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

by Christian Kallias

  * * *

  Arkoolis rose from the water and flew back towards Gaia.

  “You keep surprising me, but I think it’s time to end this little dance of ours. This has been a fun distraction but I’ve lost enough time.”

  “You keep saying that, and yet I still stand.”

  “A robot with personality. These thousands of years trapped in another dimension sure have brought up the most peculiar things.”

  “You should have stayed there. No one wants you back in this reality.”

  The general laughed hard. “Do you think we care what you and these insects want? This universe is ours now. Now that we’re back we’ll cleanse it from all impurity.”

  “You’re the impurity,” said Gaia defiantly.

  “I’m gonna make you swallow these words.”

  “Let me see you try.”

  “Do you really think you stand a chance? I have barely deployed twenty percent of my abilities up till now.”

  The planet rocked for a moment and a distant explosion resounded.

  “You hear that? It seems my partner is ripping this world apart.”

  “What makes you think he’s not the one getting ripped apart?”

  “Miseo is one of the most powerful Furies there is. None of you stand a chance of defeating him. Not that you ever stood a chance defeating me either.”

  “Ah, the Fury pride. It will be your downfall.”

  “Speaking of downfall, time to send your body parts back to your creator.”

  “I’m my own creator, and this is but one body. You’ll never be done with me.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Arkoolis moved so quickly he was on Gaia’s back before she could react. He planted his elbow deep into her avatar’s back, and began pounding her metallic body with more blows than she could count. Her shields quickly failed and each new blow deformed her armor. The end of that avatar body was near but there was nothing she could do about it.

  But then something happened.

  Arkoolis received a blue fireball right in the face and was thrown hundreds of yards away, crashing unceremoniously into the dirt, face first.

  When Gaia looked towards the source of the attack, she saw Chase with his arm extended.

  “You’re okay?” he asked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! This is just a piece of technology. But thanks, nonetheless. I have been badly damaged but I can still help you in your fight.”

  “That’s alright. I’ll deal with this Fury on my own.”

  “Don’t let your pride blind you, Chase, he is more powerful than you are.”

  Gaia saw a Droxian in the distance.

  “What is she doing here?”

  “Ryonna . . . She’s looking for her son.”

  “If he was in any of the cities that were destroyed, she is too late.”

  “According to Ares, Ronan was in the ship that crashed not long ago in the southern hemisphere, taking out the other Fury in the process.”

  “This Fury said his name was Miseo, and that he is even more powerful than him. If that’s true, he might have survived.”

  Chase reflected upon the words of the Gaia droid. “One problem at a time. For now I need to get rid of this one.”

  “We. You’ll need my help.”

  “Alright then, let’s get to work.”

  * * *

  Daniel couldn’t see a damn thing in the darkness. The night-vision mask was totaled, so he threw it aside.

  “Lieutenant? Are you alright?”

  But there was no answer.

  “Are you hurt, Lieutenant?”

  Daniel used his hands to try to find his backpack in the dark. After a while he found a rifle on the ground and turned its light on.

  The droid laid on the floor motionless. The fact that no sparks shot from its severed body parts told him it was finally destroyed, or at least disabled.

  When the light from his rifle landed on the lieutenant, Daniel had to refrain from vomiting. His head had been severed by a piece of armor from the droid.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Daniel out loud.

  But now was not the time to mourn. Daniel needed to find a way out of the building without setting off the unidentified devices strategically placed in the communications tower.

  He went into the room where the droid came from and looked around. He found the power control panel for the tower and cycled the power back on.

  The main control room was a bloody mess. His entire away team had been wiped out by the battle droid. He looked for a first-aid kit and found one.

  Time to mend his shoulder wound. He injected himself with a painkiller and was soon back in front of a control console.

  He tried to access the video feeds inside the complex but was again denied access. He punched the console out of frustration.

  He found the controls for the shades and activated them. They rose, and finally the light of day filled the bloody room. Outside he saw lush vegetation and large trees as far as the eyes could see. A bird landed on the nearest one. Some of its branches were only a couple of yards away from the control center’s large, angled windows.

  He tried opening a channel to the Destiny but was unsuccessful. With both his own gear and the tower’s comms.

  What the hell is going on up there?

  He ran a system-wide diagnostic. It would take a few minutes to complete.

  But then he felt it. Something exploded on a level below and it shook the entire complex.

  Crap! Perhaps running these diagnostics wasn’t the best idea.

  Shortly after the first detonation, another rocked the facility, and then another. Alarms wailed and Daniel knew he only had seconds to react. The third explosion cracked the large window in the control room. He grabbed what was left of the droid’s left arm and threw it against the cracked window, which gave out and shattered into a thousand pieces. He took a few steps back as the latest explosion caused the structural integrity of the tower to fail. The entire tower started leaning forward. He ran and jumped out of the window as far as he could, hoping to catch one of the tree branches nearby.

