Red Dragon Spaceship Awakening: I Gain Alien Abilities on Mars-Chapter 238: Until He’s Dead

The leaders suddenly understood the man’s point, the sensibility of Tom’s words settling over the room.

The idea that waiting could be just as dangerous as rushing, that patience could become a trap laid by an enemy who had all the time in the world: it was a sobering realization.

Bjorn leaned back in his chair, his massive arms crossing over his chest, and he nodded slowly. "Aye, I see what you’re saying. The Obscuron’s got time on his side, and we don’t." He paused, his brow furrowing as he thought, and then he looked up, his pale eyes bright with a sudden idea.

"But what if we show them? What if we make sure the next generation doesn’t forget? We’ve got videos, evidence of the Obscuron’s brutality. We’ve got the footage from the battles, the recordings from the interrogations and the testimonies from the survivors. We could archive all of it, make it mandatory viewing for every child growing up in our cities. Show them exactly what we’re fighting against and tell them what you just said about relaxing and the Obscuron attacking on a massive scale."

Tatehan shrugged, a faint smile at the corner of his mouth. "Pretty good plan."

The leaders all shared a chuckle at that, each of them laughing in their own way.

Elara’s laugh was short and sharp, almost like a bark. Jorin’s was quieter, more restrained, just a brief upturn of his lips and a shake of his head. Tom grinned outright, clearly pleased that his point had been taken seriously.

And Bjorn’s laughter was deep and rumbling, the kind of sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest.

But the moment of levity faded quickly, and Tatehan’s expression grew more serious. He straightened, his hands resting on the table, and his voice took on a harder edge.

"We’re not going to wait for our younger ones to defeat the Obscuron," Tatehan said, his gaze going across the faces of the leaders. "We will defeat the man ourselves."

The room went quiet, all eyes on him.

"I personally want to see him dead," Tatehan continued, his voice steady but carrying a real stuff that made it clear he was not exaggerating. "And I think now’s a good time to tell you all something about myself. Something you should probably know."

He paused, gathering his thoughts, and then he spoke.

"The role of Battle Commander I took for the Red Crest Clan was supposed to be something really short. My initial plan was just to lead the assault on the fortress being built above the city, take it down, and move on with my life. That was it. I didn’t expect this. I had expected one mission and one fight. And then I’d go back to figuring out what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my time on Mars."

He let that sink in for a moment, watching the leaders’ expressions shift as they processed what he was saying.

"I didn’t expect to be Battle Commander for this long," Tatehan said. "And the reason I’m still doing it is simple. I will be Battle Commander until the Obscuron is dead. That’s the deal I made with myself. That’s the commitment I made to the people who followed me into that first battle, to the ones who’ve fought beside me since and to the ones who didn’t make it back."

"No one knows about it though, I’m just telling you all now..."

His jaw tightened, and his voice dropped slightly. "So if we don’t kill him, I might be Battle Commander forever at this point. And that’s not ideal. I’ve got a life to live. Things to do beyond this. But I’m not walking away until that man is gone."

The leaders all sank into this revelation, their expressions thoughtful, some of them nodding slowly. Bjorn looked at Tatehan with something that might have been respect, maybe even admiration.

When the man had first seen Tatehan, he had thought he was just another guy. One of this boring dudes who ran a city.

Y’know, nothing special to them.

But when Tatehan had summoned his armor and proved them that he was AURA, Bjorn had started to think a bit highly of him.

But the level at which he admired Tatehan had spiked with the missions at taking first base, the way he had fought like a mad battle maniac, carrying this brutality and fearlessness.

And then with the interrogation of the battle commander, the way he hadn’t hesitated to use intense torture to extract information.

And then with taking the five bases and now his reason for being battle commander.

It... it just made Bjorn think highly of Tatehan.

Elara’s gaze was steady, her lips pressed into a thin line as she absorbed his words. Jorin leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed, his eyes distant as if he were thinking through the implications. And Tom just stared, his sharp eyes locked on Tatehan, processing.

Finally, Elara spoke, her voice calm but with curiosity. "So what do we do now?"

Tatehan straightened, his mind already running through the next steps, the strategies they would need to employ and the alliances they would need to build.

"We expand this alliance," Tatehan said. "It will be a slow and gradual process, but it’s very much possible. We reach out to the East and the South. We meet with the other cities, the ones that haven’t joined us yet, and we try to work with them. Show them what we’ve accomplished, what we’ve learned and what we’ve seized. Make it clear that standing together is the only way any of us survive."

He shrugged: "It should be pretty easy to convince them by the way, I’m sure they have been affected one way or the other."

He gestured at the holographic map, his finger tracing a path along the edges of the red zones marking the Obscuron’s territory. "And while we’re doing that, we start probing the West. We gather more intel, we look for weaknesses in that force barrier and we try to find a way to get inside and strike at his infrastructure directly."

The leaders exchanged glances, and then, one by one, they nodded.

"It’s a good plan," Bjorn said, his voice firm. "We keep pushing and keep hitting him where it hurts. And we don’t give him the luxury of time."

Elara nodded. "Agreed. We’ll coordinate outreach efforts with the other settlements. See who’s willing to join us."

Jorin added, "And we’ll keep raiding his bases. Every one we take down weakens him."

Tom leaned forward, his expression thoughtful. "Since we destroyed the first base, the Obscuron hasn’t attacked us again. We think this is a strategy of his, some kind of calculated silence? I dunno to be honest. But... we’ll try to accept it as good news. For now."

Tatehan nodded. "Good. Then we’re agreed. Let’s get to work."

The meeting adjourned shortly after, the leaders filing out of the room one by one, their minds already turning over the tasks ahead. Bjorn clapped Tatehan on the shoulder as he passed, his grip firm and approving, and then he was gone, his heavy boots echoing down the corridor.

———

As Tatehan rode in his Skyblade back to Waython Hollow, the Martian landscape rushing past beneath him in a blur of red dust and rocky terrain, his mind turned to something he had not thought about in weeks.

The spaceship. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

The reason he was alive, given a second chance at life and was here.

The one that had given him his System which gave him his abilities. The one that was still broken, still incomplete and still sitting in his inventory like a massive, half-functional relic of a war that had destroyed Earth.

While they planned strategically and tried to defeat the Obscuron, while they built alliances and raided bases and gathered intel, Tatehan realized he should also be doing what he had been bent on achieving before taking on the role of Battle Commander.

Repairing the spaceship.

He had sent it to his inventory two months ago now, back when he had planned to move to Waython Hollow and realized that dragging a massive crashed ship through the city was not exactly practical, also it was something very powerful that doing an act like that would be stupid.

And since then, he had barely thought about it, too consumed with battles and interrogations and strategy meetings to focus on anything else.

But now, with the Obscuron silent, with a month of relative peace stretching behind him, Tatehan realized that this might be his chance.

This one month spent at Waython Hollow had been productive in some ways. They had destroyed bases and had gained information.

They had built an alliance that was growing stronger by the day.

But the Obscuron’s silence was unnerving. And Tatehan knew, deep in his gut, that the man was planning something on a much larger scale. Something that would make everything they had faced so far look like a warmup.

He knew it! He...he could feel it, you just couldn’t trust that man to not act.

But the Obscuron did not know one thing.

Tatehan had the most powerful spaceship that had ever existed. A vessel built for war, designed to fight beings that could destroy planets. And if he could repair it to do more stuff: if he could get it really functional again,it could be the key to defeating the Obscuron once and for all.

He was going to start repairs again...