Chapter 82: Chapter 82: General Raddock (3) (Bonus Chapter)
On the far side of the courtyard, The Deep was trying to keep up.
There was no water here and no marine life to command. He was out of his element and he knew Homelander was watching.
A squad of soldiers took cover behind a concrete barricade, laying down suppressing fire.
"Take that, you army jerks!" The Deep yelled, his voice cracking slightly.
He ran forward, his superhuman strength his only asset. He grabbed a heavy steel door that had been blown off a nearby bunker.
Using it as a makeshift shield, he charged the barricade. The bullets pinged off the metal.
He reached the barricade and swung the steel door like a massive baseball bat. The impact caught three soldiers simultaneously.
The sheer blunt force trauma crushed their bodies against the concrete, pulverizing their internal organs. The Deep let out an adrenaline fueled laugh, looking around wildly to see if Homelander had noticed his kill.
Above it all, hovering reluctantly in the air, was Starlight.
Her face was pale, her eyes wide with pure horror. She was wearing the revealing swimsuit costume, floating above a literal slaughterhouse.
"No," she whispered, watching A Train turn a man into a red stain. "Oh my god. No..."
A spotlight from a surviving guard tower swept over her.
"Supe in the air! Fire!" a sergeant screamed from below.
A dozen rifles turned their muzzles upward. Tracers lit up the night sky, zipping toward her.
Starlight gasped, raising her arms to shield her face. The bullets struck her.
They didn’t penetrate her durable skin, but the kinetic impacts hurt, stinging like a swarm of angry wasps, leaving dark bruises blooming across her exposed arms and thighs.
She panicked. Survival instinct overrode her moral revulsion. She looked at the massive high voltage floodlights illuminating the courtyard. Her eyes began to glow with a golden light.
She siphoned the electricity from the entire grid. The lights across the base flickered, dimmed and died, plunging the slaughter into darkness, illuminated only by the burning vehicles.
All that electrical energy concentrated in her hands.
"I’m sorry!" she screamed down into the darkness. "I’m so sorry!"
She thrust her hands downward.
Twin beams of concussive photon energy erupted from her palms. She hadn’t meant to kill them. She just wanted to knock them away, to make them stop shooting.
But she absorbed too much power and she had no control over the chaotic environment.
Her blasts hit the squad of soldiers firing at her. The concussive force was like a bomb going off.
The blast wave shattered their ribs, ruptured their eardrums and lifted them off their feet, throwing them backward into the brick wall of the armory with bone crushing velocity.
They hit the wall and crumpled to the ground, a tangled mass of broken limbs. They didn’t get back up.
Starlight covered her mouth with her glowing hands, a sob tearing from her throat. She had just killed them. She was a murderer. She was one of them now.
Homelander floated through the center of the carnage, completely untouched by the violence swirling around him.
He walked on air, a few feet above the bloody concrete, looking down at the dying men with absolute contempt.
"Mud crawlers," Homelander sneered, kicking a severed arm out of his path. "You really thought you could build a better me? Out of this?"
He arrived at the entrance to the command bunker. The heavy blast doors were sealed shut.
Homelander landed on the concrete, grabbed the seam of the massive steel doors with his bare hands and peeled them open like a tin can.
He stepped into the bunker.
The remaining command staff froze, staring at the god of death who had just breached their impenetrable fortress.
General Raddock stood at the head of the holotable. His pistol was drawn, aiming directly at Homelander’s chest. His hand was shaking violently.
"You," Raddock breathed, his face drained of all color. "What have you done? You’ve attacked the United States Military! This is treason!"
Homelander smiled. It was a gentle expression. He walked slowly toward the General, ignoring the terrified staff cowering against the walls.
"Treason?" Homelander asked, his voice echoing in the concrete bunker. "General Raddock. I’m an American hero. I wear the flag."
He stopped just inches from the barrel of Raddock’s pistol.
"You, on the other hand," Homelander continued, his voice dropping to a dangerous purr, "are a traitor. You stole from Vought. You thought you could take some grunts, pump them full of our juice and replace me."
Raddock’s eyes darted left and right in confusion. "Replace you? What the hell are you talking about? I don’t have any Supes! I lobby against you freaks!"
Homelander’s smile vanished. He tilted his head. "Liar."
"I swear to God!" Raddock yelled, his finger tightening on the trigger.
"It doesn’t matter," Homelander whispered. "You thought it. You wanted to. And that’s enough."
Raddock fired.
The bullet struck Homelander squarely in the chest. The slug flattened and dropped to the floor.
Homelander reached out and grabbed the barrel of the pistol. With a casual twist of his wrist, he melted the steel into a useless lump of slag, crushing Raddock’s fingers in the process.
Raddock screamed, dropping to his knees, clutching his mangled hand.
Homelander looked down at the General. The ultimate military authority, reduced to a pathetic mess at his boots. It was intoxicating. It was exactly what the letter had told him he deserved.
"You wanted to build a god," Homelander said, his eyes beginning to glow with a searing heat. "Let me show you what a real god looks like."
Homelander focused his heat vision, narrowing the beams until they were agonizingly hot lasers. He aimed at Raddock’s knees.
The lasers sliced through the bone and cartilage. Raddock’s shrieks echoed off the bunker walls, a sound of unimaginable agony as his legs were severed at the joints. He collapsed forward, thrashing in a pool of his own boiling blood.
The command staff screamed, covering their eyes, begging for mercy.
Homelander ignored them. He kept his glowing eyes fixed on the General.
He slowly moved the beams up Raddock’s torso, cauterizing the wounds as he went, prolonging the death, ensuring the man felt every excruciating second of his punishment.
"You are nothing," Homelander whispered over the screams. "You are all just mud."
The red beams finally reached Raddock’s head. With a sudden surge of intensity, Homelander flared his vision to maximum output.
The General’s skull glowed white hot from the inside out before popping like an overripe melon, showering the holotable in ash and charred bone.
Homelander stood over the smoking remains, his chest heaving, his eyes fading back to a serene blue. He looked at the remaining officers cowering in the room.
