Out of the corner of Jaxx’s eye, an Agadon destroyer lit up in a flash, then disappeared. A large carrier vanished, then a starship. One by one, more Agadon mechs and ships left the system.
“They initiated their portal drives connected to the pyramid network. They’re probably back in Leonia orbit. Let’s regroup on Taiyo,” said Zara. “They’ll be back soon and with more battleships and artillery at their disposal.”
Jaxx nodded, then pressed his combat-mech forward, heading to retrieve his heavy, striated Ashanti sword, deep inside the Agadon mech’s chest.
So, the Agadon left their dead behind. Assholes. He should have known that was the case. They weren’t called “Negatives” for nothing. Jaxx grasped the sword with his mech’s hands, placed both feet on the floating Agadon mech, and pulled.
The sword didn’t budge.
He twisted it, then pulled again.
It only moved a few inches.
His comm line blared and laughter filled his cockpit. That wasn’t Leonian laughter, nor Taiyonian. Who was it? He eyed the Agadon cockpit. An Agadon glared, blue blood oozing out of his mouth, dripping down his gray chin, as he gave Jaxx a sinister smile. How did the Agadon tap into Jaxx’s comm line?
The Agadon coughed and blood squirted out of his mouth and onto the Agadon cockpit window. If this was an Artificial Intelligence Being like Zara said, hell bent on destroying planets, and wiping all living things out of existence, it was well made with blood and flesh – and all other human-like biological systems, except perhaps the brain; maybe substituted with a central processing unit and a hard drive that was hardwired to kill.
The Agadon wiped his blood away from the cockpit window with his gray forearm. He then jabbed his finger at Jaxx and pointed the finger at his control panel. The Agadon paused, then hit a button with his fist.
The Agadon mech exploded, shredding Jaxx’s mech’s feet and shins apart, shards of the Agadon mech’s armor shot into Jaxx’s mech, sinking into his hips, chest, and all the way up to the cockpit, shattering the cockpit window. A glass barrier from Jaxx’s helmet extended and folded over Jaxx’s face, leaving a few inches of space between the helmet’s glass and his nose. The bottom portion of the glass barrier curved under his chin, clicking into his jumpsuit’s collar.
In seconds, all air was sucked out of his mech and what was left of the cockpit window was pulled off of its hinges, jettisoning out into space. His cockpit seat pushed forward, then launched him straight through the cockpit opening, spinning him wildly in into the deep, dark void.
He sucked in a breath, but nothing entered his lungs but searing pain. His eyes widened. The helmet was malfunctioning. He pressed a few buttons on his jumpsuit, hoping to close the tube’s oxygen flap.
He attempted another breath.
Pain – as if the tissue holding his lungs in place were tearing, ripping. His slapped his helmet, his face turning blue. This was it. This is how he was going to die.
Kaden Jaxx, archeologist, Atlantean expert, warrior, prophesied savior of the known worlds: dead.
His vision narrowed and his sight began to fade. His arms slackened, weakness and sleep started to overtake him.
A crackle and hiss.
His jumpsuit and helmet filled up with air, giving him ample, clean oxygen.
He took in a deep breath, his body regaining strength, his face turning back to pink.
“Oh my God!” He blinked several times, his vision widening, his body tingling, bringing fresh oxygen through his veins.
He floated, slowly spinning in space, the stars twirling around him. All he could hear was his breath.
He pressed a button on his jumpsuit.
“I need...help.”
Static filled his helmet.
“Anyone?”
He spun farther away from his badly damaged mech. He turned, seeing his mech’s wires and tubes hanging from its legs, its torso caved in, cracked open, and its head hanging to the side, a thread of armor keeping it from following Jaxx into space.
Blue ion booster fire from the Leonian and Taiyonian ships and combat-mechs were far in the distance, heading for the blue and green planet.
Shit!
“Hey, guys?”
25
Edge of M-Quadrant, Nearing Jupiter ~ Starship Atlantis
Shaughnessy was inside his room. He took the control panel – the box that allows access in and out of the room, fully complete with a hologram interface – off the inside wall next to his door.
