an icy claw raking his shivering soul.
"This becomes a habit, Mister Hancock."
Lt. Carlin Hancock, USMC 93rd Battalion Advance Guard, saw the tip of his retort pierce a lazily floating steam cloud of breath.
"Fuck you!" he spat, twisting one shoulder clear of the sword's bite and then essaying a counter-lunge to match the vehemence of the curse.
The lithe black figure receded before him in a blink, and, unable to check his own momentum, Hancock crashed to one knee, knife hand plunged up to the wrist in the snow to keep from falling on his face. Then, even as fury and shame met in a rending clash inside him, a familiar, ominous click pulled his attention to the slender barrel of the Shansei trained over his left eye.
Up went his burning gaze, traveling the body of the foreign pistol, the length of the arm that held it, to the mocking emptiness of his adversary's masked visage.
"We have been here before, Lieutenant, no?"
Boots scrabbling in the snow, the Marine officer lurched to his feet, knife carving a vicious underhand swath before him. The sword licked out and, just barely, glanced off his own short blade, the fleeting impact enough to right him; his rage burned all the hotter at the insouciance of the gesture.
"Bastard!" he roared over the howling wind. "Joni was innocent!"
Dry laughter cut him off, a quick burst; it might as well have been a burst from an MP9 aimed at his throat for all the effect it had. "Americans and your fancies. You insult not me but yourself. Do you dare term an armed woman in a combat zone an innocent?"
He remembered.
She was a medic. Triage center detachment. Not three months on the Anchorage Front. Exempted from field duty. Her leg. A childhood illness – he recalled, painfully.
She was twenty. Young, superbly trained, with the talent of docs who'd been years on-site. The guys in triage called her 'angel in red' – one look at her hair, inches past regulation length, pretty much made it clear she hadn't earned the moniker for just blood-smeared scrubs.
He'd made straight for her tent after the last raid. Crimson Dragoons. The crafty, crafty sons of Chinese bitches.
And the blood on her scrubs had been all hers.
"She wasn't armed!" His hollow shout carried to the scudding clouds above. A fresh drift of snow blew across his face, further blurring his already misted vision.
"She shot at me, Lieutenant."
There'd been a N99 in her hand. No, there hadn't been. He could not – would not picture it. Picture the memory.
"Her life was in your hands. Why did you not have her reassigned?"
"Bastard!" His shout was weaker this time.
"It was not my bullets that killed her, but your own indecision."
"You're nothing but a murderer!"
Their blades clashed again, and his boots, momentarily free of the muddy white, shifted and danced as he chased the ghostly figure melting in and out of the blizzard. Round and round, the Chinese sword flicking back and forth, high and low, slapping aside his every blow and carving a bitter sting at some point on his body armor a second later. Each wound brought with it the cruel realization that the next might well be far deeper – and the last he would ever suffer. And, worse, that there was nothing he could do about it.
His breath left him in thick clouds. He could feel his knife hand growing numb, both from the cold and from his own iron grip. The boots on his feet were starting to drag.
Just like in the valley, a year ago… when Johnson's head had gone to pieces all over his face and the awful searing flame had risen from hell to drag him down.
Five good men lost that day. Men he'd ridden out the hump of boot camp with, who'd served under him at the Yangtze before their shipping to this frozen hell on earth.
The last thing he'd seen, just before the flames turned all to red: up on the ridge, black and terrible against the Alaskan sky – the demon.
He was in over his head.
"Enough! This ends now!"
He found himself swiping at a mere shadow in the sleeting snow. He blinked furiously, hunched low, stared from side to side. Shadows everywhere. The knife trembled in his gloved hand.
"You grow weak, Lieutenant. Your emotion rules you. Undisciplined. This is the best your West Point can offer? I have seen better at home."
A soft plop drew Hancock's attention to the Shansei that had landed at his feet.
"End it, if you so wish."
Hancock hesitated only the barest of instants. Driven by the mad vehemence that filled him, he switched knife hands in an eyeblink, scooped up the Chinese pistol, and fired upon the shadow before him. The gun barked in his hand, its report a muted crack in the noise of the storm, and rock fragments peppered his shrouded face.
Then pain stung his arm as the pistol went flying. He staggered. Spun about. The tip of the sword was poised between his temples.
"That was not what I meant, Lieutenant."
For the first time, even through the brutal consciousness of blood running down his wounded right arm, he noticed anger in the silken voice.
"You Americans have less honor than dogs. I should cut you down as I would one."
His back hit the snow-crusted rock behind. The sword tip touched his brow, pressing in harder until he felt the pain spreading through his head.
"You think you've won," he spat, struggling to work the words out past his balaclava.
The pressure of the sword tip on his forehead eased. He tasted warm, coppery blood as it trickled down his face, wetting his facial shroud and blacking up his snow goggles.
"Maybe you have." He continued, his voice a hoarse rasp. "But I've been to China. I've killed people. Your people." A bloody affair. It'd nearly cost him his life.
There was no reaction. The sword remained calm and still.
