The Final Wars End Read online

  THE FINAL WARS END

  Final Wars Trilogy, Book 3

  S.A. ASTHANA

  THE FINAL WARS END

  Copyright © 2020 by S. A. ASTHANA

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For my readers - onwards and upwards

  Contents

  THE FINAL WARS END

  Copyright

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1: BASTIEN

  CHAPTER 2: CUBE

  CHAPTER 3: ALICE

  CHAPTER 4: BELLE

  CHAPTER 5: REO

  CHAPTER 6: MARIE

  CHAPTER 7: ALICE

  CHAPTER 8: BASTIEN

  CHAPTER 9: CUBE

  CHAPTER 10: ALICE

  CHAPTER 11: REO

  CHAPTER 12: MARIE

  CHAPTER 13: BELLE

  CHAPTER 14: BASTIEN

  CHAPTER 15: CUBE

  CHAPTER 16: REO

  CHAPTER 17: ALICE

  CHAPTER 18: CUBE

  CHAPTER 19: BASTIEN

  CHAPTER 20: BELLE

  CHAPTER 21: ALICE

  CHAPTER 22: REO

  CHAPTER 23: ALICE

  CHAPTER 24: REO

  CHAPTER 25: CUBE

  CHAPTER 26: BASTIEN

  CHAPTER 27: ALICE

  CHAPTER 28: BELLE

  CHAPTER 29: BASTIEN

  EPILOGUE

  APPENDIX I: THE TRILATERAL TREATY

  APPENDIX II: WAR QUOTES

  BY S.A. ASTHANA

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1: BASTIEN

  Bastien Lyons sat atop the narrow walkway overlooking Fuchū prison’s northern sector and remembered that ill-fated day the wars started. The desert heat, the sun’s scorching rays – they still seared his memories like it was yesterday. He called up that image of Belle sitting only a few feet away, her quirky yet beautiful face and her blue cropped hair sticky with sweat. It all remained fresh. So did their conversation about humanity. “We are destroyers,” he’d said to her. “That’s what we do. Monsters who build only to tear down. And we’ll do it again.”

  A hundred solitary confinement pods spread out in the sprawling hall. Their semi-sphered shells dotted the dimly lit concrete floor, equal in number to the blue uniformed security guards who marched in neat rows like a small army of preprogrammed robots.

  The walkway’s halfway point, where Hani and Bastien crouched, served as the perfect hideout – shadows blanketed the bridge from one end to the other and blended the two trespassers’ black fitted tracksuits into darkness. Hani pulled her half-mask over the lower half of her face. As she hooked her rappelling gear to the rail, Bastien scanned the pod directly underneath. The number 512 stretched across the dome. If everything went according to plan, they’d be inside that pod within a few short moments, face-to-face with the emperor’s imprisoned son Reo Honda and ready to set him free. The teenager was jailed unjustly. He’d only ever wanted to save Nippon One from going to war with Port Sydney. His plans to assassinate Marie to avert that war failed and led to his current circumstances. He’d suffered the most out of all those involved in the attempt – he lost his father and eldest brother during the attack.

  Reo didn’t deserve any of this. He might have once been a monster as Nippon One’s Chief of Police, but there was much good in him. He harbored a strong desire for peace. He had to be saved, and Bastien was the man to do it. His brow furrowed as Father Paul’s words echoed in his heart. “You are a savior, my child.” Their meeting of priest and orphan in heaven, real or imagined, during Bastien’s cyborification surgery was seared into his soul.

  Bastien was indeed a savior – had always been, whether it was saving his fellow orphans in New Paris, or his colleagues in the Martian armed forces. On the other hand, Viktor, the persona he assumed to survive those first weeks when he fled to Nippon One, had been a man with no moral compass. A man who’d surrendered to being a monster among monsters. A man with that soul could never return. Men like him started the last world war – they were always itching for conflict, unconcerned with the human toll.

  “It took thousands upon thousands of years for man to crawl out of caves and build civilizations,” Bastien said to Belle on that day in the desert, “but only an hour to bring it all crashing down.”

  Fifty-eight minutes – that was all it’d taken for humanity to self-destruct, nearly wiping itself out altogether during World War Three a hundred years earlier. There had been survivors, those who’d kept the species’ torch lit and moving forward. But man was hell-bent on finishing what the last war couldn’t. World War Four – or whatever the conflict would come to be called, perhaps the Final Wars or maybe Space Wars – was in full swing. Nipponese armed forces were en route to Mars for an attack on Port Sydney. Even when man’s world consisted of only two civilizations, it was still destined to implode. History repeated itself in comical ways for him. The lessons from World War One were ignored leading to the break out of World War Two. Similarly, that second major war’s lessons were ignored as well, and the folly cost humanity its birthplace. Earth was bombed into an uninhabitable rock.

  Despite the consequences of large-scale wars understood well, World War Four was now a reality. Perhaps these repeated mistakes were due to man’s forgetful nature as far as his past was concerned, or more likely, it was due to his chimpanzee DNA pushing him towards conflict over and over.

  At least it was taking longer than fifty-eight minutes this time around. There’s that silver lining Bastien noted as he shook his head. It was a way of thinking acquired by spending many years under Father Paul’s tutelage. Another world war around the corner? Hopefully this one takes its sweet time – just to ensure every single human is wiped out of existence.Bastien grimaced the thought. No, humanity had to be saved no matter the cost.

  “Matthew 24:10-12 – and then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.” The good father would repeat these words often, as if in warning to his orphans. He’d usually add, “The end times.” A pale would cross his face. “I fear we are living in the end times.”

  “But Jesus will return, won’t he?” Bastien would ask, his adolescent eyes wide with hope.

  “Yes and no.” The good father’s wrinkles appeared deeper during such conversations. It was as if he’d let slip some bit of hope along the way. “He’ll rise, yes, but through someone. Someone else will stand on his behalf and sacrifice for the sake of others. Someone who could serve as the light in this darkness. Someone righteous. Someone good. A moral being amongst the monsters.” He’d brush Bastien’s black locks as if the boy was a puppy.

  Sacrifice for the sake of others – the act was well understood by Bastien even when he was only twelve, but its weight hadn’t sunk in. At least, not at that point. Now he understood it well. If he wanted to save, he had to be ready to sacrifice. The two went hand in hand.

  “You ready?” the whisper, its muted words dull yet sharp, cut Bastien from his thoughts. When Hani spoke, one listened. She was the Rogu Collective’s muscle, after all – a warrior, sure but one with brains.

  “I’m ready,” Bastien whispered back, pulling a half mask over his black beard.

  The guards flanking the pod had marched a good hundred feet away by now, leaving the target area sans security. Their lax style of overseeing the highest priority inmates in this prison might have appeared odd to a layman, but Hani was not any average individual. She was a t
echnological genius who understood security systems inside and out. Fuchū prison’s walls housed state of the art electronics that whizzed and buzzed around the clock picking up heat signature data and matching it against stored information within backend databases. The moment an individual stepped into the facility, his or her biological markers were reviewed in real time, whether it be in any of the other sectors or this one, or on the thin strip of grass encasing the rectangular prison that separated it from the perimeter’s high walls. If the security system couldn’t find a match, it set off an alarm. That was the primary reason why every square foot wasn’t patrolled at all times.

  The best of breed in all Nippon One, that’s what Hani called it. And yet, here they were, deep inside the prison’s guts still unseen. No alarm, no panic, no nothing. Bastien’s fingers ran across the sleek carbon fiber belt clipped around his waist. Although it felt like any other belt, the accessory masked the wearer’s heat signatures in a manner foreign to Fuchū’s security system. A cloaking device of sorts, its built-in technology was well ahead of the prison’s technology. And it was Hani’s creation. Technical genius she was, no doubt about it – beauty and brains.

  She mounted the metal guardrail, a thin black wire extending from a rotator mechanism stored within her backpack and connecting her to the hook clamped tight along the walkway, and whispered, “See you down there.” Hani leapt like a cat and her fall ended gently and silently halfway between the walkway and the floor. The wire went taut and a few seconds later, it gave inch by inch, lowering her from the shadows like a feather.

  A grinding sound made its way to Bastien’s ears. His muscles tightened. He couldn’t place the source at first, but soon realized what it was – his teeth. Oh, hell. The silence of the hall, interrupted by the guard’s boots stomping against concrete, racked his nerves. Would they spot Hani?

  Bastien drew the wire end dangling from his backpack and fixed its hook to the guardrail, which he mounted a second later. The drop was a good hundred feet. Hani appeared as a black stick figure against the grey cement. Her whisper came through his sleek headset. “All clear.” Bastien jumped into a free fall. The 512 enlarged at an alarming rate. Would the wire catch?

  Oh, hell.

  It caught, the wire’s fibers becoming taut so silently it defied logic. He understood little of the inner-workings of his technological world, a shortcoming he blamed on his meager, orphan upbringing. However awe-inspiring the gear, now certainly wasn’t the time to admire its fantastic capabilities—Bastien listed to the left as Hani had instructed when the two were prepping for this mission, and the wire and its connecting apparatus gave way at a snail’s pace. Hani, her frame growing with every passing second, started to hack the pod’s electronic lock by way of her black smart shades.

  A guard broke away from formation and strolled towards her without notice. All that separated him from her were a few hundred feet. What could he want? Had he heard her? The man didn’t seem to be in a rush, so him having noticed either of them wasn’t likely. But why had he broken rank?

  Bastien’s heart beat in his ears, and he halted his descent at once, sending a few beads of sweat falling away from his face. Shadows still covered him. Another foot lower and a lone beam of light from the right would have displayed him, albeit momentarily.

  “A guard,” Bastien whispered into his headset through gritted teeth. “He’s coming your way.”

  Hani froze. “From which direction, Bas?”

  “Right.”

  Hani glanced to her left. “Shit. He’s probably headed to that bathroom. I still need more time. Tell me if he doesn’t turn before this pod.”

  Bastien’s jaw was on the verge of shattering from the intense teeth grinding. Sweat festered across the forehead and beads made their way into his yellow eyes. If caught, death was a certainty for him and Hani. A hail of bullets would rip their flesh from their bones. Failure was not an option. Reo deserved saving.

  The guard didn’t turn and continued strolling until he was no more than twenty feet from Hani. Bastien whispered with urgency, “Not turning!”

  Hani slinked to the left. As the guard walked around the pod, passing its door, she moved to the opposite end. Soon she had circled it entirely and made her way back to the door. The guard disappeared into the bathroom, and Bastien came down next to Hani like a plume of smoke.

  “Close call,” he said.

  She didn’t respond. Hani was a statue, her focus fastened to whatever hacking commands streamed within her lenses. Bastien’s head turned left and right to ascertain they remained safe, or at least as safe as possible one could be in such a situation. No room more mistakes. The bathroom door remained shut – for now.

  There was a slight click. The pod door was finally unlocked. A breath of relief escaped Bastien’s lips, but his chest tightened when the bathroom door started to open, albeit slowly. Hani swung open the pod’s metal door and rushed in along with Bastien. The lock clicked back in place and given that there were no shouts of alarm from the guard, the trespassers went unnoticed.

  A slim figure splayed within a spotlight. The sight would have stolen Bastien’s full focus had it not been for the fetid smell. The pod reeked of human waste. The idea of solitary confinement was to turn humans into animals. Reo appeared a stray dog, haggard and broken.

  “I’ll have to hack us out again,” Hani said as she turned back her attention to the door.

  “I’ll get him.” Bastien rushed to Reo. A lone camera came into view against the curving walls, but a red light against its black veneer designated off status. Hani had hacked it as well. Technological genius, that woman.

  “We must go,” Bastien whispered into Reo’s ears.

  “B-Bastien?” Reo blinked open his eyes. Dark bruises spotted the pale, baby face. Dried blood caked the lips. He’d been roughed up – to be expected when one was prime suspect for wiping out half of the Nipponese royal family. But fortunately, Reo was still alive. He could still be saved from the certain death that marked his future.

  “We’re here to bust you ou—-” the words died on Bastien’s lips as the door clicked open. There should have been elation, but dread flooded his stomach. Hani wasn’t behind the unlocking. With wide eyes, she hurried into shadows – someone was opening the door from the outside.

  Bastien left Reo blinking and melted into the blackness surrounding the spotlight just as a police officer walked in. The door locked once again. Staring down his crinkled nose, the tower of a man ambled to Reo. His laser glare seemed as if capable of burning skin. The echoes from his heels slapping the floor gave way to silence when he halted over Reo.

  The ex-chief of police cowered into himself. Reo appeared a shell of his former post. He was now a broken teenager, nothing more – one who’d surrendered to his fate. And it was clear the man standing over him was behind the breaking.

  “Sit up, Uragirimono!” the officer shouted, his Japanese accent booming within the pod’s metal structure. Reo did as ordered. His limbs trembled like frail bamboo in a hurricane. He was ready to take whatever punishment came his way. Fixing his dark navy cap and its Nipponese flag, the policeman curled his thick left hand into a fist and raised it. He was going to bring down a hammer punch onto Reo’s wobbly head.

  Not if I can help it. Bastien sprang into action and rushed forth from the shadows like a demon. His carbon-alloy fist connected with the unsuspecting officer’s jaw and laid the man out cold with a thud. The cyborg element, his augmented left pec and arm, were an asset. Gone was the tattoo “For The High Council” across his chest, now replaced in entirety by metal. That Martian mark was no more, as absent as any of his rank or privilege while serving the people of Mars. He’d also lost the scar, the one around his wrist left behind by the mangy pit bull from his childhood. “The larger they are,” Bastien quipped. The twenty-eight-year-old stood tall at six feet. His body was shredded like the trunk of a sturdy tree, thanks to a childhood built on running and surviving unspeakable dangers and the mi
litary career that followed.

  Kneeling, he urged, “Reo, let’s go.” Reo didn’t seem to have the strength to even speak, let alone walk. He’d have to be carried out. Pointing at Hani, Bastien said, “Get us out.”

  She was already crouched in front of the door working her magic through the smart shades. “Who needs hackers when you can bust through doors with that fist of yours?”

  Bastien glanced at the unconscious officer. A red patch spread across the left side of his face. He’d live on account of Bastien holding back his strength when delivering the punch – full force would have split the man’s skull. Bastien was learning that being a cyborg required restraint. So did relinquishing trappings of a remorseless life. He had vowed to never kill again. He wanted nothing more of Viktor.

  The pod’s door unlocked with a click. Hani pushed it ajar a few inches. “Coast is clear.”

  Bastien hoisted Reo over his shoulder and rushed out. The teenager was feather-light – how much weight had he lost?

  The wires’ hooks were barely visible as they dangled several feet above. Hani crouched and launched like a rocket, grabbing the hooks. Pulling them down waist level, she clamped one to Bastien and the other to her apparatus.

  “We need to be quick,” she instructed. Her black sneakers left the ground as the wire snapped her up into the shadows. Bastien followed suit by tugging his wire once – it pulled him up immediately. Wind rushed past. His glances revealed lines of officers at opposite ends of the sprawling hall. They were oblivious of the trespassers, at least for now.

  Upon reaching the bridge, Hani swung over the guardrail with the grace of an acrobat. She helped pull Reo as Bastien scrambled up next to her. The royal blood had fainted during the ascent – he’d need time to recover.

  “Back the way we came.” Hani guided to the door on their left – it remained open from their entrance into the hall earlier. Inside, a police officer lay sprawled on the floor, his forehead split open by a gunshot wound. Blood splattered the small surveillance room’s many computers.