End Boss

by Bryan Nyaude

  “Thanks, Ali, but it seems I will need more than luck this time,” I smirked to myself and cut the com link off.

  I still had no clue what the real objective of this mission was. Only Dalla and Rick had been briefed; probably, shouldn’t have stunned them out. I looked down at them and shook my head.

  “Switch me into the main system,” a familiar and yet annoying voice spoke.

  I knew this voice all too know well. It was that stupid AI system Ali had installed for me. Times like these made me really miss my old AI system, since it never back talked me. However, this AI had saved me from dying horribly last time. Speaking of the past, I looked into my tracking system and noticed that the ship had stopped moving about 3 hours ago. Just what had occurred? I guess, I had done more damage to it than I anticipated.

  I took my mind off the subject and glanced one last time at our main ship. This was probably going to be the last time I ever see it with my own eyes. My hands moved the steering wheel left, while I clamped both feet on the forward thrusters. I felt the ship start to accelerate, moving towards the west direction.

  “Link me into the ship’s grid system,” my AI spoke through my com link, which I tried to ignore by turning it off, but that didn’t work. The control limiters on the artificial intelligence were far much sophisticated than I projected. Eventually, I gave up and placed my AI into the ship system. There was a slight buzz in the ship and everything went silent.

  “Leave the steering and the weapon system to me,” it commented in a sincere way.

  To my disbelief, I nodded and got up from my sit, frantically, leaving the cockpit. There was still much more I wanted to confirm about this ship. It was always good to know just what I was working with, in case I needed to improvise. Without warning, I found myself looking into a new compartment that was completely different from the rest of the ship. It was so white and utterly empty for such a large compartment. I walked right into it for a better observation. The floor was quiet, completely absorbing the noise my feet made. Just what was this room for? All of a sudden, I felt the room vibrate like the ship had bumped into something. The floor absorbed most of the vibration and noise, lessening the effects onto me. My arms caught a hold of the wall, allowing me to stay balanced. I quickly exited the room hastily, trying to make my way back to the cockpit.

  “What’s going on?” I questioned my AI.

  “Nothing, we hit some turbulence, but everything is under control,” it responded and fell into a nerve wrecking silence.

  Before I could enter the cockpit, I paused briefly and thought for a second. Slightly tilted, I bent my back onto the wall and closed my eyes. My stomach felt tight and numb. I wasn’t exactly starving, but it couldn’t hurt to eat while I still had the chance. Besides, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to that annoying AI system. I turned around and went into the mess compartment. Once I got there, I opened the fridge and looked through the frozen food. Everything inside wasn’t exactly appetizing, but I wasn’t one to complain. After all, the arrival of the terror beasts made food far scarcer than it had been before. We were all struggling to stay alive, so whenever I found food, I was thankful. I quickly gobbled up some nutrient cubes while sitting down against the interior wall. The nutrient cubes left a nasty after taste in my mouth, which for a minute almost made me throw up. I got up slowly and left the compartment, once I was satisfied. Everything was quiet. All I could hear were the small buzz noise from the ship. I walked around and found another door, a few yards from the kitchen compartment. The door was a bit hard to open for some reason; it had no sensory scanners that would open whenever someone came near it. There was also no locks or password system latched onto it. Just how was I supposed to open this door? I tried to pry open the door, by pushing it with all my might, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Grant me access to this door?” I yelled to my AI since it was now linked to every part of the ship.

  “I can’t,” it replied quickly, “this part of the ship is completely sealed off from my control.”

  This only aroused my curiosity even further—I had to get this door open somehow. Just what was inside this room? Maybe Rick and Dalla knew. But I had knocked them out, so I couldn’t ask for their help. I gave up after a while and slammed the door with my fists, before leaving to see what else was inside this ship. I was sure there still was something else left to see on this ship of interest. To my surprise, I wasn’t wrong at all; there were still more compartments of interest worth exploring. Luckily, the remaining doors were not sealed shut like the previous door. I opened one of the doors easily and made my way inside. The floor was solid metal; it gave a loud frequency reaction against all my steps. This compartment was so dark inside, that I had to turn my night vision on, to get a glimpse of what was inside. I walked inside for a while, before I came across the switch. I turned it on and everything came to light. It was not what I was expecting nor disappointing. This was another armory room; however, smaller and compact. There were so many new gadgets and guns; I could barely keep my hands to myself. I quickly grabbed for the first weapon I could find, which was a neon sword, and begun to swing it around. The hilt was light and the blade whirled loudly. I placed the blade down and went around, observing the other gadgets.

