A/N: Hey, guys I'm truly sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out (midterms now officially rule my life), but I hope it was worth the wait. In the future, I'll try not to take too long getting future chapters out. Enjoy.

Badlander

Chapter 11: Fac Bellum

Andrea Jade Bowman was cold. After she had escaped from the strange metallic room and the intruder who nearly killed her, she had wandered into the nearby forest. She was more than surprised that there weren't any patrols outside to greet her until she'd met a lone sentry who stood vigil over the base. With relative ease given her situation, she incapacitated the dark canine sharpshooter, relishing the thrill of combat.

After she had recovered the sentry's rifle, a fleeting thought had told her to kill the helpless being before her. Her fingers had trembled as she placed the barrel of the rifle to the sharpshooter's left temple. Her limbs shuttered, though she just dismissed this as the wind. Andrea's finger had hovered near the trigger, ready to squeeze.

"Mommy," a cold whisper crept from the woods. She shuddered and gazed her head around in alarm. Cool white snow and sleet greeted her teary eyes. She looked back at the crippled guard who sighed contentedly as his greatest dream rescued him from that cold forest.

And Andrea found that she could not kill him.

And now, as the strange flying contraptions battled like dark gods above, she gazed through the scope of the sentry's rifle, an unfamiliar organism greeted her sights. His cool, pale skin camouflaged hauntingly with the soundless forest. He was armed. And close, she knew.

And then she saw his eyes. They were blue. Empty. Cold. They glowed colder than the chilling forest she wondered if she would ever escape. Her body shuddered and her fingers slipped on the trigger. Something deep within her told her not to kill this man. But she did not know what. "Malakhim," a cold voice whispered to her from the darkness of her mind, but she did not know what the word meant.

A low snap of a twig brought her vision below, where a group of white camouflaged figures glided like shades above the snow. A red star, similar to the one that adorned the sentry, gleamed brightly on each figure's white hat. They were the enemy, she knew, and the man with the cold eyes was instantly forgotten.

There was only the thrill of the kill.

Gideon Waller silently observed the moving patrol ahead. Gradually, the figures in white were making way toward the tree line he occupied. He knew he would have mere minutes before they spotted him. Unless, of course, one of the Cornerians ahead happened to have a half-decent snout and smelled his freshly-bled, sweating skin. He sighed inwardly. It would do him no good to think of every single possibility, because they were endlessly diverse and distracting. The duty of a real commander was to consider what was most likely or probable, and make the best decision using those variables. If only he could convince himself of that.

Sometimes, for Gideon, the agony of standing still waiting for something to happen was worse than diving headfirst into danger, because at least then he'd be in control. Standing there behind that constricted evergreen, he hadn't felt so out of control, helpless before the elements of the universe since…

He didn't want to think about the memories. It was so much better for him and the rest of the world if he buried them, he knew. Buried memories couldn't hurt him. It was so much easier to fight, to spring into action, to fall headfirst into the fires of war, than it was to sit and wait for some foreign variable to decide his fate. No, he had dealt with a lack of control over his own life since he was a boy, and he wasn't going to deal with it any longer.

He glanced to his left. Hazel gazed sharply back at him, the humor gone from her eyes. He sighed inwardly as he took in her reddish form. She looked unnatural without her usual humorously prying gaze of intelligence. He nodded toward her, asking if she was ready. She nodded back hesitantly, and quietly he hoped she had some measure of ground-level combat experience. If the patrol discovered them, Gideon didn't want her to get hurt.

Satisfied with her answer for the moment, he glanced to his right at Sam Carson, whose dark brown eyes reciprocated his gaze. This time, it was Gideon's companion who initiated the nonverbal exchange. Gideon nodded and clutched his Thompson. Whether or not the patrol ahead saw them, they'd be ready. At least he hoped.

Gideon glanced out from the tree once more. He saw that the patrol was still nearing the tree line, but began travelling at such a wide angle that by the time they passed Gideon's group from the right, he estimated that they would still be more than one hundred feet away. Perhaps not enough to get comfortable with, he knew, but at least it was a start.

After a few minutes, the Darcie patrol had made its way further along the tree line, passing Gideon's group without a second glance. He studied their animalian faces which gleamed impassively in the cool gloom of the day. Their ranks were uniform, rigid, conformed like any military unit Gideon had encountered in his dealings with humanity, and it scared him.

