Batman/Command & Conquer: Red Gotham
By Christopher W. Blaine
e-mail: darth_yoshi@yahoo.com
DISCLAIMER: Batman and related characters and situations are ©2003 by DC Comics Inc./Yuri and related characters and situations are ©2003 by Westwood Games. All are used here without permission for fan-related entertainment purposes only. All original content is ©2003 by Christopher W. Blaine.
CHAPTER 12
"Comrade Wayne, how good of you to join me," a raspy voice said as awareness slowly crept into the Batman's skull. The last thing he remembered was Captain Marvel's fist slamming into his face, just after the Batwing had sunk below the waves of the Atlantic.
He realized he was lying down and he brought himself up to a sitting position. He had been stripped of his cape and cowl; his utility belt had been ransacked and removed of anything useful. He quickly glanced around, realizing he was in a small room that had very little furniture. His bed was a common Soviet issue cot, not very conformable at all. "It wasn't by choice," Batman replied as he rubbed his jaw. He had lost a tooth or two he realized as his tongue probed his mouth.
"I was very sorry to hear about the loss of your young friend, but the war, alas, has caused so much pain to so many," Yuri said as he stood up. He brought Batman a small glass filled with a clear liquid. "Vodka," Yuri told him.
Batman took it and swallowed it down, not worried about it being poisoned or drugged. Yuri was a powerful telepath; he had no need for chemicals to loosen the Batman's mind. "Is Batson the only member of the League still alive?" Batman asked, referring to Captain Marvel's true name of Billy Batson.
Yuri smiled and sipped at his own drink. "Of the Justice League Task Force that assaulted Moscow, yes. Most died immediately, their minds overwhelmed by my powers."
"And your psychic amplifiers," Batman guessed. The amplifiers were a favorite weapon of Yuri clones throughout the world. It would increase their powers and allow them to control whole city populations.
"A warrior must use all of the weapons at his disposal," Yuri replied before crossing across the room to sit at a small table. The Vodka bottle was sitting there was half empty. Batman suppressed the urge to jump up, grab the bottle and smack the Soviet mutant across the head. "It will do no good, Comrade Wayne; I will have control of your mind before you can direct your legs to move towards me."
"I don't like having my mind read, or my friends killed or my country invaded," Batman said. "You're a madman."
Yuri laughed and reached for the bottle of Vodka. "Perhaps I am, Comrade Wayne, but it does not matter. I have won. My goal was to capture the last of the Justice League, to put to rest the idea of the American super-hero. I have done so."
"I'm not dead yet."
"Nor will you die anytime soon, comrade, for I have many other plans." Yuri stood up and brought the bottle over to Batman. "Drink up and enjoy the last moments of your life as you know it."
Batman looked up at Yuri, his eyes focusing on the small tattoo on the Russian's forehead. "You don't realize the mistake you're about to make."
"Ah, but I'm afraid I do. You see, with you and Green Arrow…the Black Canary and Captain Marvel, I will create the Justice League of Yuri." Yuri dropped the bottle and Batman let it fall to the floor and break. "Your resistance is futile and amusing, but it will do you no good."
"It's not me you better be worried about," Batman said, a wicked grin crossing his face. Then his world went dark.
The troop transport landed in a school parking lot, Batgirl and Tanya exiting quickly as it began to rise back into the air. A call had come in to pick up several British snipers that had come in on a transport and there was no time to waste. Batgirl and her companion raced towards the school. A figure stepped out of the shadows but Batgirl's keen eyes picked up on who it was immediately.
"Helena," Batgirl said as she faced the older woman.
The Huntress smiled a feral grin. "Glad to see you've come across to the winning side, Cassie." She paused and the smile faded. "I heard about Tim. I'm sorry. You know I always liked him." The truth was that before the war, when they were all a lot younger and more innocent, Helena Bertinelli had taught high school in Gotham City and had been the teacher of Tim Drake. "I heard that Bruce was captured."
"It's a metahuman named Captain Marvel," Tanya said. She looked around. "Where's Deathstroke?"
"Dead. A Hornet crashed into a building he was in a few hours ago," the Huntress replied. If she felt any remorse or pity over the loss of her partner, she did not show it, but that had been her way since she started being a super-hero. The Huntress had represented the absolutely most conservative aspects of the Gotham "family".
"Then it is just us," Batgirl said.
"Over here!" a distinctly Russian-accented voice called out. The helicopter landing had drawn the attention of several conscripts and Tesla troopers and they poured into the schoolyard.
Tanya was the first to move, drawing her twin .45 caliber automatics and opening fire as she rushed forward. One, two then three conscripts fell, clutching their chests. The Huntress was right behind her, a crossbow held high and taking down a Soviet non-commissioned officer as he tried to direct the fire of his forces.
