Into the Fire Part I_Requiem of Souls

by Christian Kallias

  Chase considered teleporting the warrior away; perhaps send him to burn inside Erevos’ star. But that would consume an enormous amount of energy. So he decided against it. Chase saw a spark erupt from the damaged pod where the cloned Miseo had burst through earlier and it gave him an idea.

  He micro-teleported to the back of the Fury and hit him with a powerful slashing kick, effectively sending Miseo back to the pod. Chase teleported again inside the cell and quickly ripped two of the largest electrical conduits from the pod and thrust them at Miseo’s temples the moment he was in range.

  The Fury screeched and roared loudly, shaking the ground. Blood filled his mad eyes, giving him an even crazier look, something Chase didn’t think was possible. Small lightning bolts shot between Miseo’s clenched teeth and between his eyes. He grabbed both of Chase’s wrists and slowly freed himself from his frying brain session without breaking a sweat.

  This ain’t going well at all!

  Chase spun by somersaulting backward while still being held by Miseo. In the middle of his move, with incredible force, he thrust both his feet at the Fury catapulting him backward and sending a handful of the Fury’s teeth flying in the air.

  To Chase’s surprise, Miseo spun and recovered balance faster than Chase ended his somersault. Miseo took full advantage of his millisecond lead to land a powerful knee strike to Chase’s side. Chase flew, head first, and crashed to the floor as he heard two of his vertebrae break followed by acute pain.

  Before Miseo returned for his next attack, Chase tried getting back on his feet, but the pain paralyzed him, and he stumbled back to the ground. The cloned Fury launched himself at Chase with a massive crimson fireball-infused fist.

  Chase lifted his forearm in the hopes of deflecting some of the attack.

  This is going to hurt.

  Nearby, the blast doors exploded, and Chase felt a strong air current travel nearby.

  “Hey, asshole!” said a familiar voice.

  Chase couldn’t believe his eyes. There stood Argos in Ultra Fury form; it was like looking in the mirror and the eeriest of sensations. But surprise was soon replaced by pride.

  Argos blocked Miseo’s fireball-infused fist by grabbing his wrist. Argos’ orange eyes flashed stronger as he closed his hand, breaking every single bone in Miseo’s wrist. The Fury screamed in agony.

  “How?” was all Chase could mutter.

  “Long story, brother,” said Argos with a smirk.

  Oryn entered through the large hole in the room as Argos placed his palm an inch away from Miseo’s torso.

  “Now you die, and stay dead this time!” screamed Argos.

  Argos unleashed a powerful column of orange energy that traveled through the Fury’s ribcage as if it was made of paper, burning through tissue, organs and bones equally.

  A blank look of surprise filled Miseo’s crazy eyes as a watermelon-sized hole formed in the middle of his torso. The Fury fell on his back and was dead before he hit the cold, hard floor.

  Argos cracked his neck and spat on his kill before turning back toward Chase and proposing him his forearm. Chase took it and let his brother help him back up. As he did, he felt Argos’ healing energy mend his broken vertebrae.

  Chase could feel the impressive amount of energy radiating from his brother. It felt as if he was at least as powerful as him now.

  “Impressive; I didn’t think anyone else could reach this level of power.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re jealous?”

  “Not at all, but quite surprised.”

  “As I saw you in trouble. Why didn’t you just bury his ass?”

  Chase smiled and acknowledged Oryn as she passed by with a cold demeanor.

  “Your brother also regained some of his snark of old,” she snorted.

  “Have you now?” said Chase, tilting his head.

  “Nah, she’s just been getting on my nerves.”

  “Business as usual then.”

  Argos chuckled.

  “Let’s hurry,” said Chase. “We only have a little over a minute to get Menelas out of his cell before it blows up.”

  “What!? You may want to lead with that next time!”

  Snarky indeed.

  Cedric couldn’t move anymore, no matter how much power he tried to redistribute inside his super-strength mode. The metallic spider spewed a web at him that immobilized him cold.

