Into the Fire Part I_Requiem of Souls

by Christian Kallias

  “Alright, then what about you focus on a single problem and let me work on this particular one.”

  The Asgardian sighed, and Yanis could tell he was just as unpleased with this collaboration as Yanis was.

  “Very well, what would you like me to work on?”

  “Try and find a solution to why we can’t use FTL engines to escape.”

  “This won’t be an easy task; there are no sensor data that explains why we can’t.”

  This guy’s propensity for stating the obvious is starting to get on my nerves.

  “Well, try anyway,” said Yanis sharply. “Yanis out!”

  Yanis turned off the holo-communication before Rak’nar had time to answer.

  “I never thought I would say this,” said Yanis out loud, more to himself than anyone else currently present in engineering, “But I miss Kvasir.”

  Yanis opened up another channel. “Cedric, where are you? I need your butt in engineering, stat!”

  “Kinda in the middle of something, can’t it wait?”

  Are you shitting me?

  “Well, unless you want us to die in the next few minutes, so no, it can’t! Engineering, urgent, now! Is that clearer?”

  “Alright, alright; I dunno what you had for your last meal but I don’t want you to start shitting bricks, so I’m on my way,” said Cedric reluctantly.

  “What’s the matter Kvasir?” asked Thor while they waited for Chase to return.

  “I should be helping Yanis figure out what’s attacking us.”

  “Your devotion for the Earth Alliance is commendable. And, for what it’s worth, I’m glad Chase managed to convince Odin to cancel your execution.”

  Kvasir didn’t expect Thor to open up on the subject. But it warmed Kvasir’s heart to know that Thor was just following orders and that he cared about his fate.

  “Still,” Thor continued. “Any other day I would agree with you that your place is in a lab trying to figure out what the fleet is up against. But, not today. Chase’s rescue mission clearly takes precedence over this emergency.”

  Kvasir twitched, and his tattoos flashed briefly in rapid succession.

  “Are we actually willing to sacrifice all the lives on board the Victory and the other ships to save two people? Neither of which we’re sure is even savable at this point?”

  “I understand your frustration, abandoning your friend in a time of need is not an easy thing to do. But today is one of those days where we don’t have a choice in the matter.”

  “What friend? I’m just concerned about the hundreds of lives aboard all the ships.”

  “Right,” said Thor with a big smile. “It’s okay to admit that Yanis has become your friend, you know.”

  Was he? Could it be what he was really worried about? Did he form a strong emotional bond with the Earth Alliance main scientist? he wondered.

  “I don’t know that I’d call him a friend. He’s reckless, he acts before thinking, and he thinks he’s always right.”

  “Well, that has to remind you of someone,” said Thor with a smirk.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, I think you do. The adjectives you’ve used to describe your frien— colleague,” Thor corrected himself, “are the ones I would have used to describe you to someone else. And, while I don’t deny that the two of you might have many differences, you do share similar personality…how should I put this politely— traits.”

  “What were you going to say first?”

  “Personality ‘quirks’.”

  At first, Kvasir didn’t agree with Thor’s statement but reflecting upon it more, he wondered if that was indeed why he didn’t want to go on the mission. Not because he was scared that he might not succeed once they were there; Kvasir hated having the fate of others hang in the palm of his hands, but perhaps because he felt he was abandoning Yanis in a time of need. Also, that he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if something happened to him because of it.

  Before Kvasir could finish his train of thought, Chase had returned and teleported them away.

  14

  When Ryonna stepped out of the regen tank, she faced a very angry Tar’Lock.

  “Are you out of your damn, obstinate Droxian mind?! What the hell was that?! Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  “Look, I was frustrated. I needed to relax, somehow. It’s no big deal.”

  The insectoid’s eyes grew uncharacteristically wide.

  “Not a big deal?” barked Tar’Lock with a long sigh. “Only you would call that relaxing. You almost got yourself killed. And Keera and me along with it!”