They're becoming just like us. He thought hauntingly. And he knew it was the truth.

What had struck him most about the Cornerians was how individualistically they carried themselves about their daily lives. They seemed to carry some level of innocence into adulthood that people back home didn't have. Maybe he'd been wrong when he decided that all militaries were the same. Maybe he'd been wrong about a lot of things. And maybe the Great Wars had damaged mankind more severely than it let on. But to see the Cornerian spirit perverted; molded into the blank faces that had tormented him so often as a child was somehow more frightening. But he didn't know why.

And it made him feel colder than Fichina ever could.

That was when he felt it – a sudden nip in the air one feels when he is being watched. He turned his gaze toward a distant white hill that hovered near the research base's silhouette. A glint of sharp reflective light caught his eye.

Alexei Romanov stirred in his chair as another energy charge smashed into the Hinomaru's hull. He flinched slightly as Commander Branson barked orders to his crew over the sound of grinding, crumpling metal. He winced as a power junction blew, sending bright white sparks flying over half the bridge. But the crew endured. Over the years, Romanov had come to understand the usefulness of mercenaries during his crusade to avenge the death of his family and their once-great empire. He had also learned that they were by far some of the most loathsome cowards in all of Earthspace, which was why Branson's crew surprised him; they stood steadfastly by their posts even in the heat of battle.

Of course, the Malakhim had inducted Alexei into their ranks because they saw his own usefulness in defeating the communist abominations, but they had very rarely lent a hand themselves. So, quite often, he was forced to work alone, limited by his own resources (which had very likely grown substantially since word spread that he toppled the Greek Communist Revolution, he considered with pride). And now, once more limited to his own stretch of intellect and fortitude, he brought up the interactive screen in front of him.

The screen chirped at his touch and whirred to life. A glowing, orange holographic display extended outward from the operations station.

"Romanov!" Commander Branson barked from the center of the room. Alexei looked toward the man. Branson stood sharply in the center of the room, periodically bracing himself every time the hull rumbled under an enemy attack. "Activate the weapons settings on your console!"

Alexei nodded and turned back to the holographic interface. His heart beat faster as the hull rumbled again.

"Return fire!" Alexei heard Branson order his crew. Immediately, the hull began to hum. The metal structure of the ship seemed to be reconfiguring itself.

Of course! He realized, momentarily fascinated by this merchant ship's new feature. This vessel is only disguised as a merchant ship! How the hell did I not figure that out sooner?

A new, proximal tremor shook the bridge and Alexei knew that the Hinomaru's weapons were beginning to fire.

He renewed his focus on the console in front of him. Several options suddenly appeared on the holographic display, but only three caught his immediate attention:

[Activate Port Gauss Cannon 2]

[Activate Port Gauss Cannon 4]

[Activate Port Gauss Cannon 6]

He activated the three cannons. Immediately, the louder, more familiar hum rippled across the Hinomaru's hull. Instantly, the interface in front of him materialized into an external view of the attacking ships which were immediately surrounded with bright red targeting reticles. The advancing ships were distinctly pointy, but appeared far larger and more brutish than the CFS Horizon – Peppy's ship – which occupied the lower right corner of the external viewport.

Another option appeared that brought a hopeful smile to his face. Throughout history, whenever all negotiations failed, it was probably the most popular option imaginable.

The option was [Fire].

Ke-kow! A distant sound cracked over the buzz of the destructive craft above. Hazel tilted her head toward the quiet platoon of enemy soldiers that had made their way past her group.

"Sniper!" she heard one of the Red soldiers yell over the instant sporadic hail of gunfire. Hazel winced as the loud var-var-var-var of their automatic energy weapons tore through the once quiet forest. She simply watched as tree after tree fell under the echoing hail of the deadly yellow gunfire. The chaos that had resided in the skies had spread to the ground below.

She heard more yelling and screaming as a second sniper round pierced through one of the enemy infantrymen who had clumsily staggered out from behind cover, unwittingly making himself an easy target. The soldier fell soundlessly as an unseen sniper bolt tore through his chest, turning the snow below him into a sickeningly dark patch of scarlet. Hazel shut her eyes and shook her head, wishing the blood away and the memories it threatened to unearth.

"Fuck! Comrade Jenson, lay down suppressing fire on that bastard!" a voice rang out over the hail of gunfire and she opened her eyes.

