The Beginning of the End (Universe in Flames Book 4)

by Christian Kallias

  Today he was battling against five droids and like every morning when he had amped the difficulty, either in number of droids or level of artificial gravity, he had trouble holding his own at first. The first two weeks of training he had either damaged or destroyed more than half the available droids, and he was now trying to train without letting his instincts take over to the point where he couldn’t control his strikes and transformed his metal sparring partners into another useless pile of scrap.

  But that meant holding off, sometimes, and that often cost him more damage than he would have otherwise incurred. He was fine with that, as he felt that his overall resistance to blows was growing as well over time.

  In the control center, Spiros entered with his morning coffee and sat on his chair, watching Chase’s life signs and monitoring that all went well. They’d all had a scare the week before when one of the droids malfunctioned and blew up in Chase’s face. Some of the shrapnel had been propelled too close to Chase’s heart. His fast healing abilities had, of course, come in handy but Spiros was determined to make the entire training facility foolproof.

  He was exhausted that morning. Like many nights before he had pulled an all-nighter working on designing the next gen of battle droids. Not only could they help Chase train more efficiently, but they could become a really efficient foot army in case of an invasion.

  He poured a cocktails of drugs into his coffee.

  “You should ease up on the stims,” said the Gaia droid.

  Spiros stumbled from his chair and almost spilled his coffee. He held his heart.

  “You almost gave me a heart attack. I didn’t see you there.”

  “I was recharging.”

  “Right. The new power modules will help you recharge faster, but if you don’t want me to take stims you should let me sleep every once in a while.”

  “I believe you are incorrect in your assumption that I am keeping you from getting rest.”

  As much as he wanted to tell her otherwise, she was correct. Spiros was the one who decided to work all day monitoring Chase while he fought and then work most of the nights with Gaia.

  “I really look forward to testing the new droid body. I want a new avatar. This one is too inefficient. We’ll need to design one with a much larger memory capacity so I can at least copy some of my matrix into it. But we’ll also need secondary memory banks to store all the data we’ve been learning from observing Chase fight.”

  “Speaking of which, how come you even function inside this body? Isn’t the memory way too small to accommodate most of your basic AI?”

  “It is, but I’ve installed an ultra-fast wireless connection that allows me to access my functions remotely. There is a slight delay though, and it is not efficient.”

  “We can’t have that now, can we?”

  “Sarcasm, I take it.”

  Spiros smiled but then felt a sting in his heart. It had skipped a beat or two. While a good part of his vital functions had been replaced or enhanced by nanites and other augments over the years, Spiros still had a good-old beating heart.

  “Are you alright? I am detecting some strange vitals.”

  “I bet you are. I’ll be fine, but you’re right. I can’t continue replacing sleep with stims and stay up all night with you for much longer.”

  “Not to mention you are snoring heavily when you fall asleep without realizing it lately.”

  Spiros smiled. “Snoring is a normal bodily function.”

  “Not according to my medical files.”

  “Right. Trying to argue with the world’s largest encyclopedia! What was I thinking?”

  “Is there a reason you vocalize when being sarcastic? Since I’m not very receptive to it, as you undoubtedly know by now, wouldn’t it be simpler to just think it?”

  She certainly didn’t have the warmest of personalities at times, but Spiros did find Gaia quite endearing nonetheless.

  “I suppose so, but what’s the fun in that? Plus, I haven’t lost hope that your algorithm might improve the more you are subjected to it.”

  “Or is it you just like hearing yourself talking?”

  Spiros chuckled.

  They had come a long way since their rocky start, and Spiros had put his complete trust in her. Cedric and Yanis were still secretly working on means to disable her, if that was ever needed, even though he no longer thought it was necessary. The admiral, on the other hand, preferred being prepared.

  Which reminded him. His last talk with the admiral had been odd. Not only did she seem more aggressive than before, but some of her latest decisions didn’t seem to make much sense.

  A droid impacted with the control room’s shielded glass and exploded.

  This time Spiros spilled coffee all over himself.

  “Oops, I’m really sorry about that,” said Chase, while continuing to spar with the remaining four droids.

  Spiros made a face. “I need to go change. Can you please monitor him for me while I do that?”

  “Of course, Spiros. While you’re at it, why don’t you sleep for a few hours. I am perfectly able to do this, you know.”

  Spiros wanted to complain but he felt another sting in his chest.

  “You know what? That’s actually not the worst idea.”

  * * *

  Chase went see Sarah and check on the baby before going to train for the day. He rang at her apartment and a bunch of repressed feelings came to the surface. He had visited her at least twice a week lately and it did seem she was slightly warmer with him over time. But there was still an invisible but palpable tension that prevented them from going back to how things had once been between them.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s me, Chase.”

  “Oh, I wished you’d called before.”

  “I can come another time.”

  She opened the door. “Don’t be silly, come in.”

  She looked pale.

  “Is everything alright?”

  “You look great too, thank you.”