  At the exact moment he jumped, the tower’s control room exploded and he felt a wave of heat on his back, as well as the pressure from the shockwave of the explosion.

  He was thrown so far forward he missed the branch he had been aiming for and crashed against the tree’s trunk, hitting his head badly in the process.

  He started his descent towards ground, grabbing the first branch that passed him by, but it didn’t hold his weight and cracked. As he fell he was stopped every now and then by other branches that slowed his descent, but not without inflicting a tremendous amount of pain. Many of his ribs broke, and by the time his body crashed near the bottom of the tree he had lost consciousness.

  * * *

  After many unsuccessful hails to try and contact Ronan, Keera decided to cloak the Valken and head towards the planet’s surface.

  The battle between the Alliance fleet and the Zarlacks was still ongoing, and it took some pretty fancy flying to avoid being hit by stray fire. When she entered orbit of the planet her cloak failed. Fortunately, she didn’t need it anymore, at least for the time being. She headed towards the coordinates where the Phoenix had crashed. She really hoped Ronan had managed to escape. A new dot appeared on her scopes. It was similar to the signal Ronan had asked her to amplify before.

  Could that be the receiving device of that signal?

  She locked onto the area and opened a channel.

  “Is anyone receiving me?”

  “Identify yourself,” answered a familiar female voice.

  “Ryonna?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “It’s Keera. I’m looking for Ronan.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. How did you get here so fast?”

  “That’s a long story. Can you please come and pick me up?”

  “I’m adjusting course to your position.”

&
nbsp; “I’m not gonna stay in the area for long. Chase is about to battle a Fury and we all know what that means. I’ve just secured a military ground craft but this thing is way too slow. Let’s meet at the following coordinates.”

  Keera received the transmission.

  “Rendezvous coordinates received. See you soon.”

  Keera adjusted her vector for the new rendezvous point and flew above the city that was destroyed by the Phoenix.

  The damage was surreal.

  I doubt many people could have survived that blast.

  * * *

  Ronan arrived near the coordinates indicated on his portable scanner and was horrified to see a pod in the distance, in the middle of a large field still on fire.

  He ran as fast as he could towards the pod, finding a path amongst a labyrinth of flames. The temperature around him became unbearable but he kept at it nonetheless.

  He reached a large and deep crevasse that blocked his way forward.

  Dammit!

  The crevasse ran as far as the eye could see on both sides and he needed to make a choice. His first instinct was to try to jump over it, but that would have been a risky proposition even if he was in full possession of his abilities. With his multiple wounds and the lack of oxygen around him, it was suicide, plain and simple.

  He decided to go left and hoped to find a way across.

  He tried hailing his friend again but there was no response.

  After ten more minutes of running it became clear that he would need to build some sort of bridge in order to pass to the other side. He looked around him for anything to help him achieve that goal. There was a tree trunk not too far away but it was on fire. He checked his survival pack and drank some water. The smoke around him made it even more difficult to advance and his eyes were burning.

  He kept going for another three miles when he finally saw a tree near the edge of the crevasse. It hadn’t been unearthed or burned. He took his sidearm blaster and shot multiple times at the base of the tree, and soon it cracked and fell forward. The top of the tree landed on the other side of the crevasse, providing him with a bridge to cross. He climbed on the trunk and jumped a couple of times to test its stability. It didn’t budge.

  Well, that’s good enough I guess.

  He was halfway over when the ground shook and he lost balance and nearly fell to his death. He fell flat on the trunk and started slipping. Ronan grabbed on for dear life as the ground shook more, hoping the crevasse wouldn’t enlarge as a result of the tremor. After a while the tremors stopped and he got back to his feet, increasing his pace. When he was over the other side he ran in the direction of the pod. He hoped with all his heart that Arknon hadn’t been cooked alive in the meantime.

  He ran as fast as he could, avoiding patches of fire on the way, and reached the pod in under seven minutes. By then he was panting heavily and his head was spinning.

  The pod was not accessible. There was fire all around it so Ronan took the portable extinguisher from his backpack and got rid of just enough flames to allow him access to the pod. Then he was faced with another problem. The door of the pod was facing the ground. He tried rolling it to the side but was rewarded with first degree burns on both his hands.

  Okay, dumb idea.

  His feet were also burning but he ignored that and looked around for a large piece of wood. He found one he could use as lever.

  With much effort and pain, he finally managed to roll the pod onto its side. He looked through the pod’s window. It was very dirty. He grabbed some leaves from the ground to provide a little heat protection and wiped dirt from the window.

  His friend was unconscious, with a nasty cut on his forehead and a lot of blood on his face.

  He knocked at the window three times, hoping it would trigger movement in Arknon, but it didn’t.

  “Arknon! Can you hear me? Arknon!”

  Ronan couldn’t see well enough to know if his friend and commanding officer was still breathing.

