END of LINE: Humanities Last Stand - part 3 (28 page)

He grabbed his plasma rifle and ran into the bar shouting for his uncle as he went. Inside two Libirian Warriors blocked his path to the back
office confronted him. The brutes were almost as muscle bound and freakish as that stinking human! They finally recognized the young male and allowed him
to pass. “Uncle Mel!” Helios yelled, “The Peacekeepers are on their way here!” Coming to a stop at the office door, Helios saw his uncle bent over a floor
safe shoveling credit chips into a large case with both hands.

“Why didn't you warn us boy?” came an angry reply from his uncle. “I knew you was a worthless little snipe the minute I saw you fall out of your mother's
belly!” The harsh words were common coming from his uncle. All of his life he had put up with them either from his father or his uncle. Both males had
never shown him an ounce of compassion in his life. He'd been beaten nearly blind by both of them when he had walked in and seen them both beating his
mother and he'd tried to stop them. Then they had forced him to watch as they tied her up and used her for their perverted desires before leaving her a
filthy mess of tears, bloody welts and over used sex organs while still tied to a torture device that had her body bent at an odd angle but also stretched
out with nothing hidden from his view. The worse happened when they forced him to clean her with his tongue! Her excited reaction to him licking her secret
places had him becoming turned on by the whole affair and when it became too much for him to hide his erection, his uncle had forced him to use his own
mother! It wasn't until he had grown older that he learned that they had given his mother a drug that made her want sex any way she could get it. The sight
of the male now cursing him as he stuffed credits into a case in preparation to runaway to safety, and his memory of the same male laughing as he was
forced to use his mother's body, overwhelmed Helios. He was suddenly filled with hatred! Raising his plasma rifle, it took one shot to turn that sneering
face into burnt ash!

Grabbing the case filled with credit chips, Helios ran back through the bar and out to the land vehicle shouting for the two Libirian males to follow him.
On his way out he set fire to the bar. There would be nothing left to identify the owner or his connection to the King family. Once clear of town, Helios
explained to the Libirians about the coming raid by the Peacekeepers and told them he would pay them to wait until the troops had passed before jumping out
to attack. “Make sure you take down the Prince,” he'd demanded. “His armor is bright scarlet like the colors of the Royal Family.” Feeling that he had told
them enough to get them killed while he escaped, he dropped the two males off and drove away.

Jon's shuttle was coming down too fast. Trying to drop close enough to release the grubs without rearming his shuttle first had left his ship vulnerable to a ground defence cannon. He had taken a hit from the ground defenses and lost both of his main drive units. All he had to control the craft were the gavlifts and those were never meant for use inside a planet's gravity. He was fighting for all he was worth to prevent crashing his ship and getting everyone killed before the real fighting began. “I hate to tell you folks this, but the bird is dead. I've got nothing up here. Everyone get ready for an emergency evac.” Jon commed to everyone in the shuttle. “I'll get us in as close as I can to the fighting, but you're on your own once you leave the drop bay. Flight crew, move to your evac stations now.”

“I'll stay up here with you Butcher.” Jarrieal argued.

“No. I need you on the ground to keep the rest of the flight team in line. They won't listen to Rik and they must if you are all going to survive this
thing. Those pirates are going to be really PO'd at us for breaking their ships. Now unbuckle and get gone!” Jon told his copilot as the shuttle was rocked
by yet more weapons fire coming up from the ground. As nimble as these shuttles were out in the vacuum of space, once they entered a planet's gravity they
behaved more like rocks falling from the sky. Now with his main engines shot out from under him and only three of his six gavlifts working, this one was
learning totally new ways to fall!

As soon as he reached the lowest possible safe altitude to drop the troops without scattering them all over the planet, he called back one last time to let
them all know he was opening the bottom bay doors. As the doors opened, the wind rushing into the passenger area grew to hurricane force until the rear ramp opened to help even the flow of the air through the passenger area. Within five seconds of the doors fully opening, all of the grubs and Jon's entire flight crew were released from the shuttle and found themselves falling. Once he was sure his team was away safely he pointed the stricken shuttle away from where they would land and unstrapped himself. Climbing over his command chair, he made a giant leap for the open bottom of the shuttle. His large body and long legs just clearing the metalwork of the shuttle's bay door before he too was
rapidly falling towards the planet.

