Part Six: Endgame
ALEKS
The sound of the Anubis slamming into the hanger bay doors was deafening.
Spike lined up the ship with the doors, and punched up a medium burn.
"What the HELL are they doing?!" Said a human voice over the radio.
"Clear Hanger 18! Clear 18! They're on a suicide run!" Said another.
"Hang on tight!" I said and we slammed through the doors, armour plating and shields chewing through each other as the shrapnel from the steel and iron flew at our Blade Ship.
We were within a massive hanger, dozens of Bug Fighters scattered along the floor, Hork-Bajir, Taxxons, humans and Gedds stumbling about, many on the ground, bleeding profusely.
We must get off the ship! Said Spike, The shock troops will be here in minutes!
"You heard him!" I said, "Battle morphs, go, go, go!"
We all morphed to Aorkian. Spike, lacking any real combat morphs, armed himself with a heavy Dracon rifle. Rico just sort of followed behind us, keeping to himself.
We trotted down the boarding ramp and into the fray, with the mission of destroying the Eye of Akdor.
God help us all.
LaROUCHE
I slipped through the ventilation shaft and into the engine chamber with ease. It was a chamber, alright…CAVERN was more like it.
From wall to wall, as far as my morphed eyes could see, were translucent vats holding pure, green, extremely volatile Tiberium, mined from the planet of Clemiac.
No guards…must be too big a space to guard effectively.
As I landed and demorphed, a sign on the wall caught my eye. In plain Yeerkish, it said:
DANGER! ALL PERSONELL MUST BE ADEQUETELY PROTECTED AGAINST TIBERIUM RESIDUE! SEE BLOCK COMMANDER FOR RADIATION COUNTERMEASURES!
"Blast!" I cursed.
I was in danger every moment I stood in this room. Tiberium was leaking into my veins due to cheap Yeerk craftsmanship of the engines.
I'd have to find a way to bring this beast down…and fast.
Suddenly, a CRASH!
The ground vibrated at the sound. Whatever was going on up there, didn't affect me.
Oh well, I thought, rolling up my sleeves.
Time to get to work. I looked at the massive Tiberium cell in front of me. Tiberium was awful hot. Maybe I could cause the cells to overheat and blow up.
I walked off to find some controls. Time to waste this ship.
RIPPER
As I bounded into the fray of Hork-Bajir soliders waiting to end my life, I felt a sharp, burning pain in my back.
I leaned back, to see Rico Muerte standing, holding a massive Dracon beam…and Spike lying down, unconscious!
As Rico raised the gun again, I realized faintly that my armoured reptilian hide was gushing blue, inky blood.
Rico fucking SHOT ME! I cried out.
Rico, sneering, raised the gun again, "When I give you all the Empire, I'll be right back in my former glory, stupid little children…" He cackled.
He fired.
The blast hit Aleks, square on, but the reptilian scales took most of the damage.
"Stupid little shit, Stantford. You were always a little insolent punk, never knew what was good for you. I can't believe I actually let you get away with all the shit you pulled, wasting my soldiers, stealing my H. What a faulty investment."
Alek's reaction was one of pure, undiluted hatred and rage.
You fucker! Screamed Aleks, You bastard! You are fucking DEAD!
Aleks leaped on Rico Muerte, and, as I saw his expression on the leader of the Rampage turn from contempt, to alarm, to fear, and then death, he was torn limb from limb by his former right hand man.
Fate fucks with us all.
Slip and Visser 11 were caught in a panic. The Antimorph ship Anubis had slammed its way inside Hangar Bay 18, the David Taggart and Marc LaRouche had escaped from the Emperors throne room, and someone was screwing around down in the engine rooms. At least the hanger bay blast doors had shut. The room wasn't a vaccum.
"You head down to 18. I'm going to secure other matters."
"Other matters? Like what, you little bitch?" Roared Slip, "Like saving your own ass, maybe? While me and my warriors go and shred some Antimorph?"
Efflit recoiled, "I must check on the Emperor." This was a lie, of course. Efflit knew David was on his way to one place: The detention blocks that held his mother and father. And there was little that could stop him. There was a big fight in the Hangar bay, that rat LaRouche must be the one tampering with the Tiberium cores, and David on the warpath to ground zero.
He needed leverage over Taggart, and this could be his chance to wipe out that Terra Firman slime once and for all!