  “Did I say anything wrong?” Chase sensed a colder than usual tone in her voice.

  “No, it’s just this damn morning sickness I get sometimes. Your son can’t get here soon enough.”

  “My son?”

  “Sorry, our son. I was just trying to emphasize that bringing a half-Fury baby into the world seems extra everything. I’ve had all the symptoms my mom told me she had to go through with me, multiplied by at least four.”

  “I’m really sorry for the discomfort.”

  “It’s okay, Chase, I just got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. It will pass.”

  “I really don’t mind coming another time.”

  “It’s fine. You’re here and I’m glad to see you. Please sit.” She indicated the couch.

  She sat near him today. That was a good sign.

  “How’s your training going?”

  “Very well. Yesterday I was able to spar with six droids while the gravity was at a full 5 Gs.”

  “You feel stronger?”

  “I feel stronger than ever before. In fact, I have to control myself all the time, otherwise I could destroy not only my metal sparring partners but probably the entire facility.”

  She smiled. “I hope it will be enough in our upcoming fight with the Furies.”

  “So do I. We still don’t know what their technological firepower will be like. That’s got me worried. I can keep training until I’m strong enough to defeat my enemies during close encounters, but most of the bigger battles will be fought in space.”

  “And we can’t have you destroying entire systems. I get it.”

  Chase’s expression turned grave.

  “I’m sorry, that sounded worse than I wanted it to.”

  “That’s alright. I had been warned by Ares not to do this, and he was right.”

  “I don’t think you had any choice. The important thing is that we managed to escape.”

  Chase wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her with
passion but he knew it was probably still too early for that. Perhaps when the baby was born things would work themselves out.

  “What’s that look?”

  “What look?”

  “Just now you wanted to say or do something, and then your face changed while you thought about it.”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “And I’d rather you did. Spit it out, Chase. I promise I won’t bite.”

  Chase took a deep breath. “I was just thinking how great it would be to kiss you right now.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Well if you won’t . . .” She grabbed his head and kissed him.

  His entire body filled with a warmth he had almost forgotten.

  They made out most of that morning, and for the first time in weeks, Chase arrived late at the training facility.

  * * *

  Chase was now training against twenty droids at once at 10 Gs. While Spiros initially thought he could get the artificial gravity all the way to 50 Gs, the moment they had tried to climb to 15, they had overloaded and damaged half of the facility’s power conduits. There was a design flaw that he needed to address, but until he found a fix that meant Chase had to amp up the number of sparring partners.

  Chase felt incredibly fast today. He moved with such ease that the twenty droids and every single plasma canon hit mostly air all day long. But then the droids all stopped and the canons retreated back into the ceiling.

  “Huh, Spiros? What’s up?”

  “Nothing is up. Gaia would like to spar with you.”

  “Alright, but shouldn’t she just add herself to the mix?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  The artificial gravity lowered back to normal so the force field around the training area could be lowered. The doors slid open and a new droid entered. It’s paint job—dark red with silver highlights—made it look more imposing. Its shape was very close to that of the other droids, but Chase noted a few differences. Chase thought it looked slicker.

  “Gaia?”

  “Yes, this is my new avatar body. Unlike my previous one, this one can leave the planet and take part of my AI matrix along.”

  “And that is important why?”

  “So that I can accompany you on missions, with the rest of the droid army, and remote control them. I got the idea from you, in fact, the way you remote piloted the squadrons of Manticore starfighters when you came ahead of your fleet to save this world. I have also documented your fighting techniques into secondary memory banks, so I can help the droids fight more like you.”

  “I thought they already did.”

  “With some technical limitations. However, this new avatar body isn’t subject to them.”

  “What about letting me recycle the older ones?” said Chase enthusiastically.

  “When this revision has been thoroughly tested and validated. And once we have built enough of them, then, yes, perhaps. For now this is a prototype.”

  “I should go easy on you, then?”

  “Within reason. You’d be surprised how much more resistant, fast and powerful this iteration is.”

  “What are we waiting for then?”

  The doors closed back down, the force field rose and the artificial gravity was cranked back up by a factor of ten.

  Chase took an offensive posture and so did Gaia.

  When Gaia launched herself at Chase, he was surprised how much faster her droid body was compared to those he had been sparring with until now. He had just enough time to dodge her first set of hooks and parried her roundhouse kick with both elbows.

  Chase countered by pushing her away with a kinetic shockwave and immediately launched a spinning hook kick to her head.

  She dodged it, grabbed his leg and sent him crashing against the nearest wall with great force.

  Chase recovered immediately and sent a fireball her way. She let it hit her shields, that lit up green for just a second.

  “Why didn’t you try to dodge it?”

  “I want to test the shields’ efficiency.”

  “And? How much did they drain from this impact?”

  “Less than five percent.”

  “That’s pretty good, isn’t it? When I send three of these fireballs at the other droids the third one tends to destroy them.”