  Whatever material the spider had used was stronger than anything Cedric thought he knew. The supersuit could easily break free of almost any type of earthly metals, even the most intricate nanotube mesh.

  “Dammit! Yanis, I could use a little help.”

  One of the spiders knocked into Cedric and sent him crashing on his back. It then lurched toward him with its mouth open.

  Yanis activated the pulse wave, which made the lights throughout the ship flicker once due to the enormous power requirements. This seemed to attract the spider’s attention for a second, long enough for Yanis to grab his rifle and unleash a series of smaller shock wave blasts toward the spider that was nearer to Cedric. Each impact made the spider skid slightly, but with each new blast, it managed to resist better as if it were adapting to the tech.

  Yanis kept firing while screaming at the top of his lungs, but then he got hit from the side by the second spider who spewed a similar netting that had taken Cedric out of commission. Yanis literally flew to the side and was stuck against the wall by the web.

  “Ouch,” he said before losing consciousness.

  “Yanis!!” screamed Cedric, still trying in vain to get free.

  The spider resumed walking toward him, and Cedric swallowed hard. He triggered the suit’s quadrinium-enriched claws and managed to cut through enough of the web to get back up before he could move toward the spider. The second arachnid spewed another large quantity of webbing and trapped him in place once more.

  “Give me a fucking break! You fugly piece of metal shite!”

  Outside of engineering, Cedric could hear the security team firing. Were they trying to get inside? Or fending off more of the metallic monstrosities?

  The commotion got the attention of one of the spiders, and it crawled near the wall next to the magnetically sealed blast doors.

  Its counterpart screeched as it started walking toward Yanis.

  “Don’t you dare touch my friend, you bitch!” screamed Cedric.

  The spider turned around, and its eyes glowed stronger as it jumped toward Cedric for the kill.

  The blast doors exploded into a million pieces, sending one arachnid tumbling to the floor. A fireball emerged from the resulting dusty cloud around the blast doors, hitting the metallic spider in mid-air, which was inches away from taking Cedric’s head off. The impact sent the metal arachnid crashing yards away with a loud screeching sound.

  Sarah emerged from the rubble and cloud of dust, fire burning in her eyes. Without even bothering to look at it, Sarah extended an open palm toward the nearby spider and incinerated it before it was able to get back on its legs.

  The last spider spun back up and ran toward Sarah. When it was about ten yards from her, it jumped, arriving upon her from above.

  Sarah scoffed.

  She extended both her palms toward the metallic spider and used telekinesis to stop it in midair. She then moved her hands aside, and each of the metallic beast’s legs tensed up, giving the spider a strange sun-like chrome look before Sarah intensified her telekinetic pull and ripped all eight legs from its body.

  The spider screeched; its rotating rows of teeth were spinning madly.

  She smirked. “You’re not touching another hair on my friends’ heads.”

  She spun all eight detached legs that were still hovering in the air and used them to impale the body of the spider. The yellow lights on its head died off, and Sarah released her telekinetic grasp. The pile of disabled metallic scrap crashed to the floor.

  Sarah freed both Cedric and Yanis, who was just now opening his eyes.

  “What happened
?” he muttered.

  “The Cap just kicked butt is what happened; too bad you missed it.”

  “Thanks, Cap,” said Yanis, holding his still throbbing head.

  “I’m just glad I arrived in time.”

  “And we’re glad you were here on the ship and not with the away team, or we would have been turned to chili con carne by now,” said Cedric.

  “Gross, Cedric,” said Sarah with a smile, “but so you.”

  “Whatcha gonna do; I’m just happy to be alive. You may want to return to the bridge unless there are more of these things? Yanis activated the pulse not long ago.”

  “That’s alright; Daniel has the bridge.”

  A powerful buildup of energy made the quad quadrinium core hum at an increased rate.

