Jump Starting the Universe Book Bundle

by John David Buchanan

  Zir screamed again, and retreated several steps, where he shuddered so hard they thought he might pass out. In his state of rage, what was about to happen was beyond his control it. He hadn’t counted on his partner going down so easily. He had assumed the comments he had often heard about his expert hand-to-hand combat skills were true. A violent tremor shook his body from head to toe so hard he looked like his joints were coming apart.

  This was not what Zir wanted, to be exposed in front of thousands upon thousands of people, but he had lost control. Wobbling side to side, he lowered his chin to his chest. Until that moment, Soe had no reason to expect something was wrong, but Zir’s treachery was now supremely evident. So, Ute and Kar now understood why Zir was trying to annihilate the Blue Bantorians.

  “Get them out,” yelled Soe. He looked at Wayne, “Get them out, get them out, now.”

  “Soe, they can’t leave the pitch until the tournament is over.

  “Pull them out, he yelled frantically, “Zir is a mutant.”

  Wayne and Amelia stared at him, not understanding the gravity of the situation.

  Ute yelled at Soe and pointed toward the field, “They are changing.”

  Wayne could not believe his eyes. Got recovered enough to roll over onto his hand and feet then stood next to Zir, whose chest had split open, expanded to three times its size, and peeled backward until the edges touched behind his back. While his chest enlarged, his arms and legs underwent the same transformation. His head and neck were engulfed by the expanding chest cavity as it split and grew, but now they reappeared, swiveling back in-place on his shoulders.

  Where an unusually tall Bantorian had stood moments earlier, now stood a fully transformed Durgian. Nearly ten feet tall, his thick charcoal gray skin had deep furrows like the bark on an old tree. Got was halfway through the same transformation when Ute pointed to the far side of the pitch and yelled, “Soe, here comes more.” Other transformed mutants were now climbing through the panicked crowd and over the safety rails down to the field.

  “We must find the reducer guns,” yelled Kar.

  Wayne looked at Amelia, “Stay with them,” he said reassuringly patting her on the hand, and he turned and jumped over the railing to the field.

  “Wayne,” she screamed, and started to climb the railing.

  Soe grabbed her to prevent her from going over.

  Struggling to get free she yelled at Wayne, “You had better be careful,” but he didn’t hear her; the sound of panic in the stands drowned out he voice. Then she turned to Soe who was still restraining her. “I have to go with him. We have to stay together.”

  “We will return,” said Soe. “We have to retrieve equipment from the amphitheater storage rooms. Please, it will be best.”

  Ute grabbed Amelia’s hand and they ran to follow Soe and Kar down the stairs.

  Wayne ran right past Blackie at full speed and launched himself feet first through the air and right into the chest of a mutant who had come up behind Joules. It was like kicking a tree rooted in a heavy clay pot. The mutant didn’t stumble backward as Wayne had hoped, but toppled over backwards to the ground.

  Zir rushed Joules hoping to catch her off-guard. Turning to deflect her attack, he caught her arm and put her in a choke hold. Joules stomped the bridge of his foot with all her might and stunned him enough to slip from his grasp. While Joules backed away, Zir and Got were joined on the field by six other mutants. Now, Zir did the taunting.

  “Look, the puny wanderers are here to save the day. You still think you’re going to pull that off? Because of your meddling we’ll have to change our plans, but no matter, we have Durgians in all the right government offices. Time is on our side.”

  As Zir was talking the other mutants had spread out to form a circle around Joules, Blackie and Wayne.

  “When you are gone, we will be one step closer to subjugating the Bantorians,” continued Zir. “Did you believe Elo’s ridiculous prophecy? Did you think it would be easy, because you have some skill in hand-to-hand fighting?”

  “No, I thought it would be easy for another reason entirely.” Blackie turned to Joules with a smile on his face and said, “You’re on.”

  “Kill them,” snarled Zir to the other mutants.

  Joules had anticipated his reaction and before the mutants could move, a burst of brilliant white light shot into the air. The energy was so bright and intense it temporarily blinded everyone except Joules, who had closed her eyes. When their sight returned, hundreds of beams of light swirled in the air all around her, Blackie and Wayne, preventing the mutants from approaching.