"You have your orders," Spat Efflit, "Set the Eye to fire. Wipe out Gara."
A Mak Lieutenant looked at Efflit, "Sir, the power cells will take twenty minutes to reach minimum power levels, and that's barely enough to break the crust…"
"I said FIRE!" Roared Efflit, his patience breaking, "Destroy those rebels! Fry their planet to a cinder! BURN THEM ALL!"
With that, Slip took a dozen Hork-Bajir and rushed off to the battle. Efflit stormed off to the Detention Block.
No turning back.
DAVID
Detention block…detention block…I had to find the detention block!
Zooming through the pipes, vents and caverns of the massive Yeerk ship, I read words on the panels. The detention block was deep, deep in the base of the ship. I was on the right course. Down, down, into the belly of the beast…
SKORRE
Two…maybe three dozen Hork-Bajir brandishing Dracon pistols had filled the hanger. I was in Aorkian morph, dodging, biting, slashing, ripping, but for every one of my people that I destroyed, came another, or two more, to fill their place.
Ripper was beside me, still fighting on, even though the Dracon blast from Rico Muerte had injured him. Rico was dead, chewed to bits by Aleks.
The lift doors at the far end of the Hanger had opened, revealing Slip, the human monstrosity, now brandishing a metal claw for the hand that he had lost the last time we fought him.
He was accompanied by a dozen Hork-Bajir.
"KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL!" He cried, and they charged.
Slip raised his metallic arm, red energy forming in a ball inside his palm.
"Die!"
He pitched the red, apparently Dracon, ball of plasma at Sara, as she chewed through a Naharan.
What the?
She jumped to the left, barely missing the plasma ball.
Slip, more monstrous a creature now, charged me with his gnarled, shape shifting arm, stabbing my leg.
The pain was more intense than anything I had ever felt before.
"I fucking love this Polgara arm," Slip muttered, his red eyes fuming with rage.
Aleks bounded over, Spikes out! Go and drag him back on the ship! He ordered, I'm taking care of Brandon, here.
As he revealed what must have been Slips true name, I was headed off to rescue the Andalite Spike, even though his people were murderers.
DAVID
I burst from the vent to see "DETENTION BLOCK" in big, red, Yeerkish in front of me.
Fuckin' A, I thought, relieved that I had found it.
I demorphed and reached into my long-neglected Z-Space closet for a Dracon beam, and pulled out a heavy Dracon pistol.
"It's clobberin' time…" I said, determined.
"Antimorph!" a human voiced shrieked.
I immediately set the Dracon to "disable" and spun around, firing it at the controller's legs and arms.
The controller, a middle aged man with lush brown hair, stared up at me with fear.
"Just shoot me now! Visser 11 will just make me Taxxon-fodder anyways!"
I kicked him with my boot.
"You work here?" I grunted, levelling my pistol at him.
"Ye…yeah," he said.
"I want to see the Taggart's. Right-the-fuck-now. What cell are they in?"
"He'll kill me, for the love of Telmar!"
I spat, "You can take your chances or die right now. Just tell me the bloody cell number!"
"Eleven-Ten B!"
"Thanks," I said, shooting him in the head.
I ran off to find cell number 11-10-B.
LaROUCHE
The Yeerks were actually going to use this damn thing! The power core was getting really hot, but so the cooling systems adapted. I couldn't overload this thing.
Above the control board was a giant clock, counting down in Yeerkish characters. It was at little less than eleven minutes.
I couldn't get the Tiberium to explode like this…maybe I could get the weapon to backfire!
I jumped over to the radio board, and punched up one of the Pool Ships flanking the Eye of Akdor, the Juggernaut
"Juggernaut captain, come in Juggernaut captain…"
A few moments of static, and then a voice.
"This is Admiral Pietta. To whom am I speaking?"
I quickly chose a name that was common to a good number of Yeerks.
"This is Liuetenant…Snith. Antimorphs have massacred the captain and all officers on the bridge! They are attempting to escape from the forward hanger bay! Get in front of the ship to cut them off! Get as close to the front as you can, so they can't get the jump on you! The Emperor wants them pulverized!"
"We shall crush them, Lieutenant!"
If my plan worked, the overflow of Dracon energy from the superlaser would hit the Juggernaut, the blast carrying back here to the engine room…and blowing the Tiberium to Kingdom Come.