He looked to his right, staring at the bathroom mirror, seeing a clammy, short man with a receding hairline glaring back at him, his lips trembling, his shirt stained in sweat. He wasn’t proud of what he had done – accidentally killing thousands of people on a destroyer he never meant to blow up.
He was set up. He just hoped he wasn’t going to be the fall guy, the patsy.
Red, white, and yellow wires stuck out where his control panel had just been. He slid the chip out of its expansion slot and put a new one in its place, one he had enhanced. Normally, patsies were killed shortly after being setup. He didn’t want to be killed. No one would be able to change the code to get in. The only way in was to blast the door open.
He put the control panel back on and twisted the screws, tightening the panel in place.
He wiped his forehead. “Change code on my voice command only.”
“Affirmative,” replied the control panel.
“Code is 1-1-4-5-1. Please confirm.”
“New code is 1-1-4-5-1. Confirmed.”
He walked over to his bed. It was covered in food, enough food to last him weeks. He slipped his hand in an opened bag of barbecue chips and shoved some in his mouth.
He chewed.
His phone rang.
He swallowed.
Caller ID: Craig Martelle.
It rang again. He didn’t want to answer it, but by now the entire starship, as well as the entire fleet, knew that a destroyer was DAWD – Dead as a White Dwarf.
And Shaughnessy had agreed to change the fleet’s and the starship’s coordinates, performing the first acts of sabotage. In fact, several acts of sabotage. Two of his own knowledge, diverting the fleet. The other without his consent or knowledge, ending a destroyer and the lives of all who lived on that ship.
The phone rang a third time and his hand hovered over the answer icon.
President Craig Martelle always seemed like a good, non-violent individual. If he answered the phone, then more than likely, he could explain everything to Craig and he would understand. He would have his back when Slade caught wind.
It rang again.
Shaughnessy pressed on the icon.
He froze, feeling rooted to the spot.
“Hello? Is this Jon?”
“Yes...yes, Sir.” Jon sat on his bed, head in his hands.
“I’m going to keep this short. We have a saboteur or several saboteurs on our ship. You’re the most experienced and best-information technologist and hardware specialist on Starship Atlantis. Our course, along with the course of the entire Secret Space Program fleet has been re-routed. We need you to fix that for us and we need you to find out who destroyed an entire ship in the space fleet.”
Shaughnessy needed to play dumb. “Wait, a ship has gone down?” He closed his eyes, squeezing his eye-lids tightly, touching the bridge of his nose.
“Yes, sir. There is nothing we can do but find the culprit. What we can do is fix this error in navigation. We can’t seem to figure out how to change the ship’s trajectory back to its original course. And you’re the man for the job, Jon.”
Shaughnessy shook his head, not wanting to be involved in anything...anymore. “I will figure it out, Mr. President.”
“Come to my quarters immediately.”
Shaughnessy nodded. “Aye, Mr. President. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“I needed you here ten minutes ago. Get here now.”
Craig hung up and Shaughnessy looked at his shaking hands. He wa
s screwed. Why did Ken have him do this? And, what’s more, why did he agree? His life, once this was found out, was in the balance. Slade would take his life, but if he could fix this, maybe Craig would keep his life intact. He could make it up to Slade later.
But Jaxx. He did this for Jaxx, not to spite Slade. He’d tell Slade that. They will understand. They always understood that Shaughnessy was for the greater good and they would be empathetic toward him. They had to be. They were human.
He put on his shoes. “1-1-4-5-1.” The door opened and he headed out into the hall.
He turned the corner.
“Hey, Jon.” Slade extended his hand, a half smile crowded his lips. Yet, he looked like he wanted to rip someone’s head off.
“Colonel?” Jon shook Slade’s hand, the Colonel’s grip way too strong to be friendly.
“Where you going?”
Jon looked away. “The president’s suite.”
“I’ve been summoned by the president as well.”