A sudden flair of movement caught her eye. Hazel turned and saw Gideon staring at her. His eyes glowed gloomily in the ambient snowfall. He didn't even flinch when a stray energy bolt landed mere feet from him, instantly melting a patch of snow. He merely tilted his head toward the enemy soldiers and raised his weapon.

"Are you insane?" She hissed at him.

He simply glared at her, though she saw that his mouth twitched slightly at the tone of her voice.

"We're here to save the researchers, not kill people who have their backs turned to us. And besides, we have no idea who that sniper is; he might try to kill us!" She pleaded with him.

"I noticed the sniper watching me a few minutes back," he said in such an offhand way that it irritated her. "He could've killed me at any time."

She shook her head and scoffed.

How could Gideon be so careless as to risk their group eliminating soldiers they could easily slip past now that a sniper had decided to start killing them off? Gideon claimed that the sniper had been watching him, and he hadn't bothered to tell her or Carson that some lunatic with a god complex could pick them off from hundreds of yards away as easily as breaking a toothpick. And on top of that, there was an inherent threat – she knew – that the prisoners might simply be executed if the DRC position were threatened, and because of that possibility she would not allow herself to waste more time than was necessary, not when lives were at stake.

How could Gideon, a man who had certainly suffered, authorize the suffering of others? Didn't he know what it was like to be hurt, to be wounded? Didn't he know how it felt? The cool air around her offered no answer. And as she gazed into his now-inhospitable blue eyes she felt as if she were looking at a totally different person in place of the man she thought she knew.

So far, Gideon had struck her as the wounded-warrior type of man. He always seemed used to hiding his pain from others despite the harm and loneliness it might cause him. That inclination of his had been what had drawn her to him.

Not that those dreamy human eyes hadn't helped. Eh, Hazel? Her brain blurted out before she could stop herself. She shook her head. Serves me right for crushing on an alien who literally caught me in the air like their Superb Man, or whoever the hell he is. She sighed and willed herself back into reality, and the harshness of Gideon's latest order.

Gideon's decision to attack an enemy group that no longer posed a threat shocked her. She held her mouth agape, reevaluating her feelings toward the man before her. What exactly was going through his head? She wondered, but could come up with no answer. Hazel just didn't know him well enough, and it killed her. She bit her lower lip in frustration. How could she have been so stupid putting her trust in someone – investing herself in a person she barely knew? Never again, she decided, and returned his cold gaze, resolute in her desire, no, her need to be strong.

He ignored her and advanced from cover, urging Carson forward with his left arm. He positioned himself near the enemy forces, but Hazel saw that he had left himself just enough room for a quick escape in case the enemy soldiers got a bead on his position.

The constant clattering of the enemy machine gunners drowned out more of her thoughts the closer she drew to the fray. She leveled Gideon's M1911 pistol ahead of herself, aiming the iron sights until they settled on a reptilian who fired scattered volleys of yellow energy toward the lone hill that loomed in the distance.

During her training she had grown used to firing energy weapons like blasters and laser weapons – things that caused the burns and blaster scoring she had grown too familiar with treating. Ballistic weapons were different. She had watched enough Earthspace war vids during mandatory military training courses to know that the projectiles humans used were fast, loud, and gruesome. She remembered feeling very sorry for the human medics and doctors scattered throughout the war. The wounds suffered by human soldiers had more often than not resulted in fatalities or torn limbs, and the devastation of loved-ones back home who sometimes didn't have a body to bury.

Her finger hovered over the trigger. And she hesitated. Her body shuddered in the cold. Could she do it? Could she kill someone who wouldn't fight back?

Clat-clat-clat! Gideon's Thompson and Carson's M1911 thundered from behind the enemy troopers, catching them off-guard as the distant sniper picked off another target. Too late, Hazel realized that the reptilian warrior had pivoted on his feet – er – claws – whatever they were called, and had trained his energy weapon upon her. She had just enough time to dive out of the way before the swath of snow she had previously occupied had been flash-vaporized.

She rolled on the ground and raised her hands at the approaching enemy only to find them empty. Crap! She swore inside her mind and fumbled on the ground for the utilitarian pistol. Powdery snow wafted up into her face as she shuffled around for the weapon.