  “Looks like he’s about to take a shot at the spider ship,” said Cedric.

  “Hopefully we can get it off our back. We need to get moving; Arakan is now ahead of us. When the two of you feel better, can you please find a way to bypass that damn ship’s jump interdiction field? And while you’re at it, try and figure out how the hell these things got onboard without triggering any alarm?”

  “We’re on it, Cap,” said Cedric, while Yanis just flashed a thumb up.

  21

  Spiros let out a deep sigh as he looked at the ship from behind cover. Not what he expected, but then again, nobody stopped him from performing additional scans to try and get a size estimation before they left their broken transport.

  “Not exactly what I had in mind. This is bigger than we need; it probably crawls with crewmen that we’ll have to deal with.”

  “You didn’t specify any size parameters in your query. Should I return to the transport and scan for more ships?”

  “No, we don’t have the luxury of wasting more time, I’m afraid. We’ll have to make do with this one.”

  “How do you propose we dispose of the crew inside the ship?”

  “Non-lethally if we can. Perhaps by using the ship’s life support system to diffuse sleeping gas.”

  “I can easily achieve that by interfacing with their computer systems.”

  Spiros accessed his brand new neuronal implant and looked for a wireless access; none were detected. The ship, which looked like a smuggler’s vessel, must have wireless dampening fields to keep hackers away. That’s what Spiros would have done in their place.

  “Except, you have to do it manually. I have an implant allowing me to wirelessly hack into their systems. I’ll need to get inside the ship, though. Just make sure you take care of anyone we encounter as silently and quickly as possible.”

  Gaia grabbed both her belt blasters and set them to stun mode.

  “There are a couple of sentries near the ship. Let me take them out first. I’ll signal you when they’re taken care of.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Not to worry; I remember the parameters of the mission.”

  Before Spiros could say another world, Gaia disappeared in the foliage and trees. She was so stealthy that Spiros couldn’t tell where she was. A minute later she was already shadowing the first sentry who was slowly canvassing the ship’s ramp. He was armed with a heavy-duty laser rifle, and probably not set on stun.

  Spiros didn’t like it. These were probably the wrong kind of people to steal a ship from, but they had little choice in the matter now.

  Spiros’ heartbeat accelerated. He hated putting both their lives in such danger. While he knew Gaia’s martial arts and fighting functions were incredibly advanced, after all, she used these to help Furies like Chase, Argos and Chris train; but what worried Spiros was the frailty of Gaia’s new human flesh and blood body.

  Gaia made her move, putting a hand on the sentry’s mouth at the exact time as she stunned him by shooting him in the back. The sentry fell to his knees, and a moment later, Gaia had disposed of the unconscious body by dragging him behind some dense bushes.

  One down, one more to go, thought Spiros.

  While the new cover provided more protection, Ryonna questioned her choice when the Gorgar redeployed their troops and encircled them; now trying to get to them from every angle.

  “I don’t think we’ll last long enough for the rescue shuttle to come and get us, plus the Gorgar would outnumber the rescue parties pretty quickly.”

  “Let’s have faith that the Emperor will find a way to get us out of here.”

  Ryonna wanted to express her complaint about even needing the man’s help. Even though she was feeling less hatred toward him after their heartfelt talk, she still didn’t like asking for help from anyone, even less so from a foe. But right now she was too busy fending off hordes of Gorgar soldiers.

  “We’re screwed,” said Tar’Lock. “Perhaps we should have taken the mind controlling device with us.”

  “I’m not even gonna dignify that with a response,” said Ryonna. “Even if we decided not to use it and try diplomacy first, it made tactical sense to have it with us, but you threw one of your higher moral fiber tantrums. My people this, my people that speech.”

  “And yet the one time you should have put your foot down and knock some sense into me, you didn’t.”

  Ryonna growled and swore. But she had to admit that it was a mistake to listen to Tar’Lock’s imploring her not to use the device and try diplomacy instead. She could have just sneaked the device with her, and they would have gotten themselves out of this mess in an instant.