I morphed to Kestrick and flew into the vents. I had to find a Bug Fighter and ditch this bird!
DAVID
I found my mother and step father, freed, for the first time in over a year…almost two.
They were crunched into the small cell, 11-10-B, little more than a closet.
I shot the lock, and caught my mother as she fell through to the ground.
"David?" She asked, looking up at me, as I caught her.
"Yeah, mom…Its me…" I said, struggling to keep back the tears.
"My little boy…all grown up…you've come to save us, haven't you? I'm not dreaming again?"
"No mom…no dream."
"Son…they told us that you were alive…that you were fighting them. Just like your old man did, just like my boy…" Said my step-father, murmuring.
"You became so handsome, Davy-Gravy," my mother touched my face, calling me what she did when I was a little kid.
"How touching," came a sneering voice. "Hate to interrupt this little family reunion, but I believe that I should be killing you, right about now."
Efflit 1318. Rachel Berenson. Visser 11.
He stood not ten feet behind me, holding two massive Dracon pistols.
The first shot hit my step father.
I didn't see him collapse.
The second round hit my mother, in her breast, as she lay in my arms. My mother…dying in my arms. Dying because of me. Because I had freed them…
She died.
The next shot came for me.
I dodged it.
Time stopped. My mind went blank. Nothing mattered anymore. Then, nothing was replaced by a new emotion.
Rage.
I jumped at Visser 11, knocking the Dracon beams from his weak female hands.
He was trying to morph. Little brown hairs growing all out of his skin. Grizzly Bear.
In my clone body, with clone strength, speed and brute power, I didn't need to morph.
In just tore an arm off.
"Gaaah!" Cried Efflit.
Off came a leg.
Blood filled the ground around us. The blood of Rachel Berenson, and my mother and step father.
Off came the other arm.
Efflit was screaming. I didn't care. He didn't have to listen to the things inside me screaming. I didn't listen. The world was quiet now.
A small grey slug crawled out of Rachel's ear. Efflit, as a pure Yeerk.
"So small a thing," I found myself saying, "Caused so much death…"
I took my hand and grabbed it, squeezing it to a pulp as its guts covered my fist. Little more than snubbing out a cigarette.
Time sped up. I could hear the world again.
Rachel, free for the first time in months, was trying to morph, to repair the injuries.
"David…" she gasped, "Help me…"
"Look what you've done…you little bitch…"I wailed.
"I was a slave! I didn't do anything! Don't take your anger out on me!"
Lost on her was the fact that I had murdered her sister Jordan and her mother, so many months ago.
"No, bitch," I shouted, "YOU didn't do ANYTHING! NO ONE DID! You have no clue of the pain I feel! EVERYONE MUST SUFFER AS I HAVE, because EVERYONE I LOVED HAS DIED!"
"David…"Rachel said firmly, "Don't do it. Don't cross that line."
Rage filled me, took control of my body. In that moment, I was not a man, but a Demon.
"There…is…no…LINE!"
I raised my fist and, in one swift motion, crushed her skull in.
She was dead.
And I sat in her blood.
SARA
The battle in the hanger raged.
Dead Hork-Bajir were lying all over the place, the bodies piling up. Slip and his elite guard of a dozen were all that fought with us, but in our weakened and bloody condition, with no where to demorph, we were no match to them.
All of a sudden, a vent on the ceiling burst open, and a small creature…a Kestrick…came zipping out.
We have to get out of here! This thing is about to blow up!
It was LaRouche!
What the Hell? Asked Aleks, What the Hell is going on? What did you do?!
"This ship is going to fire its huge planet-wasting gun…and theres a Pool Ship parked right in front of it…" He said, demorphing.
So? I asked, perplexed.
"So…this whole thing is going to blow sky-high!"
LaRouche, you dolt! Muerte told us the explosion would be HUGE! How the Hell are we supposed to get away from the blast in time?!
"Oh…shit…that's bad…"
Get back in the Anubis! Now! We have to get in the clear! Aleks called out to Skorre, fighting a Hork-Bajir.
We covered Skorre as we made our retreat to the Anubis.
I pulled up the landing ramp, and Skorre jumped into one of the turrets, blasting the Hanger clear of Hork-Bajir.
LaRouche took us out, busting through the hanger doors again.
