"Never surrender! Not even
in the face of Armageddon!"
-Rorschach, The Watchmen
Lester came awake as soon as the hand fell on his shoulder. Kurtis Boe knelt beside his bunk, his combat gear buckled down and ready to go. Lester himself was wearing his armor under a heavy arctic survival suit, and he felt warm and clammy as his eyes sprang open. "Boe."
"Sir, U.S. Navy vessels on the edge of our radar sweep. We're still about ten miles out of their range, but we can't risk getting any closer."
"Abe?"
"Dr. Tyrant is already suited and ready, along with his drones. Wish we'd had a second transport just to bring more, but we're running on the Doctor's schedule." Lester swung out of the bunk and rolled his neck, then ran through some basic stretches. He'd never felt so old prior to an expected battle.
"How many units are ready to move?"
"Three, we're just waiting on one set of heavies and the volunteer ring skirmishers to make final preparations," Boe said in a rush, handing Lester his rifle and ammo pack. "Dr. Tyrant gave me two of his Phase Disruptors and ordered me to stay with you, sir."
"I appreciate that, but anything that can get to me might be best left alone, son," Lester chided. "I'm not entirely human."
"I have my orders, sir," Boe said flatly. Lester could see the near-worship in the younger man's eyes, not of him, but of Abe. If Abe told Boe to pull his own nails out with a pair of pliers, the young elite henchman would likely do it on the spot, no questions.
"Fine, but I'm not happy about it," Lester relented. "I want fifty feet between us at all times whenever possible, never crossfire. I'll keep you on my left when we arrive. If I give you an order in the field, so long as it doesn't contradict Abe, you follow it. Understood?"
"Yes sir."
"Good. Now, has everyone been warned off of explosives?"
"Yes sir. I issued that order myself about an hour ago, given the fragile terrain."
"Smart man. Big Three ready with his men?"
"All of the heavies have been refitted, sir. Everybody is prepared to mobilize. Skeleton crew is staying on board."
"Do we have any eyes up there yet?"
"Camera drones are being launched in about two more minutes, equipped with stealth systems running on launch." Lester nodded, checked the clip on his rifle. "Sir, if I may speak freely?"
"Always," said Lester.
"I have this feeling that things are going to go badly out there," Boe said, the faintest tremor audible in his voice. "I wish I could be more specific." Lester knew what Boe meant. The entire campaign to this point had run as smoothly as any he'd been a part of from HAC's side of the fence.
Boe shook his head and left the room then, out into the cramped walkways of the Tyrant-2. Lester cast his mind back over the entire situation, hardly able to believe that it had all taken just under two months to come to this point. He remembered running alongside his groundskeeper in the old pickup truck, the call that had brought him to HAC headquarters.
He remembered being on the video conference with the same men who had sent him to speak with Aberdeen Tyrannus, men who suspected the aged super-scientist was trying to pull a fast one on them. But Lester had seen the data himself, the projected simulations of what would happen if things were allowed to continue as they had been.
A key question floated just beyond his grasp to form, to pose to Abe. It was surely too late to ask now; they had come too far down this path to turn back. Lester Collins began to mentally prepare himself for one more battle as Captain Righteous. The new Ultra Soldier surely awaited them up on the arctic fields; that man would bludgeon his way through the ranks of henchmen in his path like the warhammer of an ancient, angry god.
And Captain Righteous intended to stand in his path.
The HAC high command sat in their usual seats, but only for another minute. The men all, save for one, stood up and moved toward the doors, General Farat standing at the doorway and shaking the hands of his fellow committee members as they congratulated him and quietly thanked him for having a clear head about all of this. Senator Wolfe even implied that it was good to have a 'fresh set of hands behind the wheel' of the HAC.
Erin Bantor remained seated, flabbergasted. Not only had Farat managed to dismiss his concerns as 'over-reaching paranoia brought on by hero worship of Captain Righteous', but the general had successfully moved to have Bantor temporarily relieved of command of the HAC and himself installed in the seat.
The motion had been voted 'yes' by everyone but Bantor.