  “What I don’t understand,” commented Keera. “Is how they managed to become so organized in so little time? Where did they get the weapons?”

  “Well,” proposed Ryonna. “If they could assemble Fury super-destroyers in mere hours, thanks to their mind-blowing population numbers, I would think creating body armor and blasters would be child’s play.”

  “I guess so, but they already have a new political structure in place, in only a few days.”

  “We probably have Argos to thank for that.”

  “What are you saying?” inquired Tar’Lock.

  “That even if it wasn’t his intention, that device we gave your sister must somehow be responsible for all of this.”

  “He should have let me beta test it,” said Tar’Lock.

  “What’s done is done. Right now we need to survive this day, and hopefully, find your sister and undo this mess. Or simply command them to do what we tell them. I’m not sure this can be avoided now, no matter how morally ambiguous that is.”

  Tar’Lock clicked a few times, and it looked like he was about to complain, but he resumed firing on more incoming soldiers instead. A look of resignation in his eyes.

  The intensity and rapid rate of laser fire impacting their stone-covered shield made it difficult for the group to chance taking their heads out of cover. They were firing blindly instead. Keera activated the last sonic grenade and threw it as far as she could without breaking cover.

  “That’s it; we don’t have any more of those.”

  “Not that they made much of a dent anyway,” commented Ryonna.

  The fire around them intensified, and a nearby explosion sent a column of sand blasting upward, making the ground shake.

  “Now we’re really screwed,” said Ryonna, “they’re switching to artillery fire. It’s only a matter of time before they blast us to oblivion with a single shot.”

  Keera activated her wrist comm. “Emperor, if you don’t come get us now, and I mean now, we’re not going to make it.”

  The comm was met with heavy static and explosive noises.

  “Understood; be ready to move the moment you see your transport. We have to get the hell out of here; planetary systems have been proving problematic in the last few minutes. Get ready.”

  Another three artillery explosions detonated nearby, getting nearer to their bunker with every shot.

  “We’re not gonna make it,” said Ryonna.

  An unexpected deafening noise could be heard from the heavens. A sonic boom shock wave sent sand flying in every direction as the sky in
stantly darkened. The Emperor’s destroyer had micro-jumped into the atmosphere. Its laser batteries started raining fire in an extended concentric firing pattern around them, and the enemy’s incoming fire stopped almost immediately.

  The Obsidian destroyer had several grave scorch marks along its hull, indicating it had been in a prior battle of its own. The destroyer widened the circumference of its heavy laser fire, quickly pushing the enemy into retreat.

  “Wow! I didn’t know a ship could jump in-atmosphere,” said Keera.

  “That’s because it’s a very dangerous proposition, especially at that low an altitude,” said Ryonna. “If anything goes wrong, if any of the ship’s systems aren’t performing at peak efficiency, the destroyer could be torn to shreds in the process. Only a madman or a very courageous one would even consider attempting such a move.”

  Tar’Lock clicked in a crescendo pitch, expressing admiration.

  “Well…I did say it was urgent; still quite the ballsy move on the Emperor’s part, huh?” said Keera.

  Both gratefulness and awe twinkled inside Ryonna’s eyes as she saw the destroyer hanging over their heads and repelling the Gorgar troops that would surely have claimed their lives in the next few moments. When she spoke, Ryonna’s voice trembled slightly.

  “With the ship damaged as it is, you have no idea how much.”

  The amount of honor points the Emperor had just scored with this maneuver was more than words could express. He had literally risked the lives of thousands of souls to get to three, one of them having held a knife to his throat only a few hours before.

  A shuttlecraft exited the bowel of the destroyer’s cargo bay.

  “That’s our ride,” said Ryonna.

  The nearest Gorgar opposition were now miles away, in full retreat. The team hopped out of cover and ran against the strong sand winds toward the landing shuttle.