Dog-Star's voice radioed into Jonas's comms system, "Good flying soldiers. Spectrum has five points, Jonas has three, Menace has one. Your auto-pilot will take you to the next test area."
The four fighters of silver, gold, blue and white sailed through the air flying side by side. The raging river below, spawned by the waterfall of Arasti, quickly lost its white-tipped rapids as it thinned out across a flat plane of arid land. Jonas rued a missed chance to take first place and a maximum five points. He told himself he had to do better in the next test; these guys didn't like him as it was. He needed to prove to them that he was worthy of their protection and that he was worthy of protecting them. Cortex came up beside the others, his confidence was as knocked as his fighter. The temptation was there for Jonas to say something smart to Cortex as he had done before the last test, but he decided against making things even harder for himself.
The robotic voice read out the instructions for the next test. "Test 2 Firepower," the robot said as the words appeared on Jonas's data-screen. "You must destroy as many given targets as you can in ninety seconds of flying over a virtual city. The targets will be highlighted. Use your cannons and missiles to destroy them. The more you destroy, the higher you score. Good luck."
A city as real as Enterra rose from the dirt of the desert in the distance. An intermittent buzzer sounded, a signal before the start of the test.
"I’ve got a really good feeling about this one," Jonas boasted, into everyone's radio.
"Just make sure you don’t get in my way!" Goldheart grumbled.
Jonas armed his laser cannons. "Last thing I’d want to do big guy," Jonas said. He was serious. No one ever wanted to get in Goldheart's way.
The buzzer stopped after one prolonged hum. Several enemy fighters materialised out of nowhere, flying towards them. Jonas's data-screen tracked them, outlining the targets in red. Before Jonas knew it, Goldheart had shot two of the fighters and the red disappeared from the data-screen. Menace, Cortex and Spectrum took out the remaining flashes of red fighters. More and more targets lit up on screen, buildings, factories, vehicles, gun-stations, soldiers and squadrons of enemy aircraft. Jonas aimed and fired but the others were so quick at manoeuvring and letting off their cannons and missiles that Jonas didn't stand a chance. His reflexes were surely quicker than theirs, he thought. The frustration played havoc with his concentration. Jonas dropped his fighter down into the city, flying low in-between buildings, taking out individual red-tagged infantry and gun stations while the others concentrated on the enemy fighters and munitions factories. With the more targets they destroyed, the scores in the bottom-left of their data-screens rolled higher and higher. Jonas pulled up, locking a missile on an enemy fighter and firing to take him down. He was learning how fast he had to be to beat the others to the shot. His score began to climb and the city disappeared before his eyes.
The final scores flashed up on their screens.
Goldheart = 30,415 points
Cortex = 29,320 points
Menace = 28,450 points
Spectrum = 27,730 points
Jonas = 15,005 points
Dog-Star's voice came in. "That's not good enough, Jonas," he said with a harshness in his throat. "Goldheart and Spectrum on five, Lucas and Jonas on three, Menace in last on two points."
Cortex smirked to himself, his smiling eyes hidden behind his mask, "How are those crumby junior suits looking Menace?" he teased.
"Better than your fighter, Lucas," she said, putting a dampener on his witty remark.
Dog-Star broke up any further argument, speaking over the both of them, "All right, it's not over yet. One challenge remains."
Jonas had to win this one. He revved himself up, ready to face whatever came next.
"Test 3" flashed up as a boxy wire-frame graphic of an enemy fighter modelled itself, rotating on Jonas's screen. The robotic voice read the next game aloud, "Test 3 Unity… You are in combat with twenty highly trained shadow-walkers. You must work together to limit your casualties and take down as many fighters as you can. Good luck."
A radar circle appeared on Jonas's data-screen. Spectrum took the group into attack, leading with a spearhead, two dekapods on each wing. He stared into the distance, keeping an eye on the sweeping line of the radar dial. A fleet of enemy fighters flashed up as red dots, moving fast.