When it was just Bantor and Farat left in the room, the old general stood at the end of the long table opposite Bantor. A wolf's grin split Farat's features. "Come on, now, Erin. This is only temporary. Besides, a man like you shouldn't have control over the kind of superhumans we have allied with us. A politician with that sort of power at his call is dangerous."
"You don't understand," Bantor muttered, eyes glassy, staring straight ahead at a point on the table a few inches from Farat's waist.
"What's not to understand? Righteous let himself be duped, like we almost were! If Major Patriot has to kill him up there in the snow and ice, then so be it! We only need one Ultra Soldier, Erin, and by God, I think we're better off with one who follows orders!"
"You don't understand," Bantor muttered again. Farat made a grunting sound of disgust and left. Erin Bantor remained right where he was, shaking his head and saying that they didn't understand.
Lester, Abe, Boe and Big Three crowded around the monitors as the camdrones took in the barren white landscape, their scanners running in every direction.
Two miles inland, a swath of heat signatures implied the presence of sixty armed men. A mile east and west of this group were two more groups of equal size. Farther inland the pattern was repeated. Snowmobiles and ice crawlers were warmed up and primed to carry the HAC troops wherever Abe's small armada showed up.
About ten miles inland was an enormous research station, with hundreds more troops. A mile and a half east of that, a single large heat signature. Lester tapped the monitor. "That will be Patriot. They're keeping him apart from the others."
Nobody argued this fact, and Abe decided that he knew where they would deploy to. "Thirteen miles inland and five miles west of center. We can get a head start with my scanner, and make ready for battle before any of them can reach us. Plus, it'll keep Patriot away longer."
"Why not go further inland," Boe asked.
"The returners assigned to the teleporter here on the Tyrant-2 only have a thirty-five mile range," Abe explained. "It's more a limitation of the teleporter than the returners themselves. This technology has been around about fifteen years now, but improvements are few and far between. If we get caught out too far on the ice, we won't be able to get back here in a hurry."
"So we'll have fifteen miles of wiggle room to search for the best spot to use the Freeze Ray at," Lester said.
"Precisely. Mr. Boe, Big, go tell the men to start lining up," said Abe. "It's time."
The Tiger Tank's systems had clearly undergone a number of improvements and upgrades over the years. To begin with, upon arrival, internal environmental control systems kicked on, keeping the Leader warm and cozy despite the subzero temperature outside of the control pit. Secondly, long range sensors gave him an exact readout of biological targets and mechanical targets. On the main control terminal, after each reading, tactical suggestions were displayed, including CLRMs (Compact Long-Range Missiles). He neglected these options for the time being, instead cycling through his maneuvering options. The walker controls were simple enough; brace clamps were attached to his legs, so that the suit could mimic his natural movements without pause.
These had the benefit of having thrusters on the bottoms of the feet units, activated by curling his big toes downward. While active, he would have to carefully angle his legs to move, but the Leader was adept at using such technology.
This would be the preferred method of movement only for speed, though, not control. The thrusters could only lift the Tiger Tank about ten feet off of the ground, and they took a moment to kick on, so combat use was out of the question.
Still, from where he now stood, a good twenty miles north of Station Echo, he couldn't help but imagine the sheer terror the sight of the Tiger Tank would bring to both Tyrant's and the HAC's troops. Not only was the suit beastly, but it was common knowledge that the man who'd named the suit after himself was dead. People in the superhero/villain community were a superstitous lot, and the arrival of a dead man would likely set some teeth on edge.
The Leader brought the Tiger Tank's main weapons systems online, calibrated the targeting, and waited for the chaos to begin.
Congressman Bantor wanted only to be away from the building now, but he felt it would be best to leave a personal notice for those staff not present in order to avoid questions or confusion.
It was this attention to detail, this preference for a personal touch, that began a ripple effect the likes of which he had never seen. The door to Colonel Chambers's office was, as ever, unlocked, though the colonel wasn't there. As Bantor was about to drop his hand written note on Chambers's desk, he noticed a sheet of paper in the colonel's 'in' tray on his fax machine.
"Who even uses faxes anymore," he muttered to himself. And that was when Bantor took up the sheet and read the message, heart pounding in his ears. Major Patriot, in his diminished mental state, had sent his final message not to the fax machine Maurice Franco had installed at Technoclone's house in Maine, but to the original line.