  Ryonna could sense that Tar’Lock was more worried about her well-being than he was mad. In fact, she could sense he understood exactly why she had gone against a simulation of Argos in the first place. She also understood why he was reprimanding her, because of his strong feelings for her. Something Ryonna was touched by but didn’t know how to deal with. She had not finished grieving for her late husband, and while Tar’Lock’s affection had been sweet, if not overwhelming at times, she didn’t know how to deal with this side of their friendship.

  “Last I checked you’re not my mother, Tar’Lock; may the spirits watch over her gentle soul. And I’d like to point out that your presence inside the holo-room wasn’t something I anticipated. So, it’s unfair to blame me for this. In fact, the two of you entering the simulation without my knowledge or consent complicated matters and put us all in jeopardy. I had things under control until the two of you showed up.”

  Tar’Lock clicked furiously as his brown shade of carapace seemed to infuse some red tones over his face.

  “Under control? Unbelievable!”

  “What’s the matter, Tar’Lock. And, don’t take this the wrong way, but last I checked, I didn’t owe you an explanation.”

  Ryonna regretted the words the moment she said them. And it didn’t take long for sadness to infuse into Tar’Lock’s eyes.

  “I see,” he said, an inch away from sobbing. “Do as you wish, then, I— I just thought we were friends.”

  “We are, Tar’Lock. I just wasn’t feeling well, and I needed to express my frustration.”

  “Some friend you are,” mumbled Tar’Lock.

  Before Ryonna could answer, Tar’Lock was already leaving the med-bay.

  “Tar’Lock, wait.”

  But her insectoid friend was already gone.

  I’m sorry…

  The last thing Ryonna wanted was to break her friend and companion’s heart. But before she could reflect further on what had just happened and how to fix it, the med-bay intercom flooded the room with the voice of someone else Ryonna would love to get a crack at killing. The emperor. He was requesting their presence in his ready room for a mission debrief.

  “I guess Aphroditis was trying to tell us something after all with the Zargons’ presence in her vision,” shouted Argos as he shot a fireball at an incoming Zargon. The beast yelped as it fell to the ground and rolled for a few yards. Argos put it out of its misery with a second attack.

  “Yeah,” said Chase, before disintegrating the nearest enraged animal with a supercharged attack. “That we have to be prepared to fight for our objectives, though I could have told you that.”

  “I’m not sure I’m happy with your decision to assign Chris with Thor and the others.”

  “We need Furies on both teams, and I’m not happy about it either, but I thought you’d want to be there when we get to Menelas. Plus, Chris can let us know if he needs our help.”

  “Good point, but I think Thor and Poseidon could have protected Kvasir and Ares just fine on their own.”

  “When the two of you are done chitchatting,” protested Oryn, impaling three of the Zargons with icy formations shooting from the ground beneath them, “then perhaps we could get a move on? That’s just a suggestion of course, but mind you, we’re quite a distance from where your father is being held.”

  “Is she always this pleasant?” ask
ed Argos.

  “Compared to earlier today she’s actually quite nice,” said Chase.

  “You guys do know that I can hear you, right?” complained Oryn. “Let’s just finish the next wave before moving deeper into the palace.”

  “Next wave?” questioned Argos.

  Oryn pointed behind him, forcing Argos to turn around.

  “Great, there are more of these things.”

  “Be happy they’re just Zargons.”

  Argos unleashed a flurry of fireballs toward the pack of beasts currently hurtling at him. He incinerated more than half of his targets before a rain of icicles took care of the rest.

  “Hey! Those were my kills.”

  “Then learn how to aim so we don’t have to spend all day in this place.”

  “Enough!” shouted Chase. “Today is not the day to bicker like children.”

  Chase transformed into an Ultra Fury, with orange flames dancing around his aura and his long hair dancing atop his head. He moved so fast he left an orange trail behind him, and before Oryn or Argos could say a word, he had eliminated the last thirty plus creatures.