Shaugnessy’s gut contracted. That was the last thing he wanted. Maybe he could simply crumple and sink to the ground and disappear. “Yes, Sir.” Shaughnessy walked forward, praying Slade would get an emergency call.
“So, tell me, how did you get the code to my admiral’s quarters?”
Shaugnessy gulped hard. “Uh, I didn’t, Colonel.”
Slade stopped, putting his arm out, almost clothes-lining Shaugnessy. He leaned in close to Shaugnessy’s ear. “You gave President Martelles secretary, Loraine, the access codes to my quarters. She took my documents.”
Oh, shit. Shaughnessy’s heart skipped a beat. “What documents, Sir?”
“Documents that I didn’t want him seeing. Don’t play dumb.” He shoved Shaughnessy against the wall, his warm, minty breath blasted against Shaugnessy’s cheek. Slade winked and patted Shaughnessy on the shoulders. “I’m just screwing with you. I think it’s very clever you hacked our rooms.” Slade walked forward. “Follow me.” He laughed. “I did the same thing.”
“You hacked his room?”
“Of course. And yours. In fact, I hacked your computer in the central ops office as well. I bugged it, and I have a constant holovid stream watching your room, your computer, your station, and the president’s suite. Who do you think initiated the Gladstone SSP ship to explode?” He smirked. “Not much gets by me, Jon. Not even your conversations with Jaxx while in central ops and the conversation you had with Senator Ken Furr about re-routing the fleet.”
Shaughnessy halted, digging his feet into the ground. He didn’t know what to do say or do. “That wasn’t on purpose. You set me up.”
Slade gritted his teeth. “You compromised our mission.” He scrunched his hands into a fist, butting his forehead against Shaugnessy’s.
Shaugnessy’s chinned trembled. He wanted to faint. Jaxx had warned him about Slade and now his life was in danger. “I can fix it.”
“Oh, I know you can. Follow me.” He gripped Shaugnessy by his upper arm and pulled him down the hall.
“Where are you taking me?”
Slade seethed, spit coming out of his mouth. “You’re going to give me the coordinates to the portal that Jaxx flew through.”
Shaughnessy feverishly shook his head. “No.” His eyes darted around as they turned a corner. “I don’t remember the numbers.”
“Yes you do.”
“I –”
Slade abruptly stopped and glared at Shaughnessy, baring his teeth like a predator. “Don’t talk.”
Shaughnessy dipped his head.
“We’re here.” Slade swiped his card on the control panel next to a door. The door opened. “You first.”
Shaughnessy walked into a storage room. It was empty. No computer. No supplies. No anything. Just four gray metallic walls with a space-side wall with a large, round loading port for any potential ship that wanted to dock with Starship Atlantis. And some empty crates.
Shaugnessy squirmed. “I don’t understand. I’m in a storage room.”
The door shut, leaving Shaughnessy in the room by himself. Slade stared at Shaughnessy through the door’s small circular window.
Shaugnessy’s face turned ashen. He pounded the door with his fists. “What are you doing?” He pushed a button to open the door. Then pressed again and again.
Nothing.
“Let me out!”
Slade smiled, then winked. He pressed a few buttons on the control panel in the hall next to the door, then stared blankly into Shaughnessy’s eyes.
A hiss filled the room. The airlock initiated, and the docking port shuddered.
“No, no. Slade, I’ll die.”
Slade nodded his head.
The airlock opened and the air escaped into the vacuum of space, Shaughnessy sucked out with it. He flew like a bat out of hell, watching Starship Atlantis and the Secret Space Program’s fleet move farther away from him and him farther away from it. In seconds, his body went from warm to freezing, his arms waiving wildly, his eyes burning. He took a breath and searing pain entered instead of oxygen. His heart pumped but two more times before it gave out. His vision went dark, then a flash of light consumed his eyes, and his body stiffened.
* * *
Slade stood in the doorway, arms crossed at his chest. “Were you expecting someone else to be with me?”