"Twenty shadow-walkers coming in fast. I’ll take the lead, two on each wing, stagger formation," Spectrum commanded, keeping instruction clear and concise.
Jonas, Menace, Goldheart and Cortex staggered their positions as instructed, one higher and one lower than Spectrum, two on each side.
Spectrum watched the enemy fighters positioning, "Fire when they’re close. Break left and accelerate hard right—right in behind them. Follow me closely," he briefed.
The shadow-walkers came into sight, speeding closer. Cannon fire lit up the sky from both sides with spurts of laser flying past the fighters. The protectors banked left, following Spectrum's order. Jonas peeled off vertically, high and right. The enemy fighters split into two groups of ten, one group followed Jonas as the protectors roared in behind the other. Jonas pulled a high gravity loop, twisting round and coming in behind his enemy.
"Jonas damn it, stick with us!" Spectrum commanded.
"I'll be fine," Jonas told him, unleashing his cannons and smoking three shadow-walkers out of the sky. He screamed with victory. This game was his for the taking, if he could win the five points then he would at worse be joint top with Goldheart or Spectrum.
Spectrum pressed a button on top of his joystick. A red marker floated around the screen following the enemy fighter in front of him, "Lock missiles," Spectrum said,
"Locking missiles," the protectors replied.
"Fire!" ordered Spectrum.
Two missiles streamed out of each dekapod towards the sporadic flying of enemy fighters ahead. The missiles locked onto their targets, gliding up and down until they exploded into the rear of eight shadow-walkers. The protectors flew through the sedimentary remains of the enemy fighters, chasing on after the remaining two.
Jonas yo-yo'd up and down through the sky, terrorizing the tails of seven fighters. He released his cannons into the central fighter of the pack, ripping its wing clean off. The doomed enemy fighter flipped through the air colliding in an explosion with another. He fired all over the pack of five fighters sitting on the tip of his nose. He couldn't make a hit. Jonas pulled up high, twisting around and diving back down, coming in from above with the five shadow-walkers in his sights. They scattered, breaking off in all directions.
Menace and Cortex saw off the final two enemies they were chasing and the fight had turned from twenty, to five on five.
Two enemy fighters came in behind the protectors. Spectrum commanded a split. The two shadows stayed on the tails of Goldheart and Cortex, firing streams of cannons too close to their fighters. They honed in on Goldheart, bullying him from behind. Cortex pushed on the brakes coming in behind the enemy. He blasted his cannons and another shadow-walker was down. The bogey in the middle of Cortex and Goldheart pulled up and out of the fight.
"Thanks Cortex," said Goldheart.
Cortex pulled alongside and looked over, "You owe me one!" he said.
"I'll knock it off the fifty you owe me," Goldheart returned.
They flew back into formation with Spectrum and Menace, while Jonas was rolling sideways and being taken for a ride by a fighter that he couldn't get close to.
"Spider, we’re stronger as a unit, fall back in. That’s an order!" said Spectrum.
"I’ve almost got him!"
Spectrum gritted his teeth and cut Jonas from the comms link, "I’m going after him."
Spectrum broke away from the group as two hidden fighters dived down through cloud cover and flew in behind him. The look in his eyes said he should never have left the pack. He waved up and down, screwballing through the sky. He couldn't shake them.
"I need help out here!" Spectrum radioed to the ot
hers.
Two enemy fighters flew circles around Cortex, Goldheart and Menace.
"No can do Spec. We’re all over the place, these drones are good." said Cortex, as he looked left and right behind him trying to catch a glimpse of the fighters.
Jonas responded to the call. "On my way."
Jonas left the fighter that he couldn't manage to break and nose-dived down from his high position at speed. The two fighters on Spectrum's tail flashed red into Jonas's target sights. He pulled the trigger for his cannons. The lasers flew close but right past the wings of the enemy craft. A shadow-walker struck Spectrum's fighter with a hit to his boosters. His ship smoked and fell, spinning from the sky. Spectrum popped his hatch and ejected out of the game. A buzzer sounded in their cockpits for the end of the exercise and the fighters pulled up, retiring home to the academy.