Hazel heard a metallic clicking from behind her. Cold footsteps resounded mere feet away, and she knew she was just seconds from being discovered. She was about to turn when her right paw brushed across something solid in the snow. She curled her fingers around the object, feeling the nicks and grooves of the clunky human pistol as she slid her hand around the grip and her index finger across the trigger. She would have to be fast, she knew. And that was what she resolved to be.

In one swift motion, she spun around on the sheer, icy landscape. The friction between her exposed fur and the inhospitable earth scraped at her skin beneath, drawing blood. But this was a nominal sensation compared to the energy bolt that seemed to fly by her in slow motion. Without thinking, she depressed the M1911's trigger in the direction of the reptilian form that had assaulted her. She had just enough time to glimpse the figure crumpling to the ground as she continued to roll. After a few seconds she stopped. Blood trickled slightly from scrapes across her body, but she was able to stand.

The continued gunfire from the fight brought her back into reality. She turned and her heart leapt. While she had been busy evading one enemy soldier, her companions had been left to deal with the rest of the platoon, and an enigmatic sniper who fired like an unseen god upon the land. She cursed herself for her weakness and walked over to the reptilian's limp body. She bent down to retrieve the reptilian's automatic energy weapon. Hazel checked the weapons settings and found them to be familiar. She moved into a nearby clearing, where the rest of the battle awaited.

Captain Ivan Denisovich sat comfortably in his command chair. A commander of a DRC destroyer that housed over fifty men, he was tasked with the destruction of a single Cornerian frigate, which almost irritated him since his ships were direly needed on the Cornerian homefront, where things had begun to go unforeseeably badly once the aerial invasion was suddenly repelled and DRC territories bombarded by the capitalist government fleet. He scoffed inwardly at Command's utter lack of intelligent prioritization.

His task had been so utterly simple for such a formidable attack group of seven vessels that he had allowed his crewmembers to fire at will, but somehow they had mistaken the gray, rusted trading vessel that hovered beyond for an enemy ship. Ivan would have protested if not for Command's implicit orders that Fichina's space above the northern continent was to be sanitized completely – no matter who or what happened to be hovering over the planet. It was lamentable, he knew, but necessary, at least in the eyes of the Glorious Revolutionary Government. And that was enough for him.

"Sir! The merchant ship seems to be undergoing some form of transformation!" One of his crewmembers noted excitedly as the feeble Cornerian frigate in the distance struggled desperately against the DRC energy weapon attacks, returning fire in the form of bright blue energy bolts so often as their evasive maneuvers would allow. Alone, the single frigate posed no threat as its shields were torn under the constant pummel of yellow energy charges. If this merchant ship had surprises of its own, it was best he be made aware of them.

"Magnify," he ordered. Instantly, the second-rate view screen that occupied the center of the command bridge shifted from its view of the hopeless Cornerian frigate to the dark, decaying, unfamiliar merchant vessel. At first glance, nothing appeared to be unusual about the craft, but upon closer inspection…

"My god," Ivan swore, momentarily forgetting himself as he broke the DRC's non-religious statutes. But no one on the bridge noticed; they were more concerned with the large hypervelocity rail cannons that protruded from the merchant vessel's port side.

"All ships, brace for impa-" the voice of the fleet commander was cut off as a bright yellow streak ripped across the empty gulf of space, smashing into one the attack group's more damaged cruisers, searing through the remainder of its shields and splitting the entirety of the hull in half. He felt the impact tremors as the cruiser's fusion cores erupted, sending a rippling shockwave across space and toward the world below, where more would surely die.

"Fuck!" Ivan swore. "Concentrate all weapons on that new ship! Don't let it fire again!" His crew members heeded his command, pressing a variety of keys and buttons that sent a torrent of yellow energy bolts and red missiles towards the offending craft, easily colliding with its unshielded hull. Unfortunately, the hull appeared to be heavily armored – more so than would be seen on the average merchant ship.

What the hell am I dealing with?

Sam Carson faithfully assisted his new alien commanding officer in eliminating the opposing platoon of soldiers. Originally, he had been loath to even fire a weapon; a condition he desperately hoped his companions would not notice. So when Captain Gideon Waller had given him the order to fire upon enemy troops who had apparently been busy with problems of their own, he had done his utmost to follow the order.