"I've seen your villages torched by our Power Armor boys. I've taken prisoners. And killed 'em. Twenty for every one of ours you commie bastards took down." He laughed, a choking sound. "I'd be still there if it weren't for this damned front. And this much I can tell you – maybe you've won. Just maybe. But only here. We'll be making matchsticks out of Shanghai by the time you bloody look up. And all you fuckin' Reds are going straight to hell when we hit Beijing. And there ain't fuck all you can do about it."
He sagged; wounds and three days of being out in the snowstorm finally getting to him enough to force him to one knee. He knew he was about to die and didn't care overmuch. His knife hung by his side; from the look of things, he didn't need it any longer. What he'd just said had struck his adversary a cut deeper than any blade could have made. A savage joy took hold of him at the realization. That was a good thing he'd done in Redland.
He hadn't been able to save Joni. Or Johnson. Or any of the others. He couldn't even save himself. But his pride as a soldier? That was one thing no slant-eyed communist motherfuck was going to take from him.
"I have been to Arkansas."
The surprise stripped away all other feeling. His eyes rose to the black figure that materialized out of the snow.
"As a matter of fact, I have only just returned. Hideous weather. I might have fallen ill upon my return were it not for some timely medication."
The abruptly conversational tone deadened Hancock's senses.
"Where?" he croaked.
"Ah, a lovely cottage in the country. Very American. Little garden at the gate. Flowers over the door." A cruel edge twisted the words.
"No." Hancock put a hand against the rock behind. Blackness was descending on his mind as an image took shape, unbidden, unwanted… familiar.
"I did not like that Indian headpiece on the porch, however. It spoiled the feel, if I may say so."
"Liar!" he bellowed. His heart burned. Oh, God. Oh, sweet Jesus.
He struggled to rise, but his legs would not respond. Frostbite? Fatigue? The featureless mask regarded him from above; cool, merciless.
"Am I?" the voice flowed on, smooth as a crystal stream. "Then allow me to clear my name."
The sword shifted. He saw his own eyes, mad, desperate, in the blade a moment before it left his vision.
"Go back and find out, Mister Hancock. And may your God have mercy on you."
A keen whistle of steel slicing air heralded the brief, sharp pain that burst inside his skull. As he slumped sideways into the snow, all awareness leaving him in a rush, Lt. Carlin Hancock heard the voice of the devil for what would be the last time:
"Because, if we meet again, I will not."
In the darkness, the holotape crackled to life in a desiccated hand.
"To my son.
I leave this for you, just as I expect you to leave it for yours. There is something I must tell you now, while I have time left to me… and it is your duty to tell those that come after you. I don't know how long this disaster will last. It may be for years, it may be forever – but what I have to say must be said.
We are a family accursed and I am the cause. Years ago, I committed a heinous crime – one I should never have. In so doing, I drew the wrath of God on myself and mine. I believe… I firmly believe that it was only by Providence that you were spared the day such death was brought to our doorstep. And not a day goes by that I don't thank the Lord for His mercy.
I betrayed my soldier's honor… and my honor as a man. I see that clearly now.
I have paid for my sins. But now I fear that you, son, must likewise. On you, therefore, falls the burden of making right what I could not.
The man who destroyed our lives is still at large. I last saw him in Alaska… during the war. But I know that, despite all that has happened, he is here. That was the last I heard from my contacts in Intel. He is in the United States. And I do not doubt he has survived what has happened to the world outside.
I don't even know his name. I know nothing of him except that he is a soldier of the Chinese Red Army. One of their infiltrators on our soil that Intel has hunted for years. He is one of their very best. When we last met, in no man's land a hundred klicks from Anchorage, he spared my life. Spared me so that I would live to die slowly, with the knowledge that I had lost everything I held dear.
I know this is no small thing I ask of you. But you are all I have left in this world. I taught you well. You must wipe away the stain that I put on our family.
You are my only hope… my last.
Find him, son. We have nothing left to us now. Find this man, and avenge your mother… and me.
Your father,
Carlin Hancock."
The scratchy voice faded away into the shadows, leaving no echoes. It mattered not. There were none in the old building to listen but ghosts – and things no longer human.
A booted foot stirred the corpse that lay sprawled out on the floor.
"Shě mo shì?"̌̀
The harsh, rasping query carried down from a catwalk high above. A voice no less corroded answered it.
"Mé̌i shì."
The hand that held the holotape slipped it into the breast pocket of a tattered jumpsuit. Eyes dark as the night glittered as they regarded the dead man. He'd died a swift, silent death, rifle in hand and not one shot spent, barely minutes after sneaking into the plant.
Even in the dimness, those eyes saw what was on the man's belt. Reaching down, the shriveled fingers came up with an old, pitted knife. It was short, black, and wholly utilitarian, with a spiked knuckle-guard designed for close in-fighting in the trenches of a bygone war.
For a moment, there was only silence. Then, slowly, the other hand freed a long, straight-bladed sword from its belt buckle and laid it on the ground next to the body.
"I win, Mister Hancock."
The voice of a man long dead hung in the stillness as a shadowy figure straightened and walked away into the dark.