End of Women: Part Four

Flag Of The Patriarch

Nate sat in the rear of the Command Airship. A real-time display of the battle shone beneath him on a plexi-wallscreen. From above, the battle looked like a hundred flies buzzing around a wounded, dying animal. 

Each time an airship went down, he cursed himself. Pretty soon he was cursing himself every ten seconds. He could not take it. Loss of life in one place does not justify it in another. How soon before more men died here than in Albuquerque? 

'Flank back and concentrate fire on the main gate!' He shouted into his mouthpiece. His display showed the airships falling back, swarming into position just out of the range of Mars' pulse cannons. When we break their gate, we will break them!

Each airship manoeuvred into position, hovering one above the other in five rows of ten, and when their Commander gave the order they threw everything at the gate. It held on, and held together even with fifty rounds slamming into it every ten seconds. Nate screamed internally, just wanting it to end, wanting to understand why it was this way at all. 

A single dot on his display caught his attention. It was another airship, fallen out of rank. Nate grabbed his mouthpiece again and shouted down the line to the Commanders.

'What the fuck is going on? Keep everyone out of range, I said!'

Nothing but static for a few moments, and then:

'Sir, that's not one of ours.'

Nate froze, staring at the dot. It was an airship, but the display had no ID for it. 

'What is it? Is it one of theirs?'

'Unsure, Sir.'

Nate ran into the cockpit, shoving his head up to the window. He could see it. It was not Bluenorth, nor was it tan coloured. It was white, pure and brilliant white, and the model was an old H-K Class. 

'What the fuck...?'

'Its moving into our range, Sir. Should we intercept?'

'No... no, goddammit, hold fire! Hold fire!'

The river of green light went dark, and the flames and smoke around the nearly broken gate cleared away. That lonely airship came about and hung in the sky between Mars Station and Bluenorth.

'Sir, incoming comms link.' Nate's pilot told him.

Nate swallowed hard, wondering if absolutely every possibility was occurring at the same time. He nodded to the pilot, who brought up the comms on Nate's plexi-screen.

A face appeared in front of him. It was a young man, straight nose and dark hair with a tee-shirt that bore a white circle as its sigil. Something about the boy looked familiar. 

'Nate Howard, I am Alex Mendez.'

Nate took his seat and told his Commanders to hold their fire again, in case anyone got punchy. The kid's face did reside somewhere in his memory, he knew, and the name meant something...

'Today, too many lives have been lost in the name of nothing. Men are at war with men, but this war was not started by men. A woman made this happen. By trickery and treachery, a woman slaughtered thousands in one instant, using the most heinous of weapons mankind has ever devised. Our lives begin to end the moment we allow this evil to dictate to us. Today, we have given in to fear, and the cost of that is blood.'

Nate understood now that this comms link was not his alone; every airship, every truck and every man inside Mars Station was listening.

'Ask yourselves, what do we win here? We win corpses of our brothers, our forgotten brothers, who die for nothing. We win nothing. Death of our fellow men is the past, when we threw men into the meat grinder to protect women. This is the new world, and not the old. We must not give in to fear. Pull your men back, Nate Howard. Stand your men down, Commander Rathers. We will meet on the field and speak, as men, before we destroy everything we have given life to build.'

Seconds ticked by. Nate clenched the arms of his seat. His head swam. 

'Move the airships a mile back,' he quietly told his Commanders, 'and have us meet out of range of Rather's guns.'