Into the Fire Part I_Requiem of Souls

by Christian Kallias

  “We understand that,” said Tar’Lock, “but since we’re the ones who freed you from enslavement, all we ask is that we’re given an audience with the elder queens to discuss a partnership that will benefit all of us.”

  “Nobody sees the mother queen,” said the guard with an impassive facial expression.

  “Mother queen?” repeated Tar’Lock in a surprised tone. “What happened to the elder gathering of queens?”

  “They’ve relinquished their place to a single, all-controlling queen,” the guard replied.

  “I don’t like this; there seems to be too many changes since our last visit. First, we have armed guards, then one main queen for a population as large as ours; this makes no sense. Whatever we did when we came, giving my sister the pill, must have had unforeseeable consequences. We need to fix this.”

  Keera took a step forward and bowed. “Please, would you mind telling us how we can get an audience with the mother queen, sir?”

  “Nobody sees the mother queen,” answered the guard coldly.

  Ryonna let a small rumbling growl escape her, which got the guards attention as he raised his rifle toward her. Big mistake. Ryonna instinctively grabbed the weapon with one hand and pushed its muzzle to the side before the Gorgar opened fire. She then smashed his face with a single knuckle sandwich, downing the guard on the spot.

  After a flurry of disagreeing clicks, Tar’Lock shot Ryonna an angry look. “What the hell, Ryonna? Is that how you approach diplomacy or anything else for that matter?”

  “We weren’t getting anywhere with this one,” she said with a shrug.

  An alarm resounded, and a massive amount of armed Gorgar soldiers began running toward them. When they started raining hellfire upon them, the group took cover behind a large boulder nearby.

  “What about them?” said Keera. “Do we try negotiating in the same manner?”

  “Alright, I’m sorry,” admitted Ryonna. “I didn’t think making one annoying and uncooperative guard unconscious would lead to such a shit storm.”

  “Perhaps that’s what you get for knocking that one unconscious every time he annoys you.” Keera gestured toward Tar’Lock. “You have a short fuse Ryonna, and while you have saved our lives many times over, you may want to keep your temper in check, especially when we’re on a sensitive diplomatic mission,” protested Keera.

  Tar’Lock’s eyes grew wide.

  “So those weren’t nightmares like you tried convincing me?” said Tar’Lock, rather furiously. “How many times have you knocked me out?”

  “Don’t be a baby; just a few times when you were irritating. You’re not exactly a calm space traveler; I thought I was doing us both a favor.”

  “Can you believe this?” asked Tar’Lock, looking at Keera.

  “I’m not getting involved; Ryonna already knows what I think about this matter,” said Keera.

  More incoming laser shots impacted nearby, and the boulder began to crumble little by little.

  “Let’s get outta here and regroup,” suggested Keera.

  Ryonna growled.

  “Droxians don’t shy away from a fight.”

  “You’re not killing Gorgars by the dozens!” protested Tar’Lock.

  “Don’t be ridiculous; I can stun them.”

  “Hundreds of them?” said Tar’Lock.

  “Watch me! And last I checked, they’re the ones firing at me, so if a few perish, that’s life,” snorted Ryonna.

  “No!” insisted Tar’Lock. “We started this mess; it doesn’t mean we have to take innocent lives because you can’t control your emotions.”

  “I’m with Tar’Lock on this one,” said Keera. “Not to mention, Gorgar are very fast too, at least the males, so unless we get the hell out of here right now, we may soon be outnumbered by a gazillion to one.”

  A large chunk of the boulder crumbled and fell between them, forcing the team to lower their position to the ground.

  “We’re running out of time,” said Tar’Lock.

  “Alright,” said Ryonna, reluctantly. “Let’s get back to the shutt—”

  Suddenly, a nearby explosion turned their transport into a flaming pile of metal.

  Tar’Lock furiously clicked as he buried his head in his hands.

  “Anyone for plan B?” asked Keera.