  “That was fast,” complimented Argos, with a thumbs up. “Why didn’t you just do that from the start?”

  “Because we’ll need to be careful about how we spend our pools of energy today; we don’t want to be caught empty-handed if Arakan shows up,” said Chase as his aura and eyes returned to their usual purple tinge.

  “Was it wise then to use this energy the way you just did?”

  Chase sighed. “No, it wasn’t, but for once Oryn is right, and we need to keep moving.”

  “For once?” Oryn repeated, raising an eyebrow.

  Spiros’ heart skipped a beat when Gaia’s clone opened her eyes and stepped out of the cloning pod. Seeing her avatar in the flesh was something he had dreamt about forever since they had met and developed their strong feelings for each other. Spiros never thought he would like Gaia when they first met though. Their first discussion, inside the holographic communication device he had built to first communicate with the AI, had been cold, to the point, and not exactly a two-way dialogue either.

  “Who am I?” was her first question, and it made Spiros’ heart thud a little.

  “Your name is Gaia.”

  “Gaia,” repeated the clone, with the coldness of an artificial life form; one with a neuronal net stripped of all emotions.

  “Yes. I need your help.”

  The clone looked around the room in a very mechanical way, which only underlined what Spiros already knew. Without the sub-routines that made Gaia her own lovable self, this body was a basic automaton; cold, calculating, not his equal, not his friend, not the woman he loved so dearly.

  “Are you my master?”

  “I suppose you could say that,” said Spiros, reluctantly.

  Just for a little while, my love. Together, we’ll get you better soon.

  Spiros wondered what to do with all the stored data she would experience now; he had sandboxed them so they could either be saved as alternate memories or simply wiped once the full Gaia was back. Still, he felt very uncomfortable around Gaia’s clone, especially using her as a bodyguard like he was about to do. Even though he knew his Gaia would want him to do so.

  “What is your name?” requested Gaia.

  “Spiros; my name is Spiros Malayianis.”

  “Administrator rights and root level access granted for Spiros Malayianis. Is there anything I can do for you today, Spiros Malayianis?”

  Spiros was ashamed, but he really wished he could kiss her. Right now, that kiss wouldn’t mean anything since there wouldn’t be any emotions behind it, so he banished the thought away. He needed to stay laser-focused on what they needed to accomplish in the next few hours and days. Timing would be everything, and they couldn’t afford to lose any. Spiros mentally accessed the ship in the landing bays of Argos’ station and turned the ship online and started pre-flight checks with the help of his brain implant.

  “Just call me Spiros; and yes, as a matter of fact, there is. Come with me; I’ll tell you more about our mission along the way.”

  Gaia mechanically bowed in agreement and followed Spiros out of the lab.

  Alpha squadrons hadn’t encountered any short-range resistance in the form of invisible fighters, though as far as they knew perhaps the ships attacking the fleet were fighters and they just didn’t bother trying to engage with the pilots’ craft.

  While it had only been a band-aid measure, Yanis has managed to reconfigure the power distribution to accelerate the recharging cycle of the Victory’s shields. Other ships were not so lucky, and the small tactical fleet had already lost two Obsidian destroyers as well as the Asgardian ship that had opened the super-fast FTL travel corridor for the fleet. The rest of the ships had just started using the Victory and Athena’s ship for cover. But it was a tedious task for these smaller ships’ captains, to constantly have to readjust their vector every time they were targeted. That gave the fleet an idea of where the enemy ship or ships were located but not precise enough to do anything about it.

  Daniel’s idea of using fast-rate lower-power lasers didn’t have any results either, and Daniel shared the frustration of some of his pilots who had expressed it over the comms.

  Beta Four exploded suddenly, and a lucky shot from nearby Alpha Six finally seemed to impact something looking like a shield. Though it was brief, and Six had failed to correctly guess the ship’s trajectory before disengaging to avoid the incoming salvo of long-range lasers coming from the fleet.

