It was 5:00. The sky was cloudy. Of course the sky was always cloudy; and Hawk hated that. Looking out from the shallow perch he had stooped on to rest, and cursed the clouds. Then he forgave the clouds and cursed Taggart, who made the clouds. Then he forgave Taggart and cursed "Dread." Whatever "Dread" was, it had once been Taggart, a man he had nearly called a friend, a man whom he had never expected to betray him, or Stuart Power, for that matter, and leave him for dead. To miss, perhaps thankfully, this dismal, dank, cloudy, and evil world that Taggart, Dread, had helped to make.
But what was in a name? Dread? Taggart? Power?
Hawk? They’d called him that from the first time he’d put in the air. The way he looked out of the cockpit. The way he could put himself anywhere in the sky he wanted to be. So, he was Hawk. He owned the sky. As he replaced his mask, he wiped a bit of moisture from his face. After all, it was cloudy. And it was 5:27.
It was 5:29. Jonathan Power was looking down. He’d been doing that a lot lately. A scientist, and part time saxophone player, he had never wanted to be a soldier. Now he was a leader of soldiers. "Soldiers of the Future," in fact, as one woman had called them.
"There is no now," she told him. "Now is dead. The past is dead, too. The only thing we have is tomorrow. That, John, that is what you are fighting to save, you and that little gang of yours. You’re Soldiers of the Future. You’re fighting to protect something that isn’t here yet. Something you may never see." She had told him this one night after a particularly disheartening loss. Dread, specifically Sauron, had gotten to the largest village so far, and it was now so much kindling. He was about to give up. Not that he knew what he would do, otherwise. Technology had gotten them into all this, and it wasn’t something he wanted to go right back to. And, there were very few gigs for the alto sax nowadays.
Assuming, of course, he could find a sax. So, this woman, he couldn’t remember her name now, had proclaimed him a Soldier of the Future. Her future. His future. Her future, however, measured 27 hours. She was killed the next day searching for supplies, when a building collapsed around her.
Now, years later, he felt as if the walls were caving in on him. Then, the battle was for his father. To carry on the task of defeating the "Machine." Later, it was to rebuild; that was where she had come in. As unable as he was to admit it, as unable as she may have been to handle it, that’s what he was fighting for. So that even if they couldn’t, still.... But now, the future didn’t matter. The ability to love didn’t matter. Dread mattered. Dread’s death mattered, and once that was done, once the poison that killed his father, destroyed his hope, and now ate at his gut was purged and gone, then, maybe, there might be something, something that might be a future. Something that might be livable. Just. But for him, now, for "Captain" Jonathan Power, the fight was personal. Very Personal. In fact, as far as the Soldiers of the Future mattered, the future was just the day when Project New Order would end, when whatever was left in that hideous case of Lyman Taggart would die, and with it, Jonathan’s vengeance, hate, despair. All the things he had become since his father’s death, since Pilot’s death, and since the death of his own spirit. And since that was all there was to look forward to, Jonathan Power looked down. It was 5:42.