Erin Bantor had a new thread to pull at, and pull he would. He had already suspected an inside deception; he may well yet prove that Colonel Chambers was the deceiver.
The first group was away, the second group crowding into the teleporter bay. Everything rushed by in fractions of a second, last moment equipment checks, safeties being undone on weapons, gloves being cinched into place. Some few offered up final prayers as they readied themselves for the mission ahead.
Ahead of Lester and Abe stood the sentry robots, lifeless, soulless machines with a singular programmed purpose. They would defend Abe absolutely, and with no sense of danger to themselves. If Abe had taken a year to prepare for this campaign, he could have easily erected an entire robot battalion to square off with the HAC and Major Patriot. But he didn't have a year.
"Lester," Abe said, turning in his heavy parka to face the original Ultra Soldier. "We won't have a chance to talk when we arrive. If something should happen to either one of us, I want you to know that I have enjoyed becoming your friend." He offered Captain Righteous his ungloved hand, and the two men, archenemies for four decades, shook to their friendship.
A minute later, they trundled into the teleportation bay, and the world turned green and white around them.
Movement on the ice, and before Patriot could even be contacted by Echo Station he was barreling outside to his snowmobile, weapons rattling on their slings.
He slapped his goggles into place and tore off for Echo Station as fast as the undersized machine could carry him. The time was at hand, he thought, the time for killing, the time for taking Captain Righteous's head from his shoulders!
Nothing could stand in his way, not Tyrant's henchmen, not his own fellow HAC agents, and not the suits in Washington who claimed to have command of him. He was a superhero, damn it, the raw, living incarnation of true patriotism!
And so he would decimate his enemy, regardless of whether they truly deserved it or not. Yes, he was the one and true Patriot, and with all of his American might, he would crush those who stood against him!
God bless the psychotic, and God bless America!
Lester knew that trouble was going to be coming, but still he marveled at the speed and precision with which the hundreds of henchmen organized themselves into the protective rings and ranks around Abe and his robots. Here was an impressive bunch, probably the best the Henchmen's Union had to offer. Certainly Boe seemed to represent the best of their elite.
Abe began using his scanner, or attempting to, but his puffy gloves kept making him press the wrong buttons and commands. "Blasted things," he groused, pulling them off and stuffing them in his heavy coat's pockets. The Freeze Ray hung in a holster low on his left hip, ready for use.
He got the scanner running a minute later, and someone from the eastern perimeter came over the radio, loud and clear in Lester's earpiece. "Movement about eight miles southeast," came the grizzled voice of a veteran. "Not approaching. I think they know we're here, over."
"Just hold steady. Unless you see movement coming for us, leave the line clear for now, over." He clicked off the earpiece and looked over and ahead to Abe. He threw Boe a hand signal to stay where he was, then jogged to the ring of robots. "Abe?"
"Trying to pinpoint the weakest local spot. This area's not in terrible shape, which is a bit of a surprise." Abe looked up at Lester with an expression of consternation. "Found the weakest location, one mile north. This thing must be off a little bit, though."
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing, it's not important. Come on!" Abe issued the order to move ranks north over the comm line, and his armada began its hurried march. To the east, another armada was readying itself for battle.
He had just been another member of the Leader's Grays, never expecting to have a vital role to play, being stuck up in Alaska. Yet here he was, and with the press of a button, he carried out his final orders.
This nameless man in his old gray nailhead suit has served his purpose. His final orders changed after the Leader was told of the submarine being loaded by Tyrannus's people. A single button was pressed, and then this seemingly harmless man just laid back and let the mini-sub's autopilot program take over.
Aboard the Tyrant-2, every electrical and mechanical system shut down as a standard-issue HAC Field Disruptor attached itself to the hull. Dr. Tyrant and everyone who had joined his cause was trapped, and they had no idea.
Abe aimed the Freeze Ray down at his feet, and pulled the trigger, bucking only for a moment when the device powered on. Brilliant blue-white energy pulsed from the device down into the ice, and Abe could actually see it flowing down and outward through the surface. "This is it! This is brilliant! It's going to work!"