A row of red-hot boosters cooled down in the landing bay. Jonas removed his Spider helmet, waiting for the hydraulic pistons to release the pilot's hatch, and he climbed down a side ladder wheeled across by one of the junior Guard.
Spectrum stormed over to Jonas straight out of the recovery carrier that had just landed, "Are you crazy? Why can't you follow orders?" he scolded.
"Hey, let's not forget who you're here to protect!" Jonas argued, having had enough of his protectors not being on his side.
"I don't care who you think you are. When my men's lives are at stake you follow orders!"
Jonas moved closer to Spectrum. "I shot down seven fighters out there. I did my best."
Dog-Star appeared behind Jonas and Spectrum. "Stand down, Spectrum," he rumbled, stopping him from saying anything further.
Spectrum moved back from Jonas and stood to attention. Dog-Star shot a look at both of them, his eyes sending them a sense of disappointment at the immaturity of their falling out.
"The game was supposed to demonstrate teamwork, Jonas, not individual performance. Line-up!" he ordered, jolting his head towards Menace, Cortex and Goldheart, who stood ready to hear the results. Jonas and Spectrum rushed across to join the line.
Dog-Star turned and walked in front of Cortex. "Well done, Lucas, five points."
He moved in front of Menace. "Excellent team skills Menace, three points."
Then on to Goldheart. "One point, Goldheart, not too far behind Menace on this occasion."
Dog-Star took a couple of paces back. "The final result—Lucas, eight points, Goldheart, six points, Menace and Spectrum on five, with Jonas last on three points," he said, prolonging his eye contact with Jonas.
"We’ll need to work on a few things, and maybe one day you'll actually be ready to fight the dydrid air force. Dismissed!" said Dog-Star, yielding a salute from the protectors.
Jonas rushed off. The feeling of loneliness that he knew all too well crept back into the depths of his throat.
Twain walked onto the landing deck. Jonas rushed straight past him. "Where are you off to?" Twain said. Jonas didn't stop to talk; he kept on pacing past.
Scurrying along, Twain chased after Jonas. "Jonas, so what! You lost!?" he said, thinking Jonas was taking losing a little worse than he'd expected.
Jonas stopped. "It’s not the losing, Twain," he said.
He turned back to face him, "I thought I was doing the right thing, being here, doing this! But I don’t care about being a prince, or being the best at following and giving orders. I don’t care for any of it!"
Twain looked at Jonas with a seriousness on his face that Jonas had never seen from the small boy before. "Well that’s just it! They do care! They’ve spent their entire lives listening to the stories of war, living with the deaths of their families and learning discipline and following every order they get without question."
It didn't matter what Twain told him, Jonas was boiling up inside. "Why doesn’t everyone just do what they want then, if everyone’s got such a problem with it. Don’t take it out on me just because I’m different."
"It scares them, Jonas. You will be their leader. You will protect them from every danger that we face. They need you to take it seriously. They need to trust you," said Twain.
Jonas dropped his head. A look of sadness fell across his face. He slid off his silver crown, holding it in front of him. "How did this happen, Twain? Life was so much easier when I had nothing."
"You’ve never had nothing, Jonas," Twain said. "I know little of what your life was like before this, but I’ll bet that you’ve always felt like you were special… as if there was something more inside of you to give. Well you’d better find whatever that is and quick. Otherwise you may one day be responsible for letting every living being in existence suffer and die."
"I do feel it." Jonas said, lifting his head.
"So stop fighting it and let it breathe," Twain pleaded. "Let me tell you something, Jonas. Sometimes we have to do extraordinary things to find what we are looking for. And if those things should seem impossible to find, it does not mean that we should stop looking. More often than not, what you want is right in front of you—you just have to work for it."
"I need some time," Jonas sighed, turning and walking away.