  Argos was in tremendous pain. The continuous heavy current traveling through bones and flesh made concentration a real issue.

  “We— need to get— out of this,” said Argos through gritted teeth.

  “A— agreed,” said Oryn, her face deformed from the pain. “Suggestions?”

  “Working on it.”

  Argos wished he had a plan but forming one seemed difficult. His current state reminded him of the pain side effect of the Kyrian drug but with none of the ecstasy brought on by the pleasure side of the drug, which helped balance things out nicely.

  Argos thought he heard his brother in his thoughts.

  Hang on Argos; I’m coming.

  No! protested Argos. We’ll get ourselves out of this mess on our own; go and get Menelas out of his cell; his rescue is more important.

  I’m not letting you two die without lifting a finger.

  And you’re not coming either. You get Menelas; if by then we’re not free, then the two of you can come to our rescue, but trust me, I’ll get us out of this. Now go, get our father!

  There was a slight pause. Argos did not doubt that his brother was reluctant to abandon them in their current predicament.

  Very well. Try and unleash a shock wave; I know it’s hard to concentrate your energy under these conditions, but let your anger take over if you have to.

  Argos was surprised to hear Chase say that, but right now he was pissed and had been trying to contain his anger.

  I thought that wasn’t a good policy?

  Today it is; just trust me on this, okay?

  Very well; get Menelas, we’ll join you shortly.

  Argos…If things get worse, you’ll let me know, okay?

  Sure thing, brother.

  Argos didn’t like lying to Chase anymore. But he would not let him know until he was sure Menelas was rescued. Even if things escalated, though right now he didn’t see how things could get any worse.

  Leave it to Arakan to devise such painful means of immobilization. What a coward! I’m looking forward to ripping his heart out. I don’t care what Chase promised Oryn, if I get a shot at killing that monster, I’m taking it!

  And Argos had no doubts that he would get a shot at this wish soon enough. But, right now, he needed the pain to stop and to get free. So he tried focusing on Arakan and the death of Zeus, which sent his emotions into a turmoil of hatred that he would normally fight against to not use anger and rage as his main emotional fuel.

  A holo-screen turned on in front of them and filled with a smirking image of Arakan.

  “I’m glad to see the two of you where you belong, within my grasp and ready to die. I’ll be there soon, so I can kill the both of you myself.”

  Arakan laughed out loud, which Argos decided was almost as painful to hear as the pain from the lightning bolts.

  Oryn unleashed a growl of pure hatred as an answer.

  Argos focused on bringing his aura to bear. It took intense focus to even light it up slightly. Upon doing so, he thought he felt a slight weakening in the current traveling through him. Not enough to help him do anything with more ease, but a sign that growing his aura would probably be the way to get them free.

  Argos felt his aura increasing, but unlike a moment earlier, the more he pushed it, the more the current traveling through him seemed to intensify. Painfully, Argos looked toward Oryn and saw she wasn’t waiting for him to come up with a solution and was also growing her cold aura.

  You fool!

  Since it took less energy to use telepathy than trying to speak, he connected with her mind.

  Stop what you’re doing at once! he commanded.

  I’m not staying idle; I’m getting out of
here and killing this asshole!

  I’m working on that, but intensifying your aura is lowering the temperature of this room, which in turn amplifies the current we’re receiving.

  I don’t care! I’m getting us outta here; if I reach absolute zero, the current will stop.

  So will our bodies abilities to function; so please, just give me a shot to get us out of this mess. If I fail, you can go ahead with your ludicrous plan. Deal?

  But Oryn refused to answer and kept increasing both her aura and with it, their pain levels.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” said Chase out loud.

  Six identical fighters all stepped forward from their wall cages and faced him with a look of pure madness burning in their flashing red eyes. They resembled Miseo; every single one of them. Chase could tell that they suffered the same mental illness as the one that he and Oryn had barely managed to kill onboard the Fury super-destroyer.

