Chapter II- No Surrender
It was 2200 exactly when the two Marine MP's, pistols at their belts, marched smartly into The General's office. He'd left the door open, and was expecting them. Krieger didn't even look up from his framed Navy Cross citation when one of them said, "General William Krieger?"
"Do you have any idea how long I've been in the Marine Corps, son?
The young corporal went ahead, as dispassionately as he could, "We have orders to place you under arrest, sir, on grounds of your having committed treason against the Government of the United States."
Ignoring the young Marine, Krieger said, half to himself, "A lifetime. Forty years is as long as most people used to live. It's all the good years you get; after that, it's a slow, downhill slide."
"I'm going to have to ask you to stand up, sir. You're under arrest."
Krieger stood, setting down the citation and facing the MPs. "Marines, I want to ask each of you a question. Do you think I'm a traitor?"
"Sir," the sergeant on the right said, "You're under arrest."
Krieger could see the reluctance of the two enlisted men; he could tell they hated having to do this. It was like being sent to arrest the reincarnation of Chesty Puller. William Krieger's exploits were legend, and he was idolized by every Marine coming into the Corps. Nobody had backed The General up more solidly through even these dark days of late than the United States Marines.
"I'm not asking you men," Krieger said, his gravelly, rough voice taking on a sterner note. "I'm ordering you. Answer my fucking question!"
The corporal's face paled; he had never, ever in his life expected he'd one day be sent to arrest a five-star general, the legendary "Death-Dealing" Krieger. This man was his hero.
Finally, the corporal gave up. "I don't think you're a traitor, sir," he said quietly.
"Williams!" the first sergeant in charge of the MP detail snapped. "We've got our orders!" he glanced briefly at Krieger, doing his best to stay detached from the situation. Suddenly, perhaps without even thinking about it, First Sergeant Hendricks laid a hand on his sidearm.
"You're going to have to come with us, General. Now." The noncom put an edge of steel into his voice.
The General drew himself up to his full height, staring the two Marines down with his steely gaze. He was every inch the great William Krieger, every fiber The General defending his myth. "Every man knows there are limits to power," Krieger said. "Except those who refuse to be bound by the rules. A general is limited, a president held in check… but a god can and will never be stopped."
The two Marine enlisted men stared, wide-eyed, at the third Marine on the other side of the desk. The General was facing them down with a look so severe, it was as if he was the one coming to arrest them.
It was their hesitation, that moment where they paused, that gave The General the edge he needed. He was lean and mean as hell, but at well past fifty years old he was nonetheless an older Marine. Young Marines, still at the height of their manhood, had some measure of a chance now at defeating The General in a fight… if they got the first move. But because the two enlisted men paused, they didn't.
And that meant The General would win.
His mouth flattening into a line, Krieger vaulted over his desk and flung himself, full force, at the Marine First Sergeant. The senior NCO reacted quickly, realizing the great second coming of Chesty Puller was not going to submit to a bureaucrat's order of arrest. He drew his firearm but simply moved an instant too late; Krieger was a powerful man even at his age, a fighter of incredible gifts. He was powerful, awe-inspiring even in almost every possible way- except for Psi. But Krieger knew that before long, something could be done to change that.
That was why he could not surrender, why he had never even considered giving up when he knew the MP's would soon be coming to arrest him. Krieger had outgrown the need to adhere to a single nation's laws, or to obey a President's orders to bring an extravagant and dangerous Psi program to heel. He had transcended the limits of any ordinary man's conception of power.
Any mortal man's conception of power.
The General simply could not, would not be stopped. His will was not to be denied. He had found a path to the greatest heights of glory and power imaginable… and no one, absolutely no one would stand in his way.
The General slammed his fist into the First Sergeant, shattering the man's jaw and breaking his neck once the two men hit the floor of the office. Not wasting a second, Krieger rolled and got to his feet, preparing for a classic bear-hug tackle, just like his football coach had taught him in William Krieger's days at Annapolis. Even then, he'd been a soldier of impressive ability, strong, fast, and easily able to project the kind of voice that could rise above the din of battle and motivate men to fight.
The corporal had his pistol out and fired, but he was clearly quite shocked; the shot whizzed just past the General's shoulder, so close Krieger felt the hot air blow past the instant the bullet did.
Krieger sprang forward, snapping up the fallen senior NCO's sidearm and shooting the young corporal through the throat.
Corporal Jason Williams staggered on his feet and fell over backwards; he crashed to the floor, wide-eyed and uttering incoherent, pained noises as he choked on his own blood. The M9 pistol fell from his hand, and he stared up in fear and wonder, his eyes pleading Why? as the General stood over him.
Krieger held out the sidearm, his eyes hard and his face grim. But after a moment, his expression softened slightly. The five-star Marine general knelt by the dying corporal, his expression almost one of regret.
Almost.
"Where I'm going, son… you can't follow." Krieger said quietly, then shot the boy in the head.
Krieger stood and glanced outside; the steady roar of an experimental XFV-24 Super Osprey's jet engines could be heard in the distance, getting closer every second as the helicopter flew low over the ground. They were right on time.
The Super Osprey had been one of Krieger's best proposals, a craft of his own design. He had done the blueprints and specs all by himself, checking the numbers against the standard V-22 and ensuring the flaws holding it back from becoming the outstanding VTOL craft it deserved to be were fixed by the new design. The Corps had loved it, even building a handful of prototypes; but naturally the bureaucrats had argued it was not really needed, a helicopter too expensive to be justified by its merits. Krieger considered making his departure in that grand new ship of his to be just another way of telling the big-wig pencil-pushers in DC just what William Krieger really thought of them.