"That's great, Abe, but we've got trouble," Lester shouted over the pulse of the Freeze Ray. Abe had turned off his earpiece, so he hadn't heard a minute before when one of the skirmishers came over the commlink to confirm that HAC troops were on the move toward them. Combat was about to be engaged in; there would be no avoiding it.
Not that Lester had thought it would be possible to avoid armed conflict this late in the game. The first shots would soon be fired; the easternmost ranks of the outer ring of skirmishers were hollering back and forth at one another, last-second adjustments being made.
Lester looked out with his binoculars and saw the onrushing HAC troops, brought to within a mile by snow crawlers and now hoofing it or riding forth on snowmobiles, staggering their approach.
These first soldiers didn't worry him, but something in the dim distance, heading their way, very much bothered him; Major Patriot. He could make out none of the other Ultra Soldier's features, but he would be the only HAC agent travelling alone out here.
As Lester lowered the binoculars, the first shots were fired, and two HAC Green Team troopers fell dead with holes in their heads. Big Three came over the commlink loud. "Remember, head or extremeties! They will be armored like us! Do not aim for center mass, repeat, do not aim for center mass!"
That, Lester thought, would be difficult. Most soldiers were trained to fire for center mass, to afford themselves the widest possible hit area. But Big and his crew knew what they were doing; they were veterans all.
The arctic slaughter began.
The Leader was much impressed with the Tiger Tank's optical zoom capabilities. He had a multi-lock function for the rocket launchers on the shoulder units, and he'd nailed down three primary targets. One more and he'd let fly, two against the henchmen, two against the HAC. The carnage on both sides would keep them clawing at one another, and he could use their confusion to draw even closer.
Major Patriot, the Leader saw, would arrive at the battlefront soon on his snowmobile. The Ultra Soldier had not yet grabbed for his rifle; the Leader wondered what the man was thinking.
No matter. By this juncture, if Major Patriot's mental stability had deteriorated as far as the Leader suspected, he wouldn't be surprised if the armored superhuman began swinging his rifle like a club, and he could have joy of it.
He locked on one final target, and with the flight of his four rockets, hell broke open in the arctic.
Abe realized something was off just before the first shots were fired. His Freeze Ray was stabilizing this section of the ice far more quickly than his calculations had predicted. Any normal man might be overjoyed by this development, but Aberdeen Tyrannus was no normal man; he was a super-scientist.
The scanner wasn't wrong, he thought. He quickly rapped one of the robots on the back and ordered it to take over the use of the Freeze Ray. Rapidly he pulled out his datapad from a pack on his hip opposite the Freeze Ray's holster, bringing up his initial report, the one he'd assembled and presented to the HAC high command in the first place.
Using that data and his scanner's readings, Abe came to a horrifying realization. "The data was manipulated. This whole thing was a set-up." He barely whispered these words, and the world turned into a blast chamber around him.
Major Patriot saw the explosions ahead of him, and the sight of the flames and flying bodies and gore only fed his own bloodlust. Still holding the handles, Patriot whipped his lower body off of the snowmobile, letting his legs carry the vehicle's dying momentum in a full-out run as he swung the snowmobile like a truncheon at the nearest of Tyrant's skirmishers.
The crunch of body armor and bones sent a thrill flooding through him. The bladder-relaxing horror of this sight paralyzed three nearby HAC agents, who were immediately brutalized in the same fashion. There was no more friend or foe for Major Patriot, only targets.
Lester, meanwhile, was shooting the legs out from every HAC soldier he could get good aim at, chosing to cripple for now instead of kill. He saw Patriot's entry into the fray, and gave himself thirty seconds before he would turn his full attention on the other Ultra Soldier.
Something shrieked in his earpiece. "Lester! It's all wrong! It was a trick!" He clicked his commlink on.
"What?" It was Abe on the other end, he realized.
"The data they gave me, it was wrong, it was manipulated! Someone accelerated the data by fifty years, Lester! This whole thing was a trap!" And as if on cue, as the fighting intensified, something enormous came crashing down on the far side of the battlefield, an impossibility that wholly captured Lester's attention.
Tiger Tank.
Men were screaming and dying all around him on both sides, and now Captain Righteous thought he might well have lost his mind. The dead did not just show up on the battlefield.