"Wait a second…" I realized, "What about David?"
Slip stood, less a few chunks of flesh, in Hanger bay 18, covered from the Anubis's Dracon fire behind a Bug Fighter.
The Eye was going to blow up, was it? Best not to stick around for that.
There were a lot of good opportunities in the galaxy for a man like him. Bounty Hunter, mercenary, advisor, warlord, Silmarillion smuggler, pirate.
He could make it good. Damned if he was going to stick around and go up in smoke with the Empire.
Slip hopped in the Bug Fighter, went over the checks, and took off, flying into Z-Space.
DAVID
I pulled myself out of the pool of blood and carnage. My black uniform was stained a deep, dark red with Rachel's blood. I couldn't even bare to look upon my parents corpses.
I heard a voice over the intercom: "Minus four minutes to superlaser firing…"
I'd better get out of here.
I saw a sign. It told me that Hanger bay 29 was nearby. Good news, I guess.
I wasn't very enthusiastic. I just wanted to lay down and die. No one had ever felt the hurt and pain that I had experienced….every last bit of my life was gone. My friends…my girlfriend…my parents…my planet…Sanders… everything was gone. What was there left to live for.
No…there was always purpose. And I had a sneaking suspicion at what mine was.
I moved, running swiftly through the underbelly of the Eye of Akdor. Tunnel through tunnel through corridor and room. It was all deserted.
Finally, I had come upon Hanger bay 29.
" I knew you would come here, Taggart," said the cold, mechanical voice of the Emperor.
I turned and saw his cyborg form, standing to my right side.
"I knew that you would go for your parents, and then try to escape here, although I couldn't have dreamed that it would ever have turned out so…" he said with a smile, "Delicious."
"Get out of my way, you old fool."
"Ooh," the Emperor said sarcastically, "What are you going to do to me? Squish me to a pulp, like you did Visser 11, or tear me apart, like you did to her helpless, injured, pitiful host?"
I charged, punching him in his metallic torso. I was so enraged that I didn't even feel my hand bleeding.
"I can't let you leave, Taggart. Not with what you are capable of."
"And what is that?!" I shouted, "WHAT AM I?! WHAT IS INSIDE ME?"
Quiet, for a moment.
"I don't know for sure what you have inside you, David Taggart," he began, "All I know is that it was powerful enough to storm its way across the cosmos and tear a hole into this world, and allow you to defy all odds, to die and come back, to kill and kill until I defies all logic. And I know what your goal is. I know that you have set events in motion mere moments ago, and try as your might, those events can never be stopped. You, Taggart, are an army. You just declared war. Now, fight it!"
He raised his gun-arm to fire.
The one thing I wanted at that moment was just for him to go away. I wanted him, in my rage and blind anger, wanted him out of the way.
Suddenly, in an instant, time stood still. The world turned pitch red.
The Emperor, Sauron 001, fell back, clutching his head and writhing in pain. Red lightening glanced all about him.
He finally stopped. Unconscious, maybe dead. I didn't really care.
I don't know if I caused the Yeerk Emperor to fall back, dead. I don't know if, in my moment of hatred, I had simply willed him to die.
I don know that it never happened again.
Tired, I hopped in a Bug Fighter, and took off into space.
LaROUCHE
A small ship came flying outside of the lower end of the ship. A Bug Fighter.
"Don't shoot!" I said to Aleks, already warming up the gun systems, "They aren't attacking! They wouldn't just send one little Bug Fighter. Its David."
Just then, the conical end of the Eye of Akdor opened fire, the Juggernaut was caught in the path of the thick, rose-coloured superlaser.
The beam never hit the planet. It collided the Pool Ship, less than a kilometre away from the laser. In a flash of blinding light, the superlaser blast recoiled on itself, snaking back into the engine room deep within the Eye of Akdor.
The craft exploded in a flash of brilliant green light.
As David's Bug Fighter rejoined us, I was relieved that the explosion wasn't nearly as bad as we had expected. The planet of Gara would be pelted with the remains of the Eye and the Juggernaut, as well as several other support ships, for weeks to come.
We had done good. The Empire had been dealt yet another harsh blow.
David docked with the Anubis. He didn't speak at all, just going straight to bed.
I never found out what happened to David. I doubt I want to know.
David said only one thing, that chilled me right to the very core of my bones.
"Everyone shall suffer."