  Zir screamed like he was possessed, “I said get them, Bir,” and he grabbed the mutant and pushed him at the swirling beams of energy.

  Bir lost his footing and stumbled forward. He would have been burned badly, or killed, but before he hit energy field, Joules retracted it so he wouldn’t be hurt.

  An evil air of satisfaction swept across Zir’s face. “So, you don’t like hurting others, let’s try again,” and he reached to grab another mutant.

  Joules raised the palms of her hands, pointing them outward and a solid beam of energy erupted into the air and shot toward Zir, who stumbled backwards. Then, the beam split to form eight beams that hovered in the air, each advancing toward one of the Durgians. When the beams stopped two meters from each of their targets, a brilliant flash of light sent the swirling energy beams around Joules into a crisscrossing pattern, forming a dome of tightly woven strands of energy.

  Zir yelled his displeasure and grabbed the mutant next to him, slinging him toward the gyrating energy field. Another blinding flash of light scorched the air. As their vision cleared, Blackie and Wayne watched as Joules rolled the edges of their protective dome upward forming a cone. Then, she retracted the beam in front of the oncoming mutant several feet, and as he approached the end of the beam, she tipped the cone-shaped structure over and dropped it to the ground, trapping Zir inside, alone.

  Looking like he was possessed by an evil spirit, Zir frantically screamed and yelled at his fellow mutants to rush the Wanderers. But they couldn’t, the beams of energy in front of each of them still hung in the air, spitting and popping as they incinerated small bits of dust and moisture in the air. Joules had advanced the energy beams, backing the mutants up until they were fifteen yards away.

  Blackie turned toward the stands behind Wayne looking for Amelia and their Blue Bantorian friends in time to see another mutant running across the field toward them. Bolting toward it, Blackie threw himself into a roll on the ground before they collided, knocking the mutant off his legs. Blackie rolled up onto his feet prepared to fight but it wasn’t necessary. The mutant was lying stiffly on the ground, barely breathing, as the end of an energy beam hovered dangerously close to his chest.

  Blackie rejoined Wayne and Joules as Zir paced inside his cage and shouted at the other mutants. “How long can you hold them?” asked Blackie.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. But I feel strong.” Then she added, “But if I begin to fail, that cage around Zir is the last thing I’ll drop. That miserable vermin deserves a prison cell.”

  “And that is where they are all going,” shouted Soe, as he, Ute, Kar and Amelia came across the field pulling a small cart of equipment.

  As they neared the mutant lying on the ground, Ute reached into the cart and retrieved a reducer gun, a silver and black weapon that resembled a 12-gauge sawed off shotgun, except it had an energy pack bolted beneath the barrel instead of a magazine port, and an energy accelerator was threaded into the end of the barrel where chokes on a shotgun would be installed.

  Zir was yelling wildly at the mutant to run, but he was pinned tightly to the ground by the energy beam hovering over his chest. Soe, Kar, and Amelia each grabbed a reducer gun and several sets of cuffs and zip-ties from the cart and walked toward their friends in the middle of the pitch. As they walked, Kar pointed his gun at the mutant on the ground.

  “We were for
ced. Zir threatened to kill our families if we did not join him,” said the mutant.

  “That may be true, but I find it suspiciously convenient for you to say so now, and not warn us before,” and he pulled the trigger.

  A shot fired from the gun and hit the mutant in the chest. Kar’s gun made a soft high- pitched sound, and as it recharged, a pulsing green dot appeared on the mutant’s skin. It shattered into fragments that raced out from the dot to form a bright green web surrounding the mutant. Zir was yelling violent threats at Kar as the mutant on the ground slowly changed back into the form of a Bantorian and lost consciousness.

  When Joules retracted the energy beam that had held him to the ground, Kar rolled him over to cuff his hands and secured his feet with a thick plastic tie. As he stood to join the others, three more guns fired and three Durgians fell to the ground. One of the Durgians thought he might have a better chance if he ran. Wayne thought otherwise and tackled him from behind. As Wayne got up, one of Joules’ energy beams pinned him to the ground.