Sanity crashed home like a bunker buster. Major Patriot had taken advantage in the momentary lull of awe and horror brought on by Tiger Tank's arrival to close the gap with him. The snowmobile caught Lester full in the torso as Patriot hurled it at him, the air rushing out of him as he was struck.
Lester rolled back as he landed on the ice and kicked the snowmobile away. He was quickly back on his feet, but only in time to be punched in the stomach by a fist more powerful than any that had ever hit him. Lester doubled over, was grabbed by the hood of his coat and waistband, and hurled into the air like a ragdoll.
Well, he thought, this could be going better. As he came back down, he was kicked in the back of the legs, sent spinning like a tilt-a-whirl before landing on his head. He nearly blacked out, but he managed to catch an incoming foot and rolled forward, toppling Patriot and rolling onto the man in a straddling position.
Lester grunted savagely as he punched Patriot across the face with first his right fist, then his left. As he reared up to bring his elbow down into Patriot's face, the younger Ultra Soldier shot his hands up, thrusting them into Lester's chest, knocking the wind out of him.
Elsewhere on the field, Big Three was directing heavy gunfire on the Tiger Tank, to no avail. The armored suit pivoted toward one of the groups of heavies, left armature thrust out. A chain gun mounted on the underside of the arm belched metal death, the enhanced bullets ripping through the heavies' body armor like an animal's claws through fruit.
Big Three himself took two bullets before clearing the killing lane, one in the right leg and one in the left shoulder. The pain was bearable, but his people were going to get slaughtered if they didn't react to this new Tiger Tank.
Kurtis Boe, for his part, was doing an excellent job against the HAC troops, and when the Tiger Tank showed up, he didn't miss a beat. Instead of freezing up, he used the lull to aim for the arms and legs of his targets, disabling them instead of killing them. He downed twelve agents in less than a minute before he had to start using evasive movements again.
Lester had been thrown off into the snow, but when Patriot came within a few feet of him again, the original Ultra Soldier threw a handful of the white stuff at his face, covering the goggles and blinding Patriot for just a moment. It was long enough for Lester to draw out a keenly honed hunting knife and ram it as hard as he could into Patriot's outer thigh.
The blade squealed against the links of Patriot's armor,but stabbed through. Patriot howled and backfisted Lester across the face, sending the older hero flailing. Blood streamed down Patriot's white winter jumpsuit, a thin stream of crimson amid the pale.
As Lester was drawing his knife, Abe was taking the Freeze Ray back from his robot and crouching for cover as the Tiger Tank sprayed chain gun fire liberally around the battlefield. Dozens of soldiers from both sides of the battle were now focusing their efforts against the massive steel construct, but to no avail.
When one brave heavy henchman got close, the Tiger Tank's right leg kicked out. A curved vertical blade on the front of the mechanical limb cut the man clean in half, his insides splashing to the ice in a steaming puddle.
Lester had used the momentum of his fall to roll back and away, darting a look to his left. There was Boe, locked in hand-to-hand combat with three HAC agents, all wielding impact batons. Boe had dropped his disruptors to contend with them, smartly angling the broadest of them so that when the next barrage of bullets came from the Tiger Tank, the HAC agent got the lethal dose of lead alone.
Lester saw this, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Major Patriot bringing his sidearm up towards Lester's head level. The veteran Ultra Soldier snap-rolled to the side, coming up directly in front of Patriot and delivering an uppercut that broke the younger man's jaw.
Patriot landed in a snarling heap, the gun dropped, forgotten. Lester clambered down beside him and slipped like an eel through the flailing, powerful arms that swung at him. Looping his own arms around, he put Major Patriot in a full nelson and dragged the man up to his feet, facing the Tiger Tank. His mouth was right next to Patriot's ear.
"Look at him," Lester screamed over the gunfire and shouting of the wounded and fighting. "Look! That is Tiger Tank, a villain! A villain you were supposed to have taken out!"
"I did take him out," Patriot snapped back, straining against the iron hold Lester had on him. Bigger and stronger, but Captain Righteous had been in the game far longer. "I killed him!"