"Let me talk to them," Twain shouted after Jonas, expecting him to turn back and finish the conversation. "Jonas, I’ll talk to them! It’ll all work out!" he shouted again. "It has to work out," he said quietly to himself.
Jonas hung his head as he walked into the long grass at the end of the firing range. Through the back of the towering reeds Jonas squelched across a swampy forest floor. He took no notice of the things around him. He walked straight past the humming wings of hovering birds that suckled water from flowered cups on the surface of a slime-filled pond. He walked on without noticing the trees covered in glowing mosses that sparkled brightly in the murky light. He didn't even look up to the shrieking sounds of families of spikey-skinned creatures swinging on the creaking branches above, blinking with bug eyes as they watched the boy mope his way through the woods. Thoughts of irony seemed to be on his mind a lot lately. It was strange that now he had finally found his purpose in life, Jonas felt more lost than ever. He sought solace for his own mind. He was the only one who could reach inside and become the man that everyone expected. He couldn't imagine how Calyx must have felt the day he ran away from their father. Just like Jonas felt now, he supposed. He had opted to be alone when things had become too much for his heart and mind to deal with. He wished he could speak with him.
After a while of walking aimlessly through the trees with a burdened mind that didn't care where he was going, Jonas came out of the forest and into a grass dancing meadow. He raised his head up, and up further, and more still, until he was leaning backwards peering vertically up to the top of a giant tree in the middle of the meadow. Vines as thick as the width of ten men wrapped around the trees trunk. Jonas put a foot onto the highest hold that he could reach and pulled himself up onto the trunk. He climbed past branch after branch for what seemed like forever until he finally felt like he was far enough away from all of his troubles. He took a seat on a flat, curved branch that supported his back perfectly against the tree. Through the swaying gaps of the leaves Jonas saw the early evening sky closing in across all of Obitrum. He saw the circular academy building perched on the cliffside. Far beyond he saw the Hydar canyon, the waterfall of Arasti and the desert where he had failed to win the respect today that he assumed he would. Jonas realised there and then in his calming thoughts that respect wasn't what he wanted. He wanted peace. That was all that was important and that was all that would put a stop to the madness in this world. He wanted those who made others suffer, just to please their own sick minds, to be gone and to never be seen again. He wanted to face and defeat the Zohr; that was why he had been brought home.
Jonas dipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out Witakker's vial. He didn't have a single feeling on where to start looking within himself to find these Maven powers that he was supposed to have. Pulling out the cork, he thought he may as well start with this. He swallowed a mouth
ful of the purple juice. It hit his taste buds with something kindred to the taste of a clammy milk. The bitterness vanished as the liquid seeped into the depths of Jonas's body. He breathed in a deep and calming breath, his eyes flashed to silver in a blink. Voices and visions rushed into his mind. Jonas raised his fingers to his temples, capturing a single vision from the thousands that flitted through his thoughts. A darkened room appeared, and he saw the black uniform of a fantom soldier lying down, a viewpoint which he had seen before in the dreams through Calyx's eyes.
The rough and crackled voice of someone's thoughts resonated in Jonas's ear. "Death. This is all I have become. Will it ever stop?" the voice begged.
"Fantom, I see through your eyes. I am Jonas, Prince of Aquilla. What is your name?" Jonas said into the fantom's mind.
The fantom body sat up and walked a few paces to stand in front of a dusty mirror. He wiped away the dust, and a beastly man with furry brown skin and large black-rimmed and solid silver eyes stared through the mirror back into Jonas's mind.
"We cannot speak, the Zohr will listen," the beast said, concerned for his life.
"No one else can hear you my friend," Jonas told him.
"Friend? You will not think so for long. Your kind will soon all be dead," he proclaimed, sending a chill into Jonas's heart.
"My father has sworn that will not happen."
"And my father has sworn that it will. You must all leave, quickly. Save many lives."
Elementis 1: The Heir to the Stone Page 13