  “Running will only make it worse,” warned Joules. “It would be best if you lie down.”

  Realizing they couldn’t win, five more Durgians laid down on the ground.

  Zir was beside himself. Ranting and screaming in a language only the Durgians and the Wanderers could understand he hurled insults at them. Breathing heavily, he stood in the middle of the cage, then without warning he moved to the one side of the cage and crouched like he was going to run a sprint.

  “Don’t do that Zir, you can’t escape,” yelled Joules, realizing what he was about to do. “You can’t touch the barrier; the jolt of energy would kill you.”

  “I think you underestimate me,” snarled Zir, and he sprinted toward the other side of the cage.

  He hit the interlaced web of energy beams with a remarkable amount of force, given the short distance he had run. The impact caused the web to distort and bow outward. Zir was momentarily suspended in air by the convex lattice work of energy beams, then it snapped back into place with a tremendous flash of energy. Zir was instantly incinerated. Bits of ash thrown in the air by the blast crackled as they floated inside the cage and drifted into the grid.

  “I can’t believe he did that,” said Amelia, whose facial expression was one of complete shock.

  Blackie and Wayne didn’t say a word. Ute, Kar and Soe only hesitated briefly to watch the ash settle, then resumed shooting and tying the remaining mutants.

  “Joules, are you okay,” asked Blackie.

  “No.” The seeming lack of emotion in her voice wasn’t how she felt. But it welled up inside her and like it or not, it came gushing out. “I witnessed an egotistical, arrogant being commit suicide, and it was unnecessary,” she cried. “No, I’m not okay.”

  Blackie put his arm around her shoulder and held her while she trembled. Then he gently spoke, “Bring it down Joules,” pointing at the cage and beams of energy. “Bring it all down.”

  Within seconds the beams were gone and Joules looked like her normal self again.

  “I knew it was going to happen,” she said to Blackie, “I hoped desperately it wouldn’t.”

  “You couldn’t have known, Joules. How could you have known?”

  “The prophecy says the wicked would be scourged with all-consuming fire. That means to cause great suffering, Blackie. I’ve thought it would come to this ever since we met Zir in his office. I could sense he would do something desperate, and he did - to himself. I’m glad he didn’t hurt the others, or goad them to the same level of insanity.”

  “Check that out.” Blackie nodded toward the others. Scores of Bantorians were on the field; Browns and Blues. Some were helping secure the mutants, but most had formed a security detail, standing shoulder to shoulder to form a ring surrounding the center of the field.

  Later that evening when they gathered to have dinner and discuss the day’s events, Blackie expressed a feeling of uncertainty shared by all of them. They felt they didn’t quite understand why things had happened the way they did. It was then Soe offered a reasoned explanation.

  “In IPT 30903, Durgians invaded Bantoria with the intent of killing or enslaving all Bantorians and confiscating our planet. They had developed a biological weapon capable of disrupting physiological processes through genetic manipulation, and began using it to annihilate Bantorians one city at a time. We rallied, but the Durgians ability to mutate and appear like Bantorians made them difficult to fight. But their scientists had committed a significant oversight that led to their defeat. That oversight is why Zir hated us.”

  “Because of our slight genetic differences, Blue Bantorians were not susceptible to the new weapon they had developed. It was only effective against the Browns, and the Durgians were not aware of this. Scientists and engineers among the Blues formed a coalition that went underground. They conducted tests and assembled a biological profile. Using the Durgian’s own methods against them, our scientists developed a highly effective and lethal weapon that targeted the them.”

  “They are so genetically dissimilar to Bantorians that using the weapon posed no risk to our remaining populations. As soon as we began using the new weapon, momentum changed, and the war turned in our favor. We recovered every lost city and the Durgians were summarily routed.”

  “But, as important as the genetic code disruptor weapon, the Blue Bantorians developed the Reducer Gun. A device using a highly classified energy source to disrupt the Durgian’s physiology. It isn’t lethal, it only forces them to mutate, or to return to their normal appearance. Reducer Squads were formed by the government to track down and apprehend mutants still living among us. But some of the Durgians, like Zir were not caught, and they remained in our society, easily blending in since they appeared outwardly as Bantorians.”