"Wrong, soldier," Lester shouted, shaking Patriot back and forth. "You failed your mission, or he wouldn't be here! Now, do you love your country?" This question seemed to have an almost paralyzing effect, because Patriot's struggles ceased right away. "I asked you a question soldier! Do you love your country?"
"Yes sir," Patriot shouted in reply.
"Then let's go finish the job, soldier!" Lester was about to take an enormous risk. As it stood, he could keep Patriot subdued for a minute or two, long enough to move him into this unknown Tiger Tank pilot's path of destruction and use Patriot as a human shield. But doing that would not eliminate the biggest threat on the field.
He let go of Major Patriot and stepped up next to him. "Come on, Major. Let's get him," Lester said, taking two jogging steps in Tiger Tank's direction. On the third stride, Major Patriot was beside him, crazed eyes locked on the mechinized suit.
The Ultra Soldiers had a common foe at last.
Big Three was grabbed by one of his wounded men, blood running out of the man's gashed forehead in a sheet. "The returners aren't working, sir! We're stranded!" Big didn't question this, merely relayed the news over everyone's commlink.
The effect of this news was immediate; Dr. Tyrant's hired forces renewed their efforts, fighting with a vigor born of desperation. Big Three felt a wave of force blast into him as a rocket from the Tiger Tank landed in the center of a clutch of heavies to his left, and he was thrown by the blast through the frigid air, his heavy parka ablaze from the flames of the blast.
He rolled as soon as he landed, the flames quickly extinguished, but not before causing the flesh along his back and left shoulder to crackle and split, leaving him bleeding as he lost consciousness on the ice.
Kurtis Boe saw a magnificent and terrifying thing; both Ultra Soldiers pelting for the Tiger Tank at a full run, rifles flapping forgotten against their backs.
His attention returned to the task of survival when his left hand, outstretched with a disruptor ready to fire, was cut off of his arm by a HAC Blue Team trooper wielding a machete. Kurtis instinctively whipped the other hand around and fired point-blank at the man's face. A split-second later, the spurting hole where the HAC trooper's neck had been angled back and the body dropped.
Boe wasted no time, charging from where he stood to the still-burning bodies of Big Three's heavies most recently hit with a rocket. Clenching his teeth against a scream, Boe thrust the stump of his wrist into the flames, heat baking off of the corpses and threatening to bake his eyes in their sockets. After half a minute, he pulled his arm out and collapsed on the ice.
The Leader couldn't understand how the original Tiger Tank could ever have been beaten by the HAC. This machine was the perfect engine of war! Even when the scrawny henchman with the disruptors had fired on him, the automatic energy shields kicked on and absorbed the shots.
Too late the Leader pivoted to see if Major Patriot had finished Captain Righteous off. When he saw that both Ultra Soldiers were leaping at him from opposing angles, he tried to backpedal and stumbled over a pile of bodies.
The Leader grunted as the suit fell, the Ultra Soldiers landing astride his chest. Both men began raining down punches on the clear dome of the cockpit, but though the suit trembled with each impact, the dome held. With a triumphant laugh the Leader used the arms to reach up and swat them away.
Lester landed badly on his left leg, the ankle twisting painfully to one side. He howled and fell over, his eyes opening on a crazed scene. The HAC agents were retreating, what few were left, and Abe's forces offered no pursuit. Instead they took hesitant parting shots, their own ranks decimated. The robots that had been protecting Abe were approaching, still moving in a ring.
The Tiger Tank was back up, hammering at Major Patriot with chain gun fire. His armor and raised arms were absorbing the bullets thus far, but Lester knew the armor couldn't hold up forever. He tried to get to his feet, favoring the injured ankle, and slowly he began limping toward the construct.
A pair of rockets slammed down into Major Patriot then, hurling him away aflame to crash among his fallen comrades. The Tiger Tank began to pivot toward Lester, and the aged superhero felt his gut tighten as he prepared himself to be killed.
That was when a stream of blue-white energy streaked out and struck the armature with the attached chain gun. Heavy ice quickly formed over the arm, all the way up to the shoulder joint. A second stream then fired out at the right arm, locking it down in a block of ice.