When his suits glide wings finally opened he could see his shuttle crash into the rocky surface below and burst into flames. He could also make out the
forms of the grubs off to his left in the scarlet flight suits they had adopted to match their leader’s suit and falling in a tight formation except for
one individual in a bright scarlet pressure suit that was further away. That only left his own flight crew unaccounted for. Jon tried twisting around so he
could get a look behind him but no mater what he tried, his people stayed out of sight. Giving up on the flight crew for now as he knew each of them was
well able to take care of themselves, Jon steered himself toward the lone person falling off to one side. Someone was already taking shots from the ground
up at that one, so Jon figured he'd need help the most. Whoever had fallen off to the side had already taken three or four direct hits from the pair of
shooters hidden in the rocks below.

Once Jon reached an easily survivable height, he cut himself free of the glide wings and fell to the ground. Landing on the balls of his feet he still felt
the sharp pain shoot up his legs as he hit the ground much harder than he thought. The two shooters had left their hiding spot and were now making their
way over to the lone trooper who was laying on his back on the ground and trying to draw his weapon. It appeared that the plasma rifle was jammed into its
sheath and could not be taken out by one person reaching over his shoulder. Especially not while he was laying flat on his back on top of it. Jon reached
for his own plasma rifle only to find that he'd left it on the now wrecked shuttle. All he had were his swords, so he drew them from behind his back and
instinctively grabbed the hilts so that the plasma fire raced over their long curved blades. Holding the swords at arms length, he ran toward the two large
males that were about to attack the smaller trooper.

Jon bellowed out a war cry just as he came up behind the pair and one of the males turned to fire at him from point blank range. The shot took Jon in his
shoulder, but thanks to the adrenaline rush of having his shuttle shot down, and now having only a pair of ancient swords for weapons, plus the boost in
strength he got from the nanoids coursing through his system, Jon never felt the bolt hit him. He just followed through with his swing and the large male
was sliced cleanly in half as the plasma encased blade of Jon's sword easily cut through muscle, guts, bone, and clothing.

Attacker number two got in several more shots at the trooper who has now laying perfectly still on the ground before Jon reached him. Screaming out again,
Jon lifted his arms to attack when he was hit several times by a long range plasma rifle in his back. The searing pain caused him to stumble but not before
he embedded one of his swords in the head of the male attacking the trooper who was still lying on the ground. Jon crawled over to the trooper and removed
the male's helmet. When Jon saw the face of his good friend, and the Crown Prince of Lexon laying there, his eyes closed and his face in that peaceful pose
that only death can bring to ones features, his heart cracked and he openly cried! His only friend from Haven and the brother of his beloved wife was gone
now forever.

Jon could no longer feel his legs or anything else from the middle of his back down to his toes for that mater. Still, he refused to leave Zeprik lying
alone on the ground. He unfastened his armor and used it to try to block any more shots from the sniper somewhere behind him so that none of the long range
shots would hit the Prince's body, then he took his swords in both hands and sat beside his friend guarding his body. Within a few minutes Jon passed out
from the pain that wracked his own body and that's how his flight team and the grubs found him the next morning.

When the Healers were called Jon came to just enough to struggle against their attempts to get him onto a stretcher and into a shuttle for the trip up to Mercury. They finally resorted to using a tranq rifle to sedate him, as even in his present state he was deemed too dangerous to approach. They had found him with no less than five more
enemy attackers lying dead around him. All of their bodies mutilated and beheaded by those terrible plasma swords he used. One enemy was found lying across
Jon's body with his sword still rammed completely through the attacker's body and his dead heart cut out and stuck to its point!

