Nineteen
All across the length and breadth of America the results were the same. The KGB vermin were driven out and sent skulking back to their lairs. Some of the forts didn’t fall at first—but the big ones did, the ones that mattered. And with their top command centers gone, the rest of the Blackshirts saw the writing on the wall and left with little more than the literal shirts on their backs. The loss of life was staggering, with 25,000 Freefighters killed, over 50,000 wounded. The Royal Sikh Army took 43% casualties. But the earth had been saved once again from total and complete darkness—for now, anyway.
“Where will you go now?” Rockson asked Sikh Ragdar as the two men rode around Fort Minsk, supervising the withdrawal.
“Back to where we landed. Our transports are scheduled to pick us up in one week. Then home to Asia where there is much work still to be done.”
“I’m sorry about Panchali,” Rock said. “He was a great general.”
“No, Freefighter,” Ragdar said with a loud laugh. “You gave him his greatest desire on this earth—to die with a sword in his hand, the bravest of friends at his side. You don’t know how many times he told me—‘Ragdar, if I grow old and feeble-minded—please send a band of noisy assassins to kill me so that I may go out fighting.’ He begged me, Rockson, I swear to you. You gave him the greatest gift, perhaps, that he has ever received.” Rockson digested this strange information and then spoke again, almost in a whisper.
“I—I wish you were not to end our all-too-temporary alliance, to return to the other side. Fighting for those we are pledged to destroy. You are a brave man—and I sense, a good man. It is hard for me to understand.”
“Ah, General Rockson,” Ragdar said with a sigh. “I don’t understand it all either. I have spent my whole life in battle with my hand gripped around a sword and a gun. I have never questioned it. I have just been the best fighter, the best general I could be.” He looked up at the sky, now sunny and clear as a pre-war afternoon, as if the answer to it all lay hidden up there, unreachable. “Perhaps I have been wrong to not question. I don’t know. It is too late now. Now that Panchali is gone, soon I am sure I will be gone too. Our fates have always been intertwined, like snakes together. And when we are dust—perhaps the Royal Army will be no more. Perhaps the rebels we fight will win. Maybe they should. And with our deaths there will only be warriors like yourselves, rebels, Freefighters. The Russian Empire will be in the long run, no match for you.”
The Doomsday Warrior reached out as he saw his team waiting by the fortress’s front gate to depart, and shook Ragdar’s hand with a long firm grip. Then, with a deep sadness in his eyes, he turned and rode away.
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DOOMSDAY WARRIOR #8 AMERICAN GLORY
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Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen