Enemy Revisited

Enemy Revisited


Harlan Osborn summoned his strength and lifted his old tractor sideways, the alien runes running the lengths of his arms surging with power. “Damn,” he said to himself, discovering a cracked transfer case. “Gonna be next to impossible to find. Well,” he set the tractor down again, “can’t stay here in the middle of the field.” So, he shifted his leverage and lifted the machine overhead, his feet leaving the ground as he drifted back to the barn with four
tons over his head.

Dark clouds from the west meant a storm on the horizon. It had been a dry summer and the rain was more than welcome. The air began to stir, thunder approaching as hundreds of acres of corn covering the hills all around him danced in the wind. Harlan set the tractor down inside the barn and wiped the grease from his hands. A deep sigh and his mind drifted to other times – epic space battles, planetary aide missions, even the collapse of whole star systems.

“Do your people even know?” a familiar figure sneered, rounding the entrance to the barn.

“You should be dead,” Harlan said, tossing his rag away before strolling coolly past him into what was left of the remaining sunlight.

“Please, you know me better than that.”

“Sent to hell for everything you’ve done.”

“I did it for the good of the galaxy.”

“Telling yourself that doesn’t make it so,” Harlan said. “Malgus the Obliterator, Destroyer of Worlds, isn’t that what they call you?”

“Simple labels from simpler minds,” Malgus replied. “But you never answered my question. Do your people even know?”

Harlan didn’t answer at first, headed toward his old farmhouse at the center of the property. “No. And hopefully they’ll never need to.”

“Even after all this time, after everything we’ve been through, your world is as backward as you were when we first fought. Incomprehensible interstellar power, contained within the miserable meatsack of a human, and none of your own kind even have a clue. Pathetic.”

“The Intelligence chose me for a reason, Malgus. God knows why.”

“Likely, your wretched notions of honor and justice…antiquated nonsense.”

“They were enough to defeat you weren’t they?”

“Were they?” Malgus grinned, smoothing down his splines with crimson fingers. “I’m still here after all.”

“After all of it,” Harlan acknowledged. “The good people lost, whole worlds ravaged…” He turned back to Malgus. “I chased you across the universe and back! Defeated your armies! Saved whole star systems!”

“But you finally broke your first rule. You took justice into your own hands when you killed me,” Malgus grinned, new faces appearing from the cornfield - old enemies, terrible conquerors, the most horrible villains in the universe, all of them fixed on Harlan. “And I was just the first of many.”

“I did what I had to.”

“Telling yourself that doesn’t make it so,” Malgus taunted.

The memories weighed heavily on Harlan’s mind. He’d lost good friends, had arrived too late too many times, and finally had almost given up on being a hero altogether. He was tired, exhausted from the constant conflict. Of course, Harlan never asked for his power, and it felt more like a curse now in some ways, especially with the universe quiet, for he could never forget the things he’d seen. Still, there were the planets he’d saved, the coalitions he’d created, the allies who became friends…the hopeful gaze of tearful eyes on too many alien worlds that had all but given up. “Why are you here?” he asked.

“Just to stare one more time into the face of my mightiest foe,” Malgus said, Harlan’s enemies closing in all around. “Just to see you finally defeated.”

“Am I?”

Malgus ran his fingers along the simple wooden fence surrounding the old farmhouse. “You’re already defeated and don’t even know it. Farming,” he scoffed. “The universe’s mightiest champion, reduced to digging in the dirt. I suppose, in the end, I won.”

Suddenly, a gale burst forth and the faces of his old foes drifted away, all but Malgus. Harlan charged his fist and blasted an energy bolt which passed cleanly through his old nemesis’ ghostly body without a mark. “Maybe not in this form, maybe not as I was, but I’ll be seeing you,” Malgus grinned before he, too, drifted away on the breeze.

“And I’ll defeat you again,” Harlan said confidently, settling back into his rocking chair as the rain began. “As many times as it takes.”