  Hang on, buddy, I’ll get you out of here.

  Ronan looked for the external door ejection system but it was located on a part of the ship still facing dirt. He had to push the pod a little more on the side before accessing the external panel. Soon the door of the pod ejected and he carefully climbed inside.

  C H A P T E R

  XIV

  Gaia approached Chase and put her hand on his shoulder. He felt a sting.

  “Ouch! What was that?”

  “Sorry for the temporary discomfort. I’ve just implanted you with transmitter nanobots.”

  Chase rubbed his itchy shoulder. “You could have asked me first.”

  “We need to be able to communicate without him hearing us. That will give us a tactical advantage.”

  “Yeah, I get that, but you could still have asked first.”

  “I’m sorry. I will next time.”

  Chase looked dubious. “Next time?”

  “Never mind that. Our foe is returning. Please be careful. Don’t underestimate him.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Ares already gave me the pep talk. But I’m pissed and I need to blow off some steam, so he might just get something extra from me today.”

  “No! Do not think this fight will be easy. He destroyed almost one hundred of my battle droids in the space of a few minutes, and if you hadn’t arrived when you did I would also be scrap metal now.”

  Chase preferred not telling her that at this exact moment, it wouldn’t have been the worst of things.

  “The nanobots are operational. I can hear your thoughts loud and clear.”

  Chase scratched his head with a dumb smile on his face. “How much of what I just thought did you hear?”

  “All of it.”

  “Right . . . Oops, then.”

  “Let’s move on. I don’t care whether or not you think I will be of some help. Together we stand a better chance of defeating him. All I care about is that he is stopped here so he cannot replicate this level of destruction on Earth.”

  “Perhaps, but you’ll let me fight him first so I can gauge him. Then if needed you’ll intervene.”

  “I feel obliged to point out that this is not an efficient strategy, Chase.”

  “Still, you’ll do as I ask, Gaia. I’m grateful for the training facility you provided me, but I need to gauge my own progress now as well as size up this Fury. You have my authorization to intervene the minute anything goes wrong, but I start this fight on my own.”

  “I should point out I do not need your authorization, but I will abide by your wishes for as long as it doesn’t conflict with my own interests.”

  “Which are?”

  “To not let your bravado kill you today, even though that is only a secondary objective, in all fairness.”

  Chase smiled. “And the first being?”

  “Kill both Furies currently on Droxian soil.”

  “You’d make great friends with Ryonna.”

  Chase didn’t know why he felt so excited at the prospect of fighting another Fury, but he preferred this sensation to the fear he felt when realizing the role he had played freeing the Furies from their dimensional prison.

  When Arkoolis landed in front of Chase, he looked utterly pissed.

  “Sorry about that. Are you’re going to be okay, pal?” teased Chase with an unusual level of arrogance.

  “So you’re the one they call Laiyos. Argos’s brother.”

  “My name actually is Chase Athanatos. And let’s get one thing clear: Argos is no brother of mine!”

  “Mine is General Arkoolis. Argos told us you had rejected your Fury heritage and decided instead to fight us.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That was a foolish decision, and today you’ll pay for that dire mistake with your life. I will make sure of that.”

  Chase decided to antagonize his enemy and gauge his reactions. Perhaps he could get something out of taunting him.

  “Not part of my plan for the day, I’m afraid. Let’s recap, shall we? First
I’ll kick your ass . . . General. Then I will go kill your other pal. Miseo is it? That’s if he survived the Droxian destroyer that got rammed up his ass a few moments ago.”

  The general’s features and expression darkened.

  “Awwww . . . You didn’t know that, now did you?”

  The general clenched both fists. “Impetuous. I’ll grant you that. You do seem overly confident for a low-class Fury.”

  “Low-class?” said Chase, raising an eyebrow.

  Go ahead and tell me some valuable information now.

  “There are different classes of fighters on our world. Some have a few meager powers but they aren’t really any more powerful than the millions of insects whose pathetic lives we’ve mercifully ended today on Droxia. We call them drones. They are the worker class of the Furies, if you will. They build, we fight. We occasionally use them as canon-fodder in larger scale assaults when more than one or two of us are required to destroy a world’s population and infrastructure, but very few races ever called for such scenarios.”

  That’s it. Keep spilling some more.

  “Then there’re three distinct categories of fighters, like you and me. The low class. That would be you, by the way. The high-class. I would say Argos sits between these categories. Probably not a fully fledged high class just yet. With the right guidance and training, maybe one day. Then there’s the elite, of which I’m part. We are those sent to a world when it needs purifying.”

  “Mercifully? Purifying? You know what, pal, mercifully purify the shit out of you is what I’m going to do next.”

  Gaia talked inside Chase’s mind.

  Is it really necessary to antagonize your adversary at this point?

  I’m just making sure he’s taking me seriously. I have no intention of losing this fight and I want him to know that, answered Chase.