One Shot
“All right, this guy is going to be coming in firing, so we need to be prepared. Jules, I need… Wait, umm Nivy? What’s up? What are you…?”
The team of heroes gathered on the ruined battlefield of a distant planet, far from home. They had contained the onslaught so far from the Pristat Dredlord and his self-replicating armies. But supplies were diminished and their last ditch armor was damaged. The wreckage of several of the Dredlord’s warships lay around them, but the command ship of his fleet was on the way and they had no real plan for how to meet it. Tony, once a simple inventor from earth, gazed over at Nivy, a rogue android with an artificial intelligence engineered by the Dredlord to snuff out all life in the universe and rewrite it according to his plans. Once gaining an awareness of the harm and pain her creator had caused and would cause, she turned on him and joined the scrappy band of heroes from far-flung planets who had the only possible chance of challenging the Dredlord.
At the moment, her servos and advanced metallic skeleton was straining and bracing against a heavy load. Everyone looked over to see Nivy hoisting the severed laser gun from one of the fallen ships onto her shoulder. This was no mere rifle that could be easily lifted, this was a gun emplacement that Tony estimated at about 50 feet in length and it was tenuously balanced on her shoulder like the most challenging game of Jenga.
Fighting to compose words while she calculated the balance, Nivy answered briskly, “It’s fine. Just an idea.”
Opening up his helmet to raise a clever eyebrow, Tony touched a hand to his chin and calmly asked, “Care to share with us your idea?”
Even though she didn’t need air to power her artificial muscles, Nivy still fought with the appearance of panting between her words to hoist the monumental gun into a position that she could wield it. “You… distract him… I… shoot him.”
Raising his hands on both sides, even though they were clad in a special metal to protect him from laser blasts and the void of space, Tony managed a decent expression of playful curiosity as to this “plan”. Rhetorically, he asked, “Please, refresh my memory… The Dredlord has eyes, correct?”
Nivy quietly braced herself against a wall of rubble and admitted, “It was a thought. And, perhaps, if you distract him well enough he’ll land, monologue about the grand nature of his plan and how he’s serving life itself or some…thing and I can get a clean shot at him.” She puffed out the last thought with an unnecessary breath followed by an irritated sigh.
Pressing his lips together with an encouraging nod, Tony admitted that it was a “plan”, however he had another thought, “How accurate are you?”
“I can shoot a frozen man’s head off the back of a spinning meteorite at half a light year.”
Tony chimed in, “Vivid. But it gives me an idea…”
——
Aboard the Dredlord‘s death ship, his main command cruiser from which he oversaw his plans for universal domination, he stood on a podium raised around a bubble of hyperglass overlooking the darkness of the cosmos, which he would turn into eternal all-consuming blackness. And from that, raise his new universe from the rubble of the old.
Here, he spoke, pontificating about what he would say at his arrival amongst the remaining forces, who would dare to oppose his plans. his gallant, polished armor and swaying bleak cape had the assistance of a fan right below the podium to move most dramatically.
“Here lay the ruins of the so-called heroes of this universe…the Allies of the Universe. But all of you… Wait, they could all be dead. Although, we don’t know the exact number because our sensors aren’t close enough. I don’t want to presume, because that would make me look silly. And this is not a moment for silly! THERE IS NO MOMENT FOR SILLY! Alright, starting again. Despite all your struggles, despite your meek and weak efforts at trying to overcome my power… hmm, I could probably be a little clearer on that part…”
At the speed of light, a blast of pure energy boiled through the hyperglass, evaporating it and erupting the atmosphere into the void of space, a blazingly-hot and suffocating oblivion whose only master was entropy and stasis. A micro moment puff of sound and light surrounded the bridge before all the Dredlord‘s followers and command staff spilled like a tipped drink into the blackness and silence. The Dredlord didn’t experience any of this as his head down to his shoulders evaporated along with the hyperglass. If any thought went through his head in that last instant, it would be too profane to transcribe here.
——-
Nivy glared out into space sternly with the smoking, recently-fired immense gun still braced on her shoulder even though there was a moment she calculated that she might fall over. It was a .1% chance, but still it was worth noting.
With the confines of light speed, it would take several minutes before the new star explosion of the Dredlord‘s command cruiser got to them. Tony, slipping on a pair of shades, cracked a quick smile, and admitted, “Fuck, yeah. Not bad.”
Though Nivy could not truly express a similar human emotion, she did her best to mimic Tony’s gesture.