  Arakan must have cloned his late son and injected these fighters with the defective treatment Oryn had used on her brother. What a sick thing to do for a grieving father, Chase thought. But Arakan had clearly lost his mind a long time ago; this was just but another unthinkable stunt confirming it.

  “I don’t have time for this,” said Chase glancing over at the time being projected on the holo-screen. Four minutes and seventeen seconds remaining.

  Chase expanded his mind and found the computer in charge of this room. He located the command to allow him to close the trap doors. He sprang to action as fast as he could, and before the cloned Miseos’ had time to react, he catapulted them back into their tiered cells with punches, kicks and elbow hits. He teleported the last one inside before triggering the closing mechanism on the trapdoor and retreating.

  When putting the Miseos back in their cells, Chase noticed they were acting on a type of suspension system, so he searched the function to reactivate this suspension of the pods as he heard intensified growling and other pounding noises on all the doors.

  The command to activate artificial suspension was encrypted, and Chase had trouble bypassing it. Eventually, he found a backdoor to it, piggybacking to the sub-system and triggering an emergency suspension function by emulating a toxic atmosphere outside of the pods. Five out of the six pods put their Miseos to sleep, but one pod reported an error, and by the time he could check its diagnostics, the trap door exploded, followed by a mad roar that made the ground shake.

  Three minutes and forty seconds were left for him to not only get out of this corridor but also to rescue Menelas. That is if Menelas were where Oryn said he would be. Chase tried communicating with his father telepathically, but there was no answer. He swore.

  Soon, a cloned Miseo stepped toward him, his aura expanding exponentially at an impressive rate. Chase had to think fast and hope that these clones were not as strong as the original Miseo; as there was no way he could dispatch a similarly powerful opponent in the time he had left.

  When crimson fireballs started raining out toward him, he dodged them and engaged the clone Fury with all his might.

  19

  When Spiros opened his eyes, there was smoke inside the cockpit and an intense light coming from outside the cracked windshield.

  Shit! How the hell are we going to get off this planet now?

  Gaia was nowhere to be seen, and Spiros’ heart started beating faster.

  “Gaia? Are you there?” he shouted out loud.

  The cockpit door opened, and Gaia ran inside and crouched near him, which reassured him somewhat, even though he couldn’t move his legs. They felt trapped under something.

  She covered his mouth with the top of his shirt.

  “Try and avoid breathing that smoke as much as you can; keep your shirt on your nose,” she said before getting back up.

  She had a fire extinguisher in her hand and began fending off a few fires that had started inside the ship. After a moment, the flames were extinguished, and Gaia went to the nearest holo-console. When the holo-console refused to turn off, she punched its side. Lights blinked a few times but quickly died off. She kicked the console one more time with her knee and the lights returned inside the cockpit. A holo-terminal projected upward and she entered a few commands that successfully activated the life support system. Soon the fans successfully siphoned out the smoke.

  “What happened?” inquired Spiros.

  “We lost control of the ship and crashed on the planet.”

  “How come we’re still alive?”

  “Luck; we landed atop a forest of tall trees, bursting through half of it,” said Gaia, pointing outside. “The trees acted as a soft landing site of sorts; well somewhat softer than the ground would have been with our inbound velocity.”

  Spiros saw large branches with pretty blue leaves from the windshield. A purple rodent creature with scruffy fur ran along a visible branch and looked inside the cockpit. Its eyes were bright orange, giving it a mean look. A second later, it made a high-pitched screech and ran away.

  That’s when Spiros saw the metallic beam trapping his feet, which he could barely feel at the moment.

  “Gaia, I think I’ll need your help.”

  Gaia saw that Spiros was trapped and immediately ran out of the cockpit.

  “Hey!” protested Spiros. “Where are you going? I need your help!”

