Into the Fire Part I_Requiem of Souls

by Christian Kallias

  “We’re almost there,” said Tassos. “One more left.”

  We’re going to make it, Spiros thought.

  The station rocked heavily and threw both of them to the floor. A series of nearby explosions shook them again.

  Spiros wondered if his thought had jinxed them. The station could still be obliterated by the armada outside, though he didn’t see the logic in them doing that while there were boarding parties deployed. Surely they wanted to get their hands on the station without destroying it, or they wouldn’t have sent in troops.

  Tassos was the first to try to get back up but screamed the instant he put weight on his left foot. He fell back to the floor. Spiros came to him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I think I’ve broken my ankle. You go. Prepare the Phoenix. I’ll try to make it, but if I’m not there by the time you’re ready to fly the ship, you get the hell out of here!”

  “Not a chance. You’re coming with me.”

  “Look, you know me. I’m not trying to be a hero, but you must get out. I’ll only slow you down.”

  Spiros put his shoulder under Tassos’ arm and helped him walk. “Stop this nonsense. We’re both getting out of here.”

  Less than a minute later, they arrived in front of cargo bay six.

  Spiros rested Tassos against the wall and opened the blast doors.

  He knew something was wrong the second the doors split open and a large cloud of black smoke filled the corridor and plunged them into darkness.

  “Stay here. I’ll check it out.”

  “Be careful,” said Tassos with a nod as he winced with pain.

  Spiros blindly walked through the thick smoke, covering his mouth and nose with his sweater, until he finally recovered some of his sight. What he saw made his heart sink.

  Half of the Phoenix was gone. Part of the ship was still on fire, but the entire tail section had been obliterated. The exposed metal still glowed orange where the blast had burned through the ship’s armor. The damage was fresh.

  “Is everything okay?” shouted Tassos from just outside the cargo bay.

  “The ship is toast. We’re not going anywhere.”

  “Then let’s try our luck with a shuttle craft. There’s at least one in each cargo bay.”

  “Except this one,” said Spiros to himself.

  The Phoenix had its own dedicated cargo bay. Spiros had requested that no other ship or cargo be put in here, so he had sufficient space to conduct his tests. A decision he deeply regretted now.

  An emergency force field surrounded the hole where the blast had taken out the Phoenix, but it was flickering heavily. It wouldn’t last much longer.

  What the hell are we going to do now?

  12

  “What’s taking you so long?” asked Tassos as he painfully limped inside the cargo bay after Spiros.

  Spiros ran a scan of the ship with his brain implant to locate the memory banks. The ship had lost power, but the data transfer had been completed. If the hardware holding the data was still there, he could recover it.

  His overlay displayed the memory banks inside the remainder of the Phoenix. He sprinted toward what was left of the ship and arrived in front of the panel that held the memory banks.

  He tried opening the metallic cover protecting the electronics behind it. Since the ship had lost power, he couldn’t open it using the touch control panel.

  “Spiros?” he heard in the distance.

  “Stay where you are. I’m getting the memory banks and will be there in a minute.”

  “Okay, but hurry. We shouldn’t stay here too long. That force field doesn’t look like it’s going to hold.”

  Spiros looked around and saw a sharp piece of metal shrapnel. He grabbed it and immediately regretted it. It was still burning hot. He released the metal shard but not before suffering serious burns to his fingers. He covered his hands with the sleeves of his sweater and grabbed the shard again. It was still too hot, but he had no choice but to continue. He inserted the sharp edge between the seal of the memory banks’ compartment and pried it open.

  There were five memory chips inserted into the computer core. Having no idea about which one contained his data, he unlocked and removed all five chips and put them in his pants pockets.

  He emerged from the Phoenix and ran back toward the still-foggy blast doors.

  “I’ve got them. Where are you?” he shouted.

  But there was no answer.

  When Spiros burst through the blast doors back into the corridor, he stopped in horror.