Truly, however, if it hadn't of been for the shooting lessons his mother had given him as a teenager growing up in rural Corneria, he didn't believe he would've been able to pull the trigger, much less do so with an accuracy and precision that rivaled even American soldiers. He sighed inwardly as his borrowed pistol took another life, and with each life taken his mother had once again saved his life, and the lives of his companions. It was in times like this, when he was truly alone, that he could feel her, his mother's presence, guiding the movement of his fingers and the precision of his aim, like the warrior spirit from Corneria's ancient tribal days.

He raised the pistol to fire at a solder that had made his position and pulled the trigger. The pistol clicked. He crouched quickly as a volley of molted blasts seared the air above him. He withdrew the final clip from his waist and reloaded the pistol. He waited for the enemy volley to cease and rose from cover, easily sighting the offending trooper and pulling the trigger. The pistol barked harshly over the chaos of the white forest. The recoil stung his hands, sending vibrations up his arms, as if his body were rebelling against the existence of the killing machine. As was usual, the enemy trooper crumpled and fell in a lifeless heap upon the scorched, snowy ground.

"Clear," he heard Gideon's cool, mechanical voice signal over the sudden silence of the enemy weapons. As it would seem, the sniper in the distance had gone silent as well, so hopefully he didn't consider Carson's group to present a threat.

Maybe it's one of the security officers from the base! He wondered. Maybe the sniper knows about Dad! And as he considered this possibility, a warm feeling of hope rose within his chest. It was a feeling that the coolest, sharpest winds on Fichina could not muffle, but it was not good enough for him. He had to know his father was alright before he committed himself to the possibility that he would be so, despite the ensuing coolness that followed with such a negative line of thinking.

He stepped from cover and met Gideon, who stood over a group of unmoving bodies. Carson shuddered uncomfortably. Why would a pilot be so good at killing? He wondered. Normally, military pilots were trained vigorously in the art of survival given the possibility of crashing in unfamiliar, usually hostile environments, but as he stood there faced with the human pilot's handiwork, he had to admit that his proficiency for killing was excessive at the very least.

I'd be stupid if I wasn't the least bit scared of this guy. He thought to himself as he registered Gideon's emotionless face. But he seemed fine earlier; hell, he even smiled this morning. So what the hell is this? He wondered.

"Clear?" Gideon asked Carson, bringing him back into reality.

"Y-yeah. Clear," Carson answered, cursing himself for his visible nervousness.

"Good," he said simply as Hazel entered the clearing. She had apparently taken a disliking to her human weapon and had retrieved one of the enemy's energy weapons.

"You alright?" Gideon asked her as he turned. Carson might have been going crazy, but he could have sworn he detected a low level of regret in the human's voice. This made him a little less uneasy, but not very much so.

"Yeah. Fine." Hazel said bitterly as she ignored his gaze, the ever-present sarcasm making no headlines in her voice. "Oh, and thanks for making us kill all these people. You're a real saint."

Oh, there it is, Carson thought mildly and sighed. He hadn't known Hazel very long, but he had dealt with her during desperate situations – situations during which people had the least control over which parts of themselves they showed. And Carson had seen the strong, capable woman beneath that sarcastic mask, but her persona was also mired in darkness. Something had happened to her, Carson thought. Sometime in the past, Hazel had had to deal with an impossible situation rife with death, and the resolution of such had scarred her especially horribly when she faced later situations dealing with death.

And now she's developed some feelings for the human, for whom death is a daily occurrence – a commodity – something that might as well have been dealt with over breakfast. And now that she's starting to realize this she's going to go through denial. The poor woman might never stop questioning her feelings about someone in the future without wondering if they're like Him. And Gideon doesn't even realize it.

Carson sighed and took inventory. His pistol still had a few rounds, but he knew it would probably be best to retrieve one of the enemy's energy weapons, which could typically fire over a hundred rounds before the battery needed to be replaced. He holstered the pistol and grappled one the automatic weapons from a dead lupine. He checked the charge. 67% it read – approximately seventy shots, Carson did the math. He was drawn once more to the sniper's position, and the knowledge the lone figure in the distance might hold.

This was going to be a hell of a day, he knew, but he allowed himself to hope.

A/N Okay, so things have gotten much darker in this chapter, but suffice to say it was a lot of fun to write. Be sure to stay tuned for the coming chapters and, as always, if you have questions, comments, or opinions don't hesitate to review or send me a PM. Thanks.