  Daniel swore. Another pilot had died without warning. And if they didn’t find a solution to at least locate their enemies, they’d all end up impacting with the enemies’ shield eventually, which seemed deadly even for the StarFuries. That also didn’t bode well for the Earth Alliance. Despite their earthly, and admittedly, distant origin as a transformed F-14 Tomcat, StarFuries were incredibly powerful and resilient star fighters. The fact that they blew up the second they impacted with their foes’ shield was very bad news for them. Of course, nowadays, the current fleet of StarFuries were built from scratch, and the only thing they shared with an actual F-14 was their outward appearance, and even so, the design had been refined and streamlined with each new generation of fighters.

  “Yanis,” said Daniel over the comms. “Please tell me you got at least some sensor data and that Beta Four didn’t die in vain.”

  “I got some sensor data, but I need more to try and figure out a way to adapt our sensors to a new scanning mechanism or frequency.”

  “Are you telling me you don’t even know what needs to be changed to make this work? Have you at least tried some things randomly?”

  “Yes, Cedric is working on that while I try to recalibrate the sensors themselves; so far we haven’t had much luck.”

  Dammit!

  “Keep at it; and find a way, soon,” barked Daniel, “or we’re history.”

  “Roger that, Daniel. And not to be a party pooper but we won’t have a solution anytime soon if we don’t get more data to analyze and work with, I’m afraid.”

  If these two couldn’t figure it out, who could? The thought suddenly triggered an idea in Daniel.

  “Understood. Will smaller impacts on their shield provide you with the data you require?”

  “Perhaps, but I would imagine a big impact would reveal way more information on how to not only detect but target these suckers.”

  They were with their backs against a wall, literally, until Daniel figured out a way to get them the data they needed. He thought he might have found a surefire way to finally impact the enemy ship or ships, but it still had to be determined at this point. Daniel’s instinct told him that there were at least two of them in tight formation. Now he needed a way to make sure he could get a bigger boom out of their shields than an exploding StarFury.

  That meant taking a page out of Chase’s book of reckless ideas, but desperate measures required desperate solutions.

 
; Daniel used his neuronal holo-HUD to take control of four pilot-less StarFuries from the Victory and launch them into space. He didn’t like wasting valuable resources such as StarFuries, but they didn’t have any other choice if they wanted to live another day.

  Chris landed both his feet onto the Fury guard’s thoracic cage, catapulting him against the nearest wall that promptly cracked upon impact. He then aimed at his immobilized prey while looking the other way, seeing another wave of Fury guards running inside the large room. Without bothering to look at his target, he incinerated the Fury with a massive column of green energy.

  “You should not waste your energy this way, little one,” said Poseidon as he retracted his Trident from an impaled guard.

  The guard fell on his knees in front of him, holding his bleeding chest and moaning. Poseidon released his grasp on his weapon, but the Trident stayed hovering where it was, not affected by the planet’s gravity, while Poseidon grabbed the Fury’s head with both hands and finished him off by vigorously twisting his neck.

  “Don’t call me that!” protested Chris, as he sent a flurry of smaller fireballs toward the next wave of Furies.

  Poseidon looked at Thor. “He’s a little on edge, isn’t he?”

  “Chris is doing fine; you’re the one that seems out of sorts. Is your new mechanical arm bothering you?”

  Poseidon opened and closed his bionic arm a few times.

  “No, it’s fine. I just miss the original one.”

  “Look at it this way, you at least have an arm, and you’re breathing, that has to count for something. I do have a question about it, though?”

  “Shoot,” said Poseidon, semi-absently.

  “It looks like a very complex piece of technology, but you don’t seem to be using it beyond what your other arm does. Isn’t it stronger and loaded with armament?”

  Poseidon looked at some of the blinking lights escaping from behind a black chrome finish of his new appendage.

  “It is. I just don’t need to at the moment. This feels a little like an aberration, but I wouldn’t expect anyone else to understand.”