Not even Wrenches could approach him safely. Even though she spoke to him in a soft, affectionate voice, he attempted to
attack her when she approached and tried to reach out to him. Finally, with tears in her eyes, she had agreed to let the Healers shoot him with
tranquilizers from a safe distance using knock out darts. It was the only way they could examine and treat him. He had lost his civilized parts to the
physical and emotional pain that now gripped his body and mind. Lost in a killing rage, he was now more animal than man.

The Healers all agreed that they had seen this type of reaction before when a loved one had been lost in battle within eyesight of another. Jon Connell
could never again be sent into combat, his reactions to it would be far too unpredictable and dangerous for friend and foe alike. One minute he would be fine,
the next he'd strike out at anyone or anything. Some who suffered from the condiction had killed their own mates while sleeping peacefully in their beds.
There was only one possible cure, but since his records did not list a mate, the Healers felt Jon would never recover.

They returned him to the military med labs on Lexon II and kept him sedated until they got him into a healing tube. Not counting the many wounds that he
had suffered to his legs, across his back and his chest, one of the shots that had punched through his armor had nearly severed his spine. It would be many cycles
before he would be able to walk more than a few steps on his own. He'd need to be fitted for an eckto-frame to keep him standing and help him to walk. Most
of the time though he'd be forced to use a wheelchair. Several months after he had been brought in, the Healers had done everything they could for him.
Before they would release him, he had to prove that he would not be alone. That's when the three flight crews from Jon's attack shuttle wing showed up
along with Phillmma and Kelesro and every last one of the grubs plus the civilian crews of all of his FTL ships to inform the Healers that Jon would never
spend one second of the day alone.

The nurses helped him into a fine clean dress white uniform, complete with his Dragon Swords at his sides, and all of
his awards pinned to his chest, stood him up in front of a bank of news cameras while Generals pinned several more awards on his chest. Then they quietly discharged
him and sent him on his way. His body had healed enough to let him live a more or less normal life. He was given a discharge with high honors and a promotion
to ensure that his pension was enough to let him live a good life. The Peacekeepers didn't care that he owned five FTL ships, all of them military surplus and
fully combat ready. They didn't care that he made more credits in one day than they'd pay him in an entire cycle. He had earned all the respect and honor
that any one Warrior could ever hope to achieve. He would be honored for his dedication and loyalty to the Peacekeepers. Arrangements had already been made and
his retirement payments would continue to be sent to his accounts on Haven.

The news turned him into a hero and named him “The Butcher of Canari Prime." They talked endlessly about how he had attempted to save the Crown Prince
single handed by killing more than ten of the enemy with nothing but two antique swords even while he must have been in intense pain due to his own
injuries. They showed endless videos of the raid on the pirate base, his crashed shuttle, the fallen Prince with Jon sitting beside him still fighting off
enemies and the dead laying in pieces near where he had killed them. The only video the Military refused to release to the news was the one of the dead man
lying on Jon's lap with his heart cut out and being held in the air on the tip of a flaming sword. Jon personally refused all requests for interviews and decided to
live on the Defiance where he could prevent the news any access to him. It was bad enough that the Peacekeepers had made his wounds public and
all had seen the scared mess his back and chest now were, he'd be damned if he'd give the news any 'live shots' of his condition.

Maybe once he got to the ship and back out on the rim the news reporters would forget about him. He made one stop on his way from the Peacekeepers' med
labs to the shuttle that would take him to his ship. He went to a tailor and had several black capes made for himself. They were long enough to come down
to his ankles and had a hood that could be pulled forward far enough to hide his face. The cape was made so that it perfectly hid the eckto-frame he was
forced to wear just to stand and walk. How he hated that cold alloy metal brace and his failure to save the life of Prince Zeprik that it reminded him of
whenever he was forced to wear it. To add insult to injury, the thing actually clanked when he walked! He sounded like a living battle tank whenever he
entered a room! Even Phillie's cyborg engineer friend could walk into a room and not make as much noise as he did wearing the frames! Then there was the
constant intense pain that the frame did nothing to help. His body screamed in agony with each step he took! The Healers had given him medications to ease
the pain, but Jon refused to take them claiming that they made him too drowsy.