  A large Zarlack lizard was holding Tassos by the throat five feet from the ground. Adrenaline flooded Spiros’ body, and he instinctively charged toward the beast, leading with his shoulder and putting his entire weight into the move.

  It did not go as he thought it would. He crashed into the beast and was thrown to the floor, an unbearable pain radiating from where his shoulder had impacted with the Zarlack’s scaly, metallic-looking skin.

  The Zarlack hadn’t moved at all as a result of Spiros’ failed rescue attempt. It looked down at Spiros and snarled before opening its mouth to display a row of ugly and sharp teeth.

  Spiros looked at Tassos. His face was deformed by pain and fear, his eyes filled with dread and helplessness; he knew he was about to die.

  “R-run,” said Tassos, just before his neck was crushed.

  Ignoring the physical pain, Spiros jumped back to his feet and started to run.

  He dared not look back but heard heavy footsteps behind him, and they were gaining. What was he to do against such a monster? The fear of death gave him more energy and stamina than he ever thought possible. He ran faster than he ever had before, but he didn’t know where to go, or if he could escape the beast that was still gaining on him. His mind filled with dread and horrid flashes of his impending doom.

  The command center’s entrance was being pounded upon from the outside. The thick metal doors deformed more with each powerful impact. Animalistic growls accompanied the unceasing pounding. The doors would soon break.

  “Draw your weapons. Use your consoles for cover,” said Leonidis.

  Leonidis drew his service blaster pistol and aimed it at the middle of the doors, his heart pounding and his hands slightly trembling.

  He had been in firefights before, but not against tall lizard beasts that seemed to have impenetrable skin. He had witnessed their unnatural strength and agility in the holo-footage he reviewed from the multiple boarding parties as his security teams engaged the enemy. These encounters hadn’t lasted very long, and the Zarlacks had brutally murdered the entire crew of Damocles-3 that came to stop their advance. Their blaster tech was superior. Their natural scaly armor was thick enough to deflect Star Alliance portable guns, and they also used claws to impale their enemies. When that wasn’t enough, they also slashed their tails to incapacitate or even behead Star Alliance personnel.

  Leonidis knew he and every one of his crew was living their last moments. He wanted to say something, to reassure them, but he couldn’t find any words that would make a damn bit of difference. They were about to be slaughtered and, as much as he was hoping for a miracle, he knew better than to give false hope to the women and men under his command.

  He touched his implanted comm-link and tried reaching Spiros, but he still couldn’t get a signal through. Hopefully, Spiros had departed from the station, though Leonidis’ current thoughts were more focused on his family.

  The pounding on the now badly deformed doors stopped for a moment. Leonidis saw movement through a gap in the twisted metal. Soon after, the doors exploded and were propelled forward. Flames and smoke rushed inside the command center with the smell of death in their wake.

  In the ensuing chaos, everyone blindly opened fire as a small group of lizards stormed the place. The officers’ weapons were useless against their foes, and Leonidis saw the first casualties amongst his crew, killed in a horrible fashion: beheaded by tail slashing, impaled by long, sharp claws
and worse. Thirty seconds in and already half of the command center crew had perished in the midst of screams and blood-spattering chaos. A Zarlack jumped and landed right in front of Leonidis, teeth clenched, a foul stench emanating from its mouth.

  Leonidis raised his blaster and instinctively shot the beast in the eye. For the first time, he saw a blaster shot finally do some damage to these creatures. The laser bolt burned through the eyeball, and purple blood shot out of the burnt socket. The Zarlack screeched and took three swaying steps backward as it held its large hand over its lifeless eye.

  That’s got to kill it.

  “Go for their eyes,” he screamed.

  A quick glance around showed him that there was only a handful of officers still standing, including his friend and first officer Michalis Maniatis.