  “Zir must have worked on his plan for a long time, and when the time was right, he presented himself as a candidate for the office of Chancellor. The government was in shambles because they seemed to have no fiscal restraint, and Zir promised he would reduce the size of the government and its out-of-control budget. Zir won by a landslide and the first order of business was to disband the Reducer Squads, under the guise of budget cutting.”

  “That virtually guaranteed he and the other mutants would not be discovered. Then he cancelled research on the virus that infects the Blues, and planned to purge us from society. It was vengeance against us for our part in defeating the Durgians.”

  “Zir was able to look like us, but he was never one of us,” said Ute. “He didn’t appreciate our history or share in our culture, and he never realized how much Blue Bantorians believed in Elo’s prophecy.”

  “And he smelled,” said Kar, “of arrogance and ignorance.”

  Word had spread the Wanderers were having dinner at a quaint little restaurant on the outskirts of town with the three Blues that charged onto the pitch during the champion competition. Their dinner went long into the evening as a constant stream of well-wishers visited their table or sent them plates of appetizers, food and drinks. It was now closing time, and although the manager would have kept the restaurant open indefinitely, Amelia insisted they had to get a good night’s sleep.

  “Anonoi should be back tomorrow,” she reminded them, “and we need to be at the rendezvous point early.”

  The next morning Wayne drove the Nomad back to the ridge where Anonoi had left them. Soe, Ute and Kar had also come to the ridge, to thank them again, and to say goodbye. As they chatted, Anonoi appeared near the Nomad and indicated they should leave soon.

  Amelia detected a sense of urgency in his communication. “Is this planet at risk, Anonoi?”

  “Not for the present, but I do not read the future. We must go. We have a path forward, but it may not last long.”

  Wayne opened the front passenger door for Amelia, then got in the driver’s seat. Blackie climbed in the backseat, after letting Joules in, and rolled down the window.

  “Good luck guys. If we’re ever in the neighborhood again, we�
��ll stop by.”

  Wayne, Amelia and Joules all voiced similar sentiments as Anonoi’s wispy appearance began to coalesce, becoming darker and denser, and the area surrounding the car began to twitch. In an instant, they were gone.

  Soe, Kar and Ute were overcome with emotion as they stood staring at the empty space where the Nomad had disappeared. Soe wept uncontrollably. They had studied the prophecies of Elo, and they believed with one-hundred percent certainty Blackie, Joules, Wayne and Amelia were the Wanderers. Elo had accurately predicted all the circumstances of their visit.

  He had also made a second prophecy concerning the Wanderers; one Soe hadn’t shared with them. In an ancient script that was all but forgotten by most, Elo had written, once the Wanderers left Bantoria, they would never, ever return.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE EDGE OF WAR

  Mark looked out the huge oval window of gunner turret number seventeen. It was like sitting inside a giant soap bubble, except this bubble came with some serious firepower. One squeeze of a trigger and the gigantic gun mounted beneath him would deal rounds of ammunition into the air like a torrential hail storm.

  When he climbed in the saddle, all he could think about was alien fighters, and the expectation he would shoot and destroy whatever came his way, manned or not. When he accepted the invitation to board the ship as part of the mission crew, he agreed to fulfill any duty he was assigned, although he hoped he would be on Arton’s stealth fighter. As it typically goes in combat conditions, things changed rapidly and reassignments are part of the gig.

  He settled in, fidgeting with the controls on the gunner’s seat as the monitor beside him blinked Mark x. Grabbing the controls, he swung the cannon up and pointed it toward the infinite space in front of him, and every thought of aliens and guns, or battle, receded into the far recesses of his mind.

  Mark stared at a planet far away and was overcome with the feeling Blackie, Wayne, Amelia and Joules were right there, and possibly staring back at that exact moment. The idea that they might be in serious trouble, just the hint of it, was something he refused to accept. Instead, he concentrated on every plausible scenario he could think-of that might have delayed their arrival on Centoria. The only reason he was aboard this ship was he knew with absolute certainty they were alive, he could feel it deep inside. But he also knew the situation in the Sote-kiliet was critical, and they had better find a way out, sooner than later.