The three Tesla troopers moved forward slowly, their lightning guns sparking as they prepared to discharge them. Batgirl flew in like a demon wind, all restraint removed from her as she struck the first blow of many for revenge for her beloved Tim. An insulated boot caught the first trooper in the chest and shattered his breastbone. He went down just as the first knife came out her boot and plunged through the silver helmet of the next.
The last trooper fired, but Batgirl easily avoided the shot by back flipping out of the way. She stopped in front of two conscripts, who were surprised to see the masked woman appear before their eyes. One went down with a throat strike that crushed his voice box while the other received a kick to the groin that was followed with a knife slash that put a thin line across his throat.
Tanya fired and blew out the side of the skull of the last Tesla trooper even as the Huntress snapped the next of the first one that Batgirl had incapacitated. Both women looked up to see several conscripts surround Batgirl, their AK-47's pointed directly at her. Tanya dropped the clips from her pistols and moved as quickly as she could to reload. She dropped her gaze to her pistol belt, grabbed the magazine for one and slammed it home and then grabbed the other.
She was loaded up when the Huntress put a hand on her shoulder. Batgirl stood there in the center of a group of dead conscripts, all of them still gripping their rifles. She was covered in blood and breathing heavy, her bosom rising and falling as she eyed each and every victim. Tanya had not heard a thing. "My God," she said silently.
Batgirl shook her head, allowing her long hair to fall over her face again and she replaced her knife back in its boot sheathe. Her cape whirled as she slowly approached the other two women. The Huntress held out a handkerchief and pointed out that there was blood running down her chest. "It goes with my broken heart," Batgirl replied.
Their trip through the streets of Gotham was more or less uneventful. There were fires everywhere and the screams of the dying were a constant serenade of despair. They encountered no more Soviet patrols, though Batgirl did dispatch a couple of guard dogs that had gotten free of their pens.
The air raid by the navy had devastated the city and Batgirl listened as the Huntress talked about how the planes being shot out of the sky had crashed into what few remaining buildings had survived the war until this night. "Soviet and Allied tanks started blasting at each other in parks where kids used to play. I saw several conscripts zero out there rifles on fleeing civilians. Yuri clones were roaming everywhere, making people do unspeakable acts of depravity."
Tanya listened as well, knowing all to well that the Huntress was telling the truth. Tanya had seen such horrors all over the world. San Francisco. Washington D.C. Hartford. Paris. Cairo. It was the same everywhere.
Someone once said that war was hell. Tanya could not imagine a place worse than this one.
They stopped on a street that had several burned out buildings, where bricks lay about in the street like confetti after a ticker-tape parade. There were also several bodies, some fresh and some not. Some wore uniforms, Allied and Soviet, others wore nothing but tattered rags.
Some were adults but many more were children.
They could see the forward walls of Yuri's main base in Gotham City. Several automated sentry guns, twin-barreled cannons capable of ripping a man in two in moments, were dotted all along the walls. At the guard shacks stood an entire squad of conscripts and Tanya used her binoculars to examine the unit patches on their uniforms. "Damn," she muttered. "Those aren't conscripted locals or even Soviet-bloc nation forces, those are Russian regulars. Tough bastards."
She scanned the wall line and saw the tips of at least two Tesla coil defensive weapons, giant power rods that shot out lethal bolts of electricity. There were other buildings as well, most of the type you found in typical Soviet field bases.
A patrol of two conscripts and two guard dogs came around a corner of the wall and marched towards the front gate. A few minutes later, another patrol came around the same corner. "They've got the patrols up as well."
"Too bad we can't fly," the Huntress said, trying to figure out what to do. "It isn't like we can go through the front gate." She tapped her boot on the ground. "Hey, if you have some explosives, we could blow through the wall."
Batgirl brushed past them, pulling out two short swords from scabbards that had been hidden beneath her cape. "Where the hell are you going?" the Huntress asked.
There was no reply and Batgirl stepped over a pile of rubble and hopped across several bodies until she was next to the burned out husk of a Soviet Tesla tank. Two soldiers who had been relieving themselves next to the destroyed vehicle noticed her there too late. Before they could let go of their privates to reach for their AK-47's, Batgirl had severed their heads from their bodies. Spinning the blades, she put them back in their scabbards and gabbed the dropping heads before they could hit the ground.
In the days of the French Revolution, the executioner at the guillotine would often grab the condemned's head after it fell into the basket. If they were quick enough, they could hold it up to the crowd while it was still alive, wordlessly making protests to its fate. One of the heads that Batgirl cradled was moving its lips. It was a young face, but it had the eyes of a veteran. It seemed to ask why, but Batgirl knew in her heart of hearts that as the Russian's vision slowly faded to black, he knew exactly why he had to die.
