Operation Darkness: Here Comes the Rooster
by Josh Nolan


The running.  The shooting.  The killing.  The dying.

It never stopped.

He'd tried using alcohol to put himself to sleep - but it made him feel
awful, and soon the dreams came for him anyway.  Then he'd taken to
using stimulants to stay awake and away from the dreams.  It worked a
bit better - for a few days.  And then it followed him into the waking
world.  Suddenly, everyone had a hidden weapon.  He had to get to them
first.  They just kept coming.

Then, after a few days, or sometimes weeks, once he began to hallucinate
for real, he'd stop using the stimulants, and his entire system would
crash, into sleep.

It lived there.

The setting varied - the desert, Pullenvale, Melbourne, New Hampshire,
the High Palace, Paris, and the rest - but the dreams were the same.
Kill or be killed.  Kill and die.  Try to not kill, and kill all the
same.

Sometimes he was killing his enemies.  Sometimes his friends.  Sometimes
they were killing him.  Sometimes he was killing himself.  It didn't
matter.  It was all horrible.

Right now, Defel droids were dragging him past a French firing squad,
who were riddling him with bullets.  He screamed at them, tried to tell
them to stop, but bullets ricocheting off the droids drowned him out.
Then a bullet went into his mouth, and he felt the back of his head get
ripped off by it, but he didn't die, he was still there, he was still -

He woke up screaming.

He staggered out of the chair, upsetting the empty beer bottles
littering the ground around him.  The ruckus sent him into a dive,
flying across the room, slamming his shoulder into the corner of the
coffee table, upsetting the bottles arranged on it.

He lay on his back, his shoulder throbbing, his eyes filling with
tears.  One of the upset bottles rolled off the table and fell on his
arm, the liquid inside making a slopping noise.  He reached across
himself and picked it up, bringing it in front of his eyes.  Kirov
vodka.  A few mouthfuls left.  Good.

He unscrewed the lid and gulped the liquid down, the burning sensation
calming his pulse slightly.  He drew in a shuddering breath, released
it, then slowly crawled to his feet.  It was about then that the
insistent tone of the comlink finally intruded on his awareness.

With a curse, he picked his way over to the comlink and picked it up.
"Yeah?" he said blearily.

The comlink continued to bleep at him.

He keyed it, cleared his throat which had suddenly gone dry.  "Yeah?" he
repeated.

"Captain Nolan, sir?"

"Yeah."

"Priority signal from Space Command, sir.  Your presence is required in
Mendellia ASAP, highest urgency.  And, sir, I've been asked to relay
that the P better be pretty damn S."

"I'll be there.  Five out."  He clicked off the comlink and sighed.

He went to the bedside of the small hotel room, and pulled out a
hypodermic syringe.  He'd have to be on top of his game for the mission.