  The lizard beast in front of Leonidis regained its composure and unleashed an angry, deafening roar. It expelled gooey and smelly spittoons toward him from its open mouth. Leonidis aimed toward the second eye, but by the time he depressed the trigger of his blaster, the Zarlack had already protected its remaining eye with its palm. The shot burned through its flesh, but that didn’t stop it.

  Before he could line up the third shot, the Zarlack slashed its tail, hitting Leonidis’ firing hand, and sent his blaster scattering across the floor. Then a punch that felt more like a hammer blow hit Leonidis under the jaw and propelled him crashing hard into the console behind him. Shards of glass pierced his clothes and skin and lodged in his back. Leonidis screamed with pain.

  The Zarlack walked toward him and extended a long trio of sharp claws from its fist.

  This is it. Now I’m going to die.

  Leonidis glanced to the side to see if a weapon was nearby and saw the beheaded body of his communications officer, blood spilling from his clean-cut neck. The sight disgusted him but also brought rage back to the surface.

  If I must die, I’m going down fighting.

  13

  The Zarlack was gaining on Spiros and getting dangerously close. Spiros had only a handful of seconds to do something, or he would surely die.

  The thought gave him the courage to think outside the box for a technological way to save his life. He had to survive. So many people had died. He couldn’t just let himself be killed this way. If he did, their deaths would be rendered meaningless.

  While still running as fast as he possibly could, ignoring the terrible pain throughout his old body’s joints, he accessed the schematics of the corridor he was in and located a nearby juncture point where a force field could be erected. He hacked into the controls with his implants to shave off extra seconds he didn’t have, going in with authorization codes, and overlaid the exact location of the force-field generator on top of his vision so he would know exactly when to trigger it.

  Too early and he would trap himself on the wrong side or, worse, be cut in two as the field deployed. He boosted power to the generator by diverting energy from the laser batteries on this deck. Their loss wouldn’t affect the battle outside, which was already lost anyway.

  The moment he walked past the mark he had set on his HUD, he mentally activated the force field and jumped forward. He heard the force field come to life just before he crashed to the floor.

  He turned around just in time to see the Zarlack run and crash into the field and be violently ejected backward before falling on its back.

  Spiros let a long sigh escape his burning lungs. He was not in the right shape for such long efforts and was now desperately trying to catch his breath. The Zarlack lay on its back, unconscious, while Spiros took a few much-needed breaths of air.

  Leonidis grabbed the small lightblade from his belt and turned it on. The six-inch, light-blue energy blade vibrated to life. This would probably be his last move, so he had to make it count.

  The Zarlack ambled toward him, still holding a hand over its burnt eye. The other burned with hatred. It growled, and Leonidis didn’t need words to understand the beast’s call for revenge. It wanted to kill him. At least in that last moment, they had this in common. Leonidis was also determined to kill his foe.

  Leonidis sprinted toward the beast, shouting from the bottom of his lungs, which seemed to confuse his enemy, who stopped advancing. The Zarlack slashed its tail at Leonidis, and he let himself fall, using his momentum to skid on the floor between the Zarlack’s legs, effectively dodging his enemy’s tail.

  Leonidis grabbed one of his foe’s ankles with his free hand and felt the sharp scales cut through his skin. He then squatted and propelled himself toward the back of the Zarlack’s neck. Leonidis planted his lightblade at the bottom of the neckline where the scales appeared thinner. His blade shot through, and its tip emerged on the other side, piercing the Zarlack’s throat.

  The Zarlack fell hard on its knees while Leonidis held on for dear life, with his legs around the beast’s torso. The upper body of the beast angled forward, and Leonidis knew he had killed his enemy. He unlocked his feet and landed on the side of the collapsed lizard. He recovered the still-pulsating lightblade from the corpse and turned around, a look of determination in his eyes.

  “Who’s next?” he said out loud.

  He was now running on pure adrenaline and rage. His fear levels were off the charts, but he was determined to end his life on a high note and go down fighting until his very last breath.