Craig looked up from his desk while turning another page of the top-secret report on Kaden Jaxx. Underneath the desk he flicked a button with his finger, turning on a hidden cam in the room. This feed would be going straight to Fleet Admiral Lon Vernadore of the Secret Space Program. “In fact, I summoned Jon Shaughnessy. Where is he?”
Slade lowered his eyes. “He’ll no longer be meeting with you tonight...or ever.”
Craig knew what he meant and looked around for any hidden cameras or secretly placed audio devices. Slade was truly a whack-job but you keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. He liked the guy’s ideas, not the guy’s morality. He had to play it cool. But he was the president. No one fucked with that high of a ranking. Not even Slade. Playing it cool would suffice. “So, how long have you bugged my room?”
“I’ve bugged all the important official’s rooms.”
“We’re all important.”
“Some more so than others.”
“Right now, I don’t care. We have a mutiny on our hands. What troops are on our side and what troops aren’t?”
“We’ve got most of Deck 5 and some of Deck 7’s. I’ll convince the Fleet Admiral to bring his Space Marines, and I’ve contacted the Kelhoon leader, Kajka Okbak. They sent a special troop envoy. They’re here now, docked in the storage bays on Deck 6. I had to get them a special SSP signature so they’d seem like another SSP transport ship coming from another quadrant. It worked. They weren’t even contacted.”
Craig put his hands together, something was pulling on his last nerve. It was something they discussed earlier. “Why didn’t you tell me about Jaxx?”
“I did.”
“You told me he was the Goddamn key to opening up those alien pyramid power plants. You didn’t tell me he was alien himself.” Craig caught Loraine catching a glimpse of the conversation from the outside room. “Slade, step inside.”
Slade did and the door shut behind him.
“The last thing you need right now are more distractions, Mr. President.”
“Now, when you don’t tell me things, it becomes a distraction.” Craig flipped through some more pages. “According to this here document that you watched me read, Jaxx wasn’t born on our planet.”
Slade nodded. “Of course not. A man with those extraordinary powers has a different, more open DNA sequence than we do. But we’re learning that can be changed and our DNA can open up just like theirs can.”
“Another secret, Slade.” It was a statement, not a question. He looked at the document. “And guess what? I read more after you last left my office. It says here that you were there when these Beings from an undisclosed location within our solar system lande
d and gifted you Jaxx when he was a baby. You then adopted him out? Why the hell would you do that?”
Slade cracked a smile. “If you only knew. He was given to my mother. I was able to keep track of the boy the majority of his life. Then, we took him against his will and trained him in the art of combat – starfighter piloting, hand-to-hand fighting, and weapons special ops shit. That’s how we do things in the Secret Space Program. We take. We don’t ask. In return, we make people better, more disciplined, noble, loyal to the United States of America.”
“I see.” Craig looked at the document on his desk. “You knew about the Atlanteans on Callisto this entire time?”
“No. We found that out recently. We have been trying to locate where these Beings came from for decades. We were surprised we hadn’t found them sooner than we did. Hell, they were on Callisto this whole time. I don’t know how that escaped us.”
Craig flipped another page. “And he showed incredible skills during starfighter combat, but was more or less lacking during flight training?”
Slade leaned forward, annoyed. “Yes.”
“He was able to figure out the pyramids so quickly and read their writings at incredible speeds, understanding exactly what they meant because he was Atlantean?” asked Craig.
Slade winked. “You catch on quickly.” He spit on the floor and rubbed his boot in it. He took out a folded piece of paper and dropped it on Craig’s desk.
Craig held in a grin. Here we go. He took a quick peek at the camera, making sure it was dead panned on him. “What’s this?” questioned Craig, playing ignorant.
“I did a lot of thinking since I last left this office. I did a lot of things too.”
Craig opened it up, resting his temple against his hand. He pushed off his desk right away and crumpled the piece of paper and threw it at Slade. “Not a chance.”
Slade picked up the paper and unwrapped it. “Sign it.” He slammed it back on the desk, leaving his hand on the upper portion so Craig couldn’t throw it back at him.
The Complete Atlantis Series, Books 1 - 5: Ascendant Saga Page 61