The good-guys shouldn't always win

Of course, you don't know who the 'good-guys' are in this story yet. I like stories where the 'good-guys' lose. They seem more 'real' somehow. It started when I was a kid, and saw a movie on TV about a spy, who went through all this crazy stuff, thought he 'won', but at the end was killed by the person in the government who was his boss. To this day I have no idea what the name of the movie was, and have never seen it again. But it had an impact.



SPOILERS AHEAD You have been warned.

Even though just the mention of the following will spoil the endings for you, I have to suggest these;
The Wicker Man (the original, not the horrid remake from a few years back)
Spellbinder (A movie from the 80s. Pretty crappy, really, but if you can sit through it, very rewarding.)
I Am Legend (The Richard Matheson novel, not the Will Smith movie)
Soylent Green (A sci-fi classic)
Silent Running (Really, the good-guys don't lose, but at the end, it does leave you in a place you don't quite expect movies to leave you.)


Now on to the main event.

Part IV – The Big Hit

            He finally finds the door to the stairs, and kicks it open.  ‘Only a few more levels to the roof.’  He stumbles up the first few stairs, his leg burning from the Borg’s bolter.  He’s wheezing and coughing up blood by the time he reaches the next level.  The air filters don’t work so well deep in Level One, where the air is thick.  His own filter mask was knocked off by the Borg’s first punch, which also broke his jaw.

            The hit team was no problem for him.  They were mostly meat; slower, weaker, and less experienced.  But the Borg, that’s different.  He hadn’t anticipated them hiring one.  ‘They must really want me dead.’

            He falls at the next landing, coughing more blood onto the floor.  ‘Can’t stop.  Don’t know if I lost ‘em.’  He looks behind him down the stairs, then gets up to continue the climb to the top.  ‘Only one more level.  I should be O.K. then.’  He puts his hand on his favorite slugthrower for reassurance, and glances at his shredded armor coat.  ‘I better be.  That Borg hits me one more time with that bolter of his, I could be history.’  He clutches his wounded leg at the top of the stairs, still in great pain.  He opens the door and walks out onto the roof.

            “Hi.  Been waiting,” the Borg says in his synthetic voice, as he throws a devastating punch.  “Those are your ribs that just broke.”

            He blocks the Borg’s next punch with his cyberarm, but the Borg grabs his flesh hand, breaking three fingers.  The Borg throws him like a doll into a giant air filter exhaust tube.  He manages to dodge the Borg’s first bolter shot, but the second hits his cyberarm, scorching the whole arm.  ‘Shit. There goes my ace in the hole,’ his one-shot E.M. Pulse, to disable the Borg.  He draws and fires his old 700 pistol, but his bullets merely dent and bounce off the advancing Borg.  His last bullet breaks the Borg’s single eye as it closes in on him.

            “I don’t see with my eye,” the Borg says as it kicks his shin, breaking his leg.  The Borg picks him up and throws him near the edge.

            “Jump!” the bald man radios his partner.

            “What?”

            “Jump!  Now!” the bald man radios, and he rolls off the edge.  Seconds later, two missiles impact the Borg, destroying the rooftop along with it.

            ‘Here we go again,’ he thinks, as he holsters his gun on the long fall to the ground far, far below.