  “Yes, these shields are much more powerful, thanks to the new, efficient power supply we’ve designed for it. They also recharge much faster. They are already back at one hundred percent.”

  “Cool.”

  Chase and Gaia resumed their training for hours that day, testing her new avatar droid, and Chase was bested a few times. He was careful not to deploy all his energy to avoid damaging the prototype, though.

  Over the next few days both Chase and Gaia progressed on different levels. Gaia was able to anticipate Chase’s attacks better the more she observed his technique and Chase was getting faster and stronger as well.

  * * *

  It had now been almost three months since they had returned from Erevos. Chase and Spiros entered the Destiny’s conference room at the same time. Already sitting around the table were Sarah, Ryonna, Daniel and the commodore.

  “Please sit down, we have an emergency to discuss.”

  Chase noticed the face of Admiral Thassos on the nearest holo-display.

  Saroudis stood and addressed everyone.

  “At 19:35 today a probe we sent to Alpha Prime received a distress call.”

  Chase’s expression changed completely. “There are survivors?”

  “Apparently so. We think pockets of resistance went underground after the Zarlack invaded the system and destroyed most of the infrastructure there. It took them until now to manage an assault on a communications tower to send the distress call. However, the transmission hasn’t been authenticated.”

  “When are we leaving, Commodore?”

  “Not so fast, Lieutenant Commander,” interrupted the admiral.

  “What do you mean, not so fast? If there are survivors on Alpha Prime we have a duty to rescue them. In fact, we should reclaim the entire sector while we’re at it.”

  “I agree we need to go to Alpha Prime,” added Daniel.

  “I’m not ready to commit a large scale force at this point.”

  Chase made fists and clenched his teeth. He couldn’t hide his frustration. He shot an angry look at Commodore Saroudis. “We have to do something!” Chase insisted.

  “Lieutenant Commander, you’re only here as a courtesy to the commodore, but don’t think your past acts of treason have been forgotten.”

  Treason?

  Saroudis waved a hand to make sure Chase didn’t escalate the tension any further. This was a very volatile situation and the commodore knew it when he addressed the admiral next.

  “Admiral, I believe we must send at least a few ships. The Zarlack forces must be spread thinly in their conquest of resource-rich worlds at the moment, so three or four ships, including the Destiny, is probably all we need to retake the system.”

  “It could be a trap.”

  “Nevertheless, Lieutenant Commander Athanatos is correct, we’re duty bound to render assistance.”

  “I don’t care what the lieutenant commander thinks.”

  Daniel got up. “Admiral, if I may?”

  “You may not, Commander, take back your seat.”

  Daniel swallowed hard. “Yes, Admiral.”

  He sat back, but not before giving Chase a worried look.

  Chase reached the commodore with his mind.

  Adonis, you have to do something. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with the admiral these days but you need to seize command of the fleet, now!

  Saroudis shot him a surprised look, but then realized only he had heard Chase telepathically.

  Your family could still be alive amongst the survivors. Do you want to take the risk that they are killed while we sit on our asses waiting? Now that the resistance has sent a message, they’v
e clearly put a target on their backs. Let me lead a full-force assault to Alpha Prime. Perhaps it’s not too late.

  Saroudis swallowed hard. Chase could see the conflict in him.

  “Admiral,” said Saroudis, treading carefully. “I believe we should vote on this issue.”

  “Vote? I’m sorry, that’s not how things work around here. I’ve let your band of rebels off the hook more than enough in the past, but they’ll either follow my orders or they’ll be court-martialed. And that goes for you as well, Commodore.”

  She’s losing it, added Chase telepathically. Do something before it’s too late.

  “Admiral, as second-in-command of the fleet I’m afraid you leave me no choice but to declare you unfit for duty. I’m relieving you of your command, effective immediately.”

  “In your dreams, Commodore! I don’t recognize your authority in these matters. You’re the one who’s relieved of—”

  The admiral reached for her throat, unable to breathe nor speak.

  Saroudis understood what was going on immediately.

  “Chase! What are you doing? Stop this at once.”

  “Don’t worry, Commodore, I’m just making sure she doesn’t finish that illegal order. I understand she’s scared after what happened on Earth—even though she was not here to protect it during the last attack—but enough is enough. Your relieving her of command was done by the book, under the circumstances. I for one have had enough of staying on the sidelines while Argos conquers one world after another. Soon we’ll have Fury ships on our doorsteps if this continues. We all know this is the right thing to do.”

  Ryonna stood up. “I agree with Chase. The admiral is a coward and needed to be relieved of command. Unless I don’t understand the regulations of the Earth Alliance, you’ve just done that. It matters not what she says now and I’m glad Chase silenced her.”

  Chase looked at Sarah. “Do you want to add anything?”

  “I think you’re all correct, but please let her go. You’re scaring her even more.” There was genuine concern in Sarah’s eyes.

  Chase released his grip and the admiral breathed heavily. “You’ll all pay for—”