  He caught a glimpse of a pair of Zarlacks converging toward his first officer.

  “Watch out, Michalis. Go for the back of their n—”

  But before Leonidis could finish his warning, the first Zarlack had punched through the lieutenant commander’s chest with its tail, while a second jumped in the air, grabbed his friend’s head and ripped it from of his body, along with Michalis’ entire spine.

  Barbaric bastards! You asshole. You’re my next kill.

  Leonidis screamed his frustration as he sprinted toward the Zarlack who had beheaded his friend, a look of utter hatred in his eyes.

  The Zarlack turned around and saw Leonidis running toward it. It threw the severed head and spine toward Leonidis who had to take a step to the side to dodge it. Some of the blood on the spine spilled onto Leonidis’ face. He wiped it with his injured hand. This spread both Michalis’ blood and his own into four red lines across his cheeks. It looked like war paint. The feeling of blood on his face strengthened his resolve. He would end the murderous beast’s life even if that were the last thing he ever did.

  Spiros stood and dusted himself off. He felt slightly better, though he still had a sharp pain in his shoulder and the mother of all head-pounding headaches.

  He couldn’t worry about that now. He had to find a way to get off the station. That’s when it hit him like a hammer. The Phoenix had stealth and a jump engine. Most shuttles on Damocles-3 didn’t. There was one larger troop-deploying shuttlecraft, but it was five decks below. He could probably make a short jump with it. But they would surely track it and destroy it. It would also take too long to reach the shuttle from his current position. The more time passed, the more Zarlacks boarded and the less freedom anyone would have to roam the station.

  Soon he would be overwhelmed and unable to get anywhere. And shortly after that, the station’s self-destruct mode would detonate and kill everyone on board, himself included.

  The Zarlack started moving again. Its tail flailed for a second before it released a muffled growl.

  This is not good.

  Spiros didn’t expect the lizard to recover so quickly. These beasts were far more resilient than they seemed.

  The Zarlack rose and shook its head. When it saw Spiros on the other side of the force field, it rushed and punched it with full strength and screeched from the pain. That didn’t stop it, though. It kept pounding on the field and even slashed its tail toward it. It then locked its frustrated gaze onto Spiros and roared.

  Spiros didn’t want to stay and test the longevity of the field, so he turned and resumed running.

  His options seemed more and more limited. H
e couldn’t escape the station, and he couldn’t just try to survive under the current regime, or he would get blown up by the self-destruct. There was only one thing he could do, even though it was a long shot and something he hoped he could avoid. He had to hide inside the station, at least until some backup was dispatched. But before any of that could happen, he needed to stop the self-destruct sequence.

  Fortunately, he wasn’t far from engineering, and that was the best place to execute the next part of his desperate plan.

  14

  Leonidis only had a couple of seconds to make his move. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and planted his lightblade into it. It emitted a high-pitched sound.

  Leonidis threw the extinguisher at the Zarlack, which caught the bottle-shaped projectile with its tail. It brought its tail and the whistling extinguisher near its face and removed the blade. The extinguisher exploded and threw the Zarlack to the ground.

  The blade spun in the air and Leonidis reached to grab it. One false move and he would slice all his fingers, but he grabbed the handle with a precise and fluid motion.

  He then launched himself toward the downed Zarlack and went for its eyes, but he was smashed out of the way by a slash of his enemy’s tail. He rolled on the floor and stopped against a nearby console, his head pounding.

  By the time Leonidis looked up, another Zarlack was jumping toward him. Leonidis ripped the back panel off the console, located the power source and rolled out of the way quickly enough to avoid getting crushed by a large Zarlack foot.

  Leonidis quickly jumped back on his feet and threw the lightblade toward the exposed power source of the console. The Zarlack saw the move and tried stopping the knife with his palm a couple of inches before impact. The knife impaled his hand and pierced the other side. The momentum of the throw carried the tip of the blade just far enough to make contact with the power source.