  A few seconds later, Gaia returned with a steel pipe and stuck it under the beam. She used the pipe as a lever to lift the beam enough for Spiros to get free. Sensation returned to his feet, but they still felt numb, probably due to the beam cutting his blood flow for an unknown period.

  “Thank you; I thought you left.”

  “My programming is to make sure you’re unharmed. I would never abandon you. But I didn’t even need to try and lift the beam; I knew just from looking at it that it was too heavy for my muscle mass to move it without a lever force.”

  Spiros had, of course, guessed all that when she returned with the pipe. But talking to Gaia as if she had emotions and understood concepts like fear and worry made him feel better, at least until he got very machine-like responses back, reminding him this was just a temporary, stripped and basic AI that had nothing to do with the Gaia he was trying to save.

  “How far are we from the biomaterial’s location?” he inquired.

  “By foot, I estimate it should be a little under two days.”

  Except, we didn’t have two days. We shouldn’t have come here.

  “We can’t afford that much time; we need to be back to the base before that.”

  “The probabilities of achieving this goal under the current parameters are less than one percent.”

  I don’t need those kinds of odds either, he thought.

  “Then let’s change the parameters, shall we,” said Spiros with a forced smile. “Do we still have sensor resolution?”

  “We’re running on secondary power cells, but we should be able to get resolution up to one hundred miles.”

  “Then scan for the nearest vehicle that could get us to our target coordinates faster.”

  Gaia mechanically nodded and entered commands on the holo-console. A couple of beeps got Spiros’ attention.

  “Anything?”

  “I’ve detected a vehicle suitable for our needs that is one point five miles away.”

  “Now we’re talking.”

  “Haven’t we been talking all this time?”

  Spiros shook his head as he struggled to get back on his feet. “Never mind.”

  “Captain,” said the tactical officer. “Long-range sensors are detecting a ship traveling at hyperspace speed currently on course for Erevos.”

  “Open a channel to Athena’s ship.”

  “Channel open, Captain.”

  Athena’s face filled the bridge’s main holo-screen.

  “What can I do for you, Sarah? I’ve received your targeting slaving request and linked our computers successfully.”

  “Thank you, but that’s not why I called you. We’ve detected a ship i
n hyperspace going toward Erevos.”

  “We have as well. In all likelihood, it’s Arakan’s ship returning to base. We need to get moving so we can provide support as well as transportation away from the planet for our away team.”

  “Fortunately, Chase should be able to teleport the away team if needed.”

  “As much as I trust my son’s abilities, I would imagine their mission is forcing them to use a lot of energy fighting their way to Aphroditis and Menelas. We also have to assume that Chase could be incapacitated, in which case, the entire away team would be marooned on the planet.”

  Sarah swore in her head. She’d been so used to Chase’s ability to get things done one way or another that she hadn’t even factored in that this was a possible outcome. Her anxiety levels rose as Athena’s words sank in.

  “Right. Let me get back to you soon, but we’re going to have to get out of here and try to lose that ship in hyperspace.”

  “Normally, I would agree. Unfortunately, our technicians tell me we can’t use the jump engines; the target ships seem to be emitting a jump interdiction field.”

  “Hang on, Athena,” said Sarah looking at her ship’s pilot.

  He didn’t need any verbal orders and started keying commands on his holo-console. Shortly after, he looked back at Sarah and shook his head from side to side.

  “How come we didn’t detect this any sooner?”

  “The field being emitted,” said the pilot, “isn’t of any design our computer has encountered before. I’ve only detected the problem by trying to activate the jump engine pre-flight sequence. I’m sorry, Captain, I should have checked that earlier.”

  “No need to apologize; there was no way for you to know.”

  In fact, I should have proposed the idea of retreat earlier, but I’ve let my will to command this vessel to the best of my abilities cloud my judgment in this matter.

  “Athena, I can confirm we’re also unable to use jump engines.”

  “Then we need to destroy that ship, and this has just become urgent.”

  “I’ll get back to you soon.”