Krieger advanced down the hallway outside his office after closing the eyes of the two MPs he had killed; he regretted killing Marines, but no one, not even a Marine MP just doing his duty, could be allowed to get in the way. Krieger moved cautiously down the hallways of his empty headquarters, pistol at the ready as he made his way downstairs and towards the front doors. Through the shaded glass Krieger could see the Super Osprey hovering, preparing to set down; the Marine MPs outside had brought three Humvees with them, and about half of the men stood guard over the disarmed other half.
The General stepped confidently outside, once again perfectly calm and as always totally in control. He raised his arms as he holstered the sidearm, calling to the Marines in his deep, rough voice, made rough by so many years of shouting orders on the training field or in battle, "Marines!"
"Sir!" The Marine Captain in charge of the MP detail spun on his heel, moved to face Krieger and saluted crisply. He looked Krieger straight in the eye, the admiration plain on his face. "Sir," the captain said, "we're with you."
Krieger sternly returned the salute, then shook hands with the captain. "You've made the right choice, Marine," he said. He meant it. Where he was going, he would need some to follow; a general could never hope to be much without troops. But in time… in time, he would need followers no longer. Because everyone would be following his orders. Until that day, though, General Krieger knew he needed a few good men. There was a lot yet to do, a lot of work to be done. The factory on the Black Sea, the 'empty' missile silo in Western Kazakhstan, and most of all the dark, mysterious cavern, beneath the monastery in the Himalayas… all of those were places the General had an interest. And all of them would need to be attended to; they'd all need loyal men guarding them.
The General knew this captain wanted to join those ranks. He wanted to join the new Corps, the one William Krieger was leading, wherever it was going to go.
A few of the Marine MPs had known the Super Osprey was coming; they waved it in and the VTOL landed, dropping its gear and setting down on the lawn of the headquarters of the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps. The ramp dropped, and as a few of the Marines moved towards it, a man in a lavender suit- a man of great height and impressive size- stepped out. The Marines halted at a respectful distance, turning to stand guard over the ramp.
"Your stylish exits leave a lot to be desired where time is concerned, General," the tall, dark-skinned man said by way of greeting. He spoke respectfully, but was clearly mindful of the fact that the whole base would soon be on alert.
Krieger was oddly amused by the thought that he, an enthusiastic Naval Aviator his whole career in the Corps, might get shot down by other Marine flyers, pilots he'd trained and probably knew by name. But that would only happen if he moved too slowly; the General knew better than to make such mistakes.
"We're done here," the General said simply. "Those jets won't take off unless they're told."
"And the sooner we are off the ground, the less likely that will happen!" the big man said.
Pleasantries exchanged, the two men approached each other, solemnly shaking hands. "Been a long time, Edgar Barrett," the General said. "It's unfortunate Mindgate couldn't be bothered to better appreciate your talents."
"There's a reason these men will follow you anywhere," Barrett said, gesturing to the Marines standing guard around them- and the group of them that was escorting the disarmed Marines, the ones who had refused to switch sides, aboard the Super Osprey. "You're the General," Barrett said simply. "Without you Mindgate will fall to pieces. Ordinary soldiers as well as the Psi elite will soon know the Movement is the flag to fight under."
The General nodded, stepping aboard the Super Osprey as the last of the prisoners were loaded aboard, the guards stepped inside, and the ramp closed as the jet engines started to roar.
Staring up at his darkened office as the ramp closed, the General chuckled; a deep, rumbling sound. One of the Marines, seated to one side of the interior bay, looked up. "What's funny, General?" he said curiously. Barrett, nearly filling the troop bay with his impressive size, glared at the Marine, still focused on the plan of escape and not interested in idle talk. The General waved him down, though; there was no harm in a question when they were already lifting off the ground, right on schedule.
Krieger waved another hand dismissively as he faced north again, as if he could see Washington and that son of a bitch Peter Ferguson himself. "They thought you men would be able to stop me," the General laughed. "They thought you would want to stop me!"
At this, the Marines did laugh; Barrett chuckled too, in spite of himself. As the Super Osprey lifted off the ground, raised its gear and with a roar vanished into the night sky as it streaked toward the Atlantic, Krieger turned his thoughts to the project ahead of him.
The discovery he'd made as a black-ops Marine Colonel had stunned Krieger; it had literally changed his life. Hunting for communist guerrillas, no less than Ho Chi Minh himself and his hardiest men holed up in the Himalayas, Krieger had found something else. Something much more important, buried far beneath the ancient monastery. Mindgate had been quite pleased at the discovery… but Mindgate would not be in possession of that object for much longer.
They'd called it Luna-1, the bigshot scientists at Mindgate. They'd hailed it as the central piece of humanity's most crucial puzzle; once the full power of the artifact it was part of was unlocked… the full potential of the human mind, it's truly limitless power, could at last be held by a single man.
William Krieger would be the first man to know that power- and contrary to what Barrett and the others believed, he'd also be the only one to wield it. For now, though, Krieger needed Barrett's help. He needed all those men and women who would be willing to follow him in pursuit of his goal, because for right now William Krieger did not have the kind of power he needed. The UN, the US and Mindgate were still too powerful; the Movement, even once Krieger escaped and took full control of it, would still be too covert and weak.
But one day soon… the Movement's red-white-and-black flag would fly in every city, all over the world. It was going to take years to build and prepare; it would take all of the General's brilliance to organize everything that would need to happen. But in the end, that day would come about, and knowing that, Krieger was prepared to wait.
Krieger smiled. He was going to live to see that day, and many, many more.
Because as everyone knew, a god could never die.