Lester half-turned to see Abe crouched down between the legs of two of his robots, grinning. "I believe that's your cue, Lester," he called. Lester began hobbling toward the Tiger Tank again, the pilot trying to move away until a final stream from the Freeze Ray locked its feet to the frozen ground.
Lester arrived at the same time as a scorched Major Patriot, the left half of Patriot's face melted away down to bone and gristle. He looked like a kind of muscular zombie as he half-dragged himself up onto the machine's front with Lester.
"Major," Lester said with a nod. Patriot's eyes no longer gleamed with madness; they looked clear and bright.
"Captain," Patriot rasped. Together they punched the partially frozen dome, which cracked in a spiderweb pattern. One more punch shattered it, and the squalling, kicking pilot within squirmed like a rat in his efforts to avoid being grabbed.
But Lester got his hands on the man's leg, and he tossed the Tiger Tank pilot out onto the ice without ceremony. Lester looked over to Major Patriot, but the young Ultra Soldier had slid down off the front of the machine.
Lester landed on his good leg after sliding down off the Tiger Tank, and he lurched over to Patriot, reaching down to feel for a pulse. He found none; the younger Ultra Soldier was dead.
Looking up, Lester yanked his own sidearm out and shot the Tiger Tank pilot in the leg as the helmeted man tried to run away. Soon several henchmen were at his side, helping him over to the wounded foe. "Take his helmet off," Lester growled through barred teeth.
One henchman held each arm, and a third pulled the helmet off. When Lester saw who was before him, his mind went blank. Colonel Brant Chambers, United States Army and Logistics Chief of the Hero Action Committee, lay staring up at him.
The henchman holding Chambers's left arm ripped the Colonel's returner device off his arm and tossed it aside. The skirmisher looked up at him and said, "Captain Righteous, what do you want us to do with him?" For a long minute, Lester just stared down into the baleful eyes of Chambers.
"Put him in restraints and bandage his leg up," he said softly. There was someone shouting for him nearby, and when he turned, Lester saw that a ring of henchmen had formed around Abe and his robots. Fearing the worst, he ignored the flaring pain in his foot and dashed toward them.
The men and robots all cleared a path for him to Abe, who lay flat on his back, clutching at his chest. Lester fell to his knees beside him, eyes darting here and there for blood, for a bullet wound. "Where are you hit," he asked in a rush.
"Not, hit," Abe managed to croak. "Heart, attack." With his left hand Abe reached up and grabbed Lester by the coat, trying to pull the superhero down to speak to him. Lester came willingly, and when his ear was right next to Abe's lips, the once-feared Dr. Tyrant spoke. "Tell them. Tell them I was just trying to save them."
The hand holding Lester's jacket then went limp, and Aberdeen Tyrannus exhaled his final breath.
When the sailors and Marines from the submarines came upon the battlefield twenty minutes later, they found ninety-six surviving henchmen, all with their weapons piled together by the cloned Tiger Tank. The small fleet's commander had been listening to the commlink chatter with the help of his communications specialists, and when Big Three had said their returners weren't working, the fleet had moved.
The downed Tyrant-2 had been boarded and its skeleton crew rescued. The fleet had orders directly from the President to take everybody alive and unharmed.
The commander had used the commlink bandwidth that Abe's people were on to tell them all to disarm and prepare for surrender and transport to the U.S. Submarines. The HAC troops who had fled would be given the same orders when Tyrannus's people were seen to.
When a group of Marines approached Lester cautiously, their eyes on the robots, the Ultra Soldier shook his head. "Their master is dead. They won't hurt you. I want Abe's body treated with respect, or so help me God, I will tear off your balls and feed them to you."
The body was handled with the utmost respect.
Major Patriot's body was also recovered, and Kurtis Boe's hand was put in a container for later reattachment. Colonel Brant Chambers was placed under military arrest for charges of conspiracy, murder, and treason. Erin Bantor had been working hard in conjunction with the FBI and CIA to uncover all of the connections within The Leader's umbrella of influence.
The discovery of Maurice Franco's body and questioning of Technoclone had helped a great deal in that regard.
When Lester Collins was put into a small bunk cabin aboard the lead submarine, he let his fatigue and shock take him down into the comforts of dreamless sleep.