  I felt like I was celebrating my tenth birthday again, when I was opening every gift my relatives had given me. Oh how I missed those times a lot. What I wouldn’t give to celebrate those times again. Out of the blue, something caught my attention. I turned my attention to this small well crafted box, sitting in the corner with a sign that said “DANGER.” I thought about what it said for a moment and hesitated at first; however, I couldn’t resist opening it to see what was inside. Strangely enough, I was expecting to find something very dangerous and toxic, but what I found just disappointed me. Inside, there were small yellow pellets, the size of peas; they didn’t look that dangerous at all, considering the DANGER sign. They reminded me of tasty black peas, although they smelled like titanium. I wondered what they were for. My hands found themselves moving towards the pellets, being guided by my curiosity.

  “Den, don’t you even think about it,” a voice growled at me so loud that it startled me. “Normally, I would let it slide, but you stunning me to the ground completely off guard is cold, dude.”

  I recognized his rough voice and knew who it was. From the tone of his voice, I would say he was angry. I turned my attention towards him slowly—my heartbeat beating at a rapid speed. I saw the look on his face and backed away completely. He looked so hostile, I doubt I could just easily apologize to him and leave.

  “I never really liked you, Den, you seemed like a stuck up brat,” he commented, clinching his fists and cracking his neck muscles. He moved towards me and stopped a few feet from me.

  Did he really think he could take me on? He was unarmed and younger than me. To make things worse for him, his armor and weapon system were worlds apart from mine.

  “I know what you are thinking, Den,” Rick snickered in a faint smile, “I don’t look that tough and I look unarmed. That being said, you are at a disadvantage.”

  What did he mean? Was he bluffing me into a corner? There was a rifle, on my left, fully loaded with proton bullets. Rick looked at the gun before turning his attention towards me. I saw the look in his eyes and realized I was in trouble. This man was itching for blood—my blood to be precise. Realizing this, I made a dash for the gun, but stopped halfway, when I heard the click of a gun. I was a few seconds too late. Rick was holding a four gauge revolver, an old relic from the ancient wars. Just what did he think he could do with that? He had four bullets in it, which wasn’t enough to deal that much damage to my armor. I smirked as I straightened up. Rick fired without any warning, aiming for my left chest plate. I never saw the bullet, but I heard it hit my armor, abruptly.

  “That didn’t hurt,” I commented, placing my hands on my chest plate in a defensive stance. “Okay, what I did was wrong and I am sorry. I just wanted to stop you two
before you guys did something stupid.”

  “Oh really?” he growled impatiently, while firing two more rounds at me.

  I shielded myself by placing my arms in front of me. I heard the bullets deflect from my armor. There was a tingling sensation that followed that I couldn’t comprehend. My arms, something was wrong.

  “Take a look at your hands, Den. I wasn’t just firing randomly at you,” Rick hissed at me.

  What, just what was he saying? Slowing, I lifted my hands and felt a painful sensation; it felt like my arms had been crippled. My tendons and muscles felt locked. The more I tried to move, the more unbearable the pain became. What had Rick done to me? I looked up and saw him unload the empty shells out of his revolver. This was getting dangerous for me.

  “I bet you can feel it now, can't you?” Rick said, loading more rounds into his revolver.

  I was absolutely sure his bullets had not pierced me. There was more to his gun than what meet the eye. I thought it was strange for him to use an ancient gun against my type of armor. It seemed he had baited me into dropping my guard. I had been so overconfident; l let him lure me into his snare.

  “What did you do to me?” I asked him furiously, struggling to regain control of my arms.

  This was maddening to say the least—I was absolutely sure he hadn’t injured me at all. The armor had absorbed the force behind his bullet. I coiled back, locking my right knee in front.

  “My revolver is over a thousand years old,” he spoke while pointing his gun at my head. “It has been passed from generation to generation, each making new modifications towards its firing power. Did you know.”

  “Shut up, already,” I stopped him. “Just give me the shorter version of your story, the last thing I need is a history lecture from you.”

  Rick got even more furious as I could see more wrinkles on his face. Is this what people called a real bind? Crap, I felt my back hit against something solid, and a noise, as if an object fell to the ground afterwards. It was the box with the pellets.

  “Wait, Rick,” I warned him to stop attacking, but he wasn’t listening.

  Using him to test my stun system was the worst thing I could have done. Rick dashed towards me, with his gun in his right hand, without firing a single shot. My guess, he was trying to shoot me at point blank range, which was not such a bad plan for him, that is. I just backed up with all my might and rolled out of his grasp, barely avoiding a bullet from his revolver. He twisted his body, with such precise maneuvers, and fired another shot, aiming for my leg. By some luck, I was able to avoid it by twisting my ankle to its limit and executing a small jump. It was now clear to me at this point that Rick didn’t want to kill me; however, cause me pain as a way to get back at me. I looked down, for some reason, and saw one of the pellets from the box on the ground.

  “Oh crap, you idiot,” Rick screamed and stopped attacking me.

  He put his gun back onto its hidden strap and dashed towards the small pellet. Something was wrong. The tone on his voice gave me a sense of fear.

  “Open the hatchet, now,” he screamed at my AI while picking up the pellet that had fallen on the ