LEVIATHAN (Part Five)

You know, whenever you hear about these great adventures, these amazing struggles that the good guys go through, it never sinks in just how exhausting all of that crap really is.

We had been going for days, off of very little rest. And I didn't sleep under normal circumstances. Now it was sinking in about Miss Frost's old worries on my risk of mental fatigue. All of the fighting, traveling around, more fighting, and never sitting still... I didn't even have time to bask in any real light source to recharge. I had to make due with artificial light most of the time, and it wasn't like there was even a lot of that on spaceships.

We landed on the fake moon in Breakworld's orbit without any problems. That was as good as our attack went. Breakworld soldiers came out of the woodwork to try and stop us. I mean wave after wave. They went at us en masse. And we couldn't stop. We had to keep pushing through. If we stopped, we'd get surrounded.

Saberwolf told me not to hold back in live combat. I didn't. There were too many bodies flying around for me to do that. When I shot someone, it was with the intention to make sure they didn't get back up again. When I hit something, I punched or kicked with the intent to go through it.

"This is legit. This is real. Can't back down. Can't run away," I heard Hisako chant to herself, her psionic armor protecting her body and making her a lethal weapon to smash through enemy soldiers.

I shot through her armor when I could. She trusted me enough to keep from adjusting her movements to let me do what I needed to do and continue fighting in her own way. That good old trust and teamwork that came with extended time in a squad. Nothing could beat it.

Somewhere along the way, Agent Brand had gotten shot by some energy weapon that left her down and out, chest smoking. Dr. McCoy scooped her up and carried her to a trench on the metal satellite that we had advanced to and hunkered down in for cover. I was our only ranged fighter since the lady with the guns went down, so I went to work popping my head up and shooting anything that came our way.

"Keep shooting, Glowstick," Mister Logan said, looking over my shoulder over our cover. We could both see the large numbers of enemies gathering a distance away. I could still hit them, but there were way too many of them for me to scare into a retreat. They would endure the losses as long as they could get their heavy weapons and units together.

They stood between us and the massive missile protruding from the satellite like a tower on solid land.

"This is so primitive," Miss Pryde complained, having hacked into their systems to try and disarm the missile, "There's constant position adjustment from the orbit thrusters, a combustion detonation system, and a clock. There's no actual uplink to the missile."

"How do you make a doomsday weapon with no controls?" Hisako complained, taking the moment we had huddled in the trench to rest. If she was too tired, she wouldn't be able to armor up, making her squishy and vulnerable, "The countdown is the only thing it relies on?"

Mister Logan yelled back at the others while he stayed over my shoulder, spotting the best places to fire at grouped pockets of troops to slow them down, "Anybody wanna hear about the army heading our way? It's a colorful story!"

Miss Pryde chose to leave the hacking alone once it was clear it would get us nowhere, "Enough. I'll take the shortcut," With that, she dove into the ground, phasing through the metal.

Fair play. If only one of us could make it to the missile, that was one more than we were otherwise getting there. She was also the best equipped to disarm all of the wiring inside of the damn thing.

You had to go with what you knew. I could shoot a bitch in the face from half a mile away, so that was what I stuck to doing. Leave the technical stuff for the people who could handle it.

Not that I wanted to complain, but it never ended. The fight just kept dragging on. They would move forward on our position, taking cover in other trenches when they could reach them

"Is Miss Pryde almost done yet?" I asked still doing my part to ward off soldiers. They kept getting closer. Pockets of them moved up whenever I targeted another set, "They're gonna make it here eventually!"

Dr McCoy was in communication with Miss Pryde as she worked from the inside, "Keep it up for as long as you can. She's inside of the missile now."

Mister Logan hopped down from his place as my spotter, "What's she telling you, Hank?"

A shake of the good doctor's head signified nothing good, "She's gone in for miles and hasn't found any wiring. No hatches. Nothing to help it navigate to Earth."

I was getting exhausted. I had never had to fight so often, so long, without ample time to properly recharge to keep going, "Hisako, eye check!"

She scampered up to where I was and took a gander at my eye color, "You're on red. Dark red," Well that was no good, "How close is that to empty?"

"Really close," I told her.

Agent Brand had recovered enough to limp over to the wall underneath me and lean against it, "So what? I have no idea how his powers work."

"If they go black, he dies," Dr McCoy said, bluntly describing my situation for the sake of the uninitiated.

Brand looked up at me and cursed, "Shit. Get down," She held a nasty burn on her stomach, "Time for some close-quarters action, I guess."

I slid down to sit on the ground. I needed a moment to get myself together. I had never been so tired before, "Sorry. I'm definitely running low. Just… just give me some time to recharge. A few minutes, maybe."

Mister Logan stooped down by me to get a good look at my condition, "You gonna be alright, Glowstick?"

I dropped my head back and looked up at him, "Does it matter? Still gotta fight."

Mister Logan grinned down at me and gave me a pat on the head, "Good answer, you damned smartass."

I sat there and tried to focus on gathering energy. As much as I could. If I actively concentrated on drawing in more light, I could do it faster. I couldn't do much else in the meantime, though.

However fast I could try to absorb more energy, it wasn't fast enough. I don't think anything would have been fast enough... or mattered in the end.

It was quick. It was sudden. There was no launch preparation. No countdown. No alarm. Out of nowhere, the missile just fired out of its hole in the satellite.

The rumbling started. All eyes turned to the missile. Dr. McCoy's mouth slowly fell open, "Oh no. No."

"She's firing!"

The sound of the missile taking off was the loudest thing that I had ever heard. For something of its size to launch, heading as far off as it was set to go, it needed a BIG push. Even covering my ears, I still felt like they were about to bleed.

And off it went. A big silver sliver, stabbing through the darkness of space. There was nothing we could do to pull it back down. The thing about it was, it didn't go off with a sustained eruption. It was more closer to a big burst.

"It's got no thrusters!" Hisako shouted at the top of her lungs, trying to get her voice to carry over the departing rumble of the launch blast.

"Of course not," Dr. McCoy whispered, more to himself than anyone else. His eyes were wide in horror, transfixed on the rapidly disappearing projectile flying away "Precise timing. Perfect trajectory, but no guidance systems. No engine. Just a giant metal rod, hollow at the front," My heart dropped into my stomach, "It's not a missile. It's a bullet."

Once it left the atmosphere of the satellite, it wasn't going to stop.

It wasn't going to lose momentum. Not in space. Not as carefully aimed as it was. It was going to go all the way and plow straight into the Earth. It was ten miles long. An asteroid that size hitting the planet would end it. With a bullet that size, no one had a chance.

After that, everything was a blur to me. There was yelling. I think we got in contact with Mister Summers, or Miss Frost. One of them. We ran. Left our positions behind and fled back to the ship. Staying there wouldn't mean anything. There weren't any controls. That much was clear by now.

The next moment, I found myself deposited in the cockpit, sitting at the steering wheel, voices chattering frantically around me. My chest hurt. Breathing was hard. I couldn't get enough breath.

Dr. McCoy's furry hands put mine on the wheel.

"Bellamy, I need you to fly for us. Take us back to the Breakworld," My fingers froze on the controls. My teacher was hurtling through space in an alien bullet headed straight for my planet. Dr. McCoy set his hands on my arms and roared into my ears, "BELLAMY! Fly the ship!"

I needed the shock to function. I took off without even thinking about it. My mind was out to lunch, but my body still knew what to do. It was full speed off of the satellite and back to the hellhole called the Breakworld.

"We should be going after Kitty," Mister Logan snapped, pacing around behind me like a wild animal. He was upset, obviously. We all were.

"We can't catch a bullet flying through space. Not in this vessel," Dr. McCoy reasoned, taking stock of what moves we had left to make, "Scott and Emma are headed back to Earth in Kruun's fastest ship. We need to back up Peter."

A growl rolled from my self-defense teacher's throat, "Pete should do the goddamn job and get out," I couldn't help but agree.

"Tell me I didn't just hear you suggest genocide," Dr. McCoy said in return.

"What do you think they're trying to do to us!?"

Agent Brand tried to get cooler heads to prevail. Fighting amongst ourselves in the dead of space, or otherwise falling apart now would do nothing for any of us, "If Summers gets close enough, he can bounce a message to Earth. Maybe get some of the Avengers working on this from the other end. We need to take one last shot at Kruun."

Someone there, with all of the minds and abilities amassed on Earth, had to be able to stop that bullet. If we couldn't, someone had to.

Mister Logan still wanted to sink his claws into something fleshy and alive, "I can kill him, right?"

Agent Brand burst his bubble, "I've got something more diplomatic in mind."

Hisako sat in a passenger seat, staring out at the black of space, knees pulled up to her chest, "Peter doesn't know, does he?" She asked, petrified by what was happening, "He doesn't know about Kitty."