Tanya and the Huntress moved quickly to scramble over the rubble and got to Batgirl just as she tossed the heads at the guards. She knew better than to get into range of the sentry guns and so the throw was not good enough to strike anyone. Instead the heads hit the cold pavement with twin thunks that drew the attention of a smoking soldier.
He pointed at the heads and screamed out something in Russian and soon the entire squad was moving towards the three female figures. Batgirl did not wait for a quick plan, but instead smiled and stepped out at the head of the group. None of the soldiers fired their weapons, seeing the costumes. Batgirl had expected this since Yuri seemed to have a desire to capture as many super-heroes as he could.
The soldiers threw down their rifles and pulled out their bayonets. Two burly ones immediately went for Batgirl. She kicked out, striking the hand of one soldier so hard that it snapped back and he impaled himself on his own weapon. Following through with the kick, she planted her foot down, and put a karate chop to the other's throat. He was down just as the next conscript tried to slash with his knife. Batgirl caught his arm, wrenched it up until the elbow snapped and then brought a leg up to smash his face with a kick.
Soon it became almost comical the way Batgirl dispatched each challenger with one or two strikes, killing some, wounding others. The Huntress, not one to stand by and let someone else do the work, took a shot at a Tesla trooper inside the gate next to one of the Tesla coil. The missile from her crossbow punctured his reinforced hood and buried itself deep into his eye. He went down, falling into the Tesla coil field and was instantly incinerated.
Tanya was firing left and right, trying her best to take out the quickly approaching guard dogs that came from both corners. Their handlers were following close behind, their guns firing until they saw the swish of Batgirl's cape. One of the sentries realized what was going on and got onto his radio to inform the chief of security. He got his warning out just before a .45 caliber bullet pierced his skull.
Batgirl took down the last trooper, a soldier carrying one of the anti-aircraft flak cannons, and came up with both blades whirling. She sensed something had changed in the air and Tanya made mention that there should have been a lot more troops coming at them. "And where is the damn alarm? Soviets love alarms."
An arrow pierced her shoulder, spinning her around and throwing her flat on her face. Batgirl looked up to see the familiar figure of Green Arrow standing on the wall. Another arrow was already notched and being fired. Batgirl cartwheeled out of the way, just missing being skewered. Two more arrows followed her on her spinning trip to cover behind the remains of an Allied Prism tank.
The Huntress loaded her crossbow and took a bead on the Emerald Archer. Years before she had admired the man, especially for his willingness to stick by his political views no matter how stupid everyone else thought they were. Just as he finger went for the trigger when a sonic blast caught her in the back and lifted her through the air. She crashed into a broken wall even as the Black Canary finished her Canary Cry. Clearing her throat, the former hero prepared for a final, lethal blow when her stomach exploded as the pointed tip of a sword protruded through it.
"I'm sorry," Batgirl said, truly agonizing over the fact she had just killed someone who had once been her friend and a comrade. But that was a long time ago and Dinah Lance, the woman who was Black Canary, was long gone, replaced by the unstoppable will of Yuri.
If Green Arrow was troubled by the loss of his lover and confidant, he didn't show it, but instead loaded up an explosive tip arrow to fire at Batgirl. The Dark Knight Damsel pulled out her sword and started running for more cover. The Prism tank was thinly armored and would not protect her from the C-4 charge that Green Arrow used in the specialized arrow.
She had no choice but to run back towards where the group of women had come from. Any other course would but her closer to Green Arrow. As it happened, she did not have to worry because Tanya, using her one good arm, shot the possessed archer in the head. His arrow went high and sailed behind him and there was an explosion as it struck a Tesla power generator. It was obvious that it was a critical hit because several lights went out in the base.
Batgirl changed her course and ran towards the Huntress, but stopped short. The position of her neck told the story and the young warrior turned to go help Tanya. "Look out!" Tanya called out.
Batgirl ducked just in time to avoid having her skull bashed in by a projectile that made a very familiar sound as it cut through the air. She tucked and rolled, coming up in a crouch, her swords crossed in front of her.
Batman stepped out of the shadows, in costume except for his cape and cowl. The eyes of Bruce Wayne were glazed over, glassy like he was sleep walking. His movements told another story, though. He moved with a determination that Batgirl had not seen since before the war. In his hand he held the Batarang that had almost ended her life.
He looked at her and smiled. It was a feral grin, devoid of any compassion. It was a fight to the death. Batgirl did not want to fight Batman. She wanted Yuri and Captain Marvel; they had killed her beloved Tim.
But if she had to, she would not hesitate she told herself.
Tanya groaned and rolled over, starting to drag herself away from the battle about to commence. Several Soviet Tesla troopers were assembling at the front gate, their coil weapons sparking as they stood and watched. Batman took a step towards her and Batgirl leapt, a scream of rage and fury escaping from her throat.