Endgame 4 by DarkBeta
[All characters herein belong to Tatsunoko Productions, even the nameless walk-ons and Galactor goons.]
(To quote Marvel Comics, "This issue . . . everybody dies!" Well, everybody but Sosai X, who'd probably prefer it.)
The Phoenix exploded. They had escaped. Nambu, dying in whatever radiation bathed the undersea base, and Gatchaman. Katze hoped it had hurt. He hoped they were broken and burned before the end, screaming in terror as they fell with the wreckage. Hope was all he had left.
"Katze-sama, should we retreat?"
The shock wave looked like white feathers arcing across the sky, a hawk's head shrieking. The illusory wing swept toward the flagship. Katze flinched.
Nothing happened. Smoke and light and imagination, the wings were no more than that. The smoke wisped away. The wreckage fell toward the ocean, with worms of that strange radiation writhing across it. The water steamed and bubbled. The waves seamed over the last trace of Gatchaman.
A glowing surface surged out from the sunken base, like the back of a white whale, like a giant's head rising from the sea, like a dome of milk-white crystal. His captains screamed. Ships collided as they veered and tried to retreat. Fleeing ahead of them all, Katze saw the curve of energy race after him, swifter than any ship or earthly power. He called to the only power that had ever aided him.
"Sosai, help Me. Save Me!"
The awareness at the back of his mind stirred and investigated. Through his eyes it saw the silver fire, the memory of Hakase's machine. It pulled away.
"No! You can't leave Me alone!"
Katze felt emptiness where there had always been presence. He refused to be sundered. He . . . gripped, held on as his master screamed in frustration and fear. He was using skills of the mind that he never knew he had, that Terrans never guessed at. They were the reason Sosai X had chosen him, the reason he was its vehicle and tool.
Katze smiled.
"Never alone," he sighed, and heard Sosai scream again as the sphere of destruction took them.
For one of Sosai's kind, physical destruction was a remote possibility. Madness . . . was not so difficult.
In a fortress among mountains, Galactor soldiers ran from something like darkness or like fire. When they were dead – and they did die, every one – eyes in the dark went on hunting for something stolen, for an understanding that was gone forever.
In the centuries that followed, adventurers came to the ruined fortress. None of them left again. Finally stories and rumors were forgotten, and nobody came at all. The eyes still searched for what was lost, alone and impotent for all the remaining years of Earth.
The highest ranking Galactors made themselves warlords. They feuded, each with their neighbor. The cream of their warships had been in Berg Katze's escort though, and those ships were lost. Here and there, where the Galactors were stupid or the people they oppressed were desperate, rebels arose. War surged across the world.
Not everyone died. War's oscillations were damped. For several thousand years mankind worked its way back from the edge of extinction. No hidden intelligence guided or thwarted them.
When the aliens came, they found a people who lived gracefully and well. Terrans were never again a numerous people, but the ideas of Earth became part of a galaxy's culture.
As the centuries went by, winged deities symbolized what was best and strongest in the human spirit. However history never knew of a ship's last flight, with a dying captain and a blind gunner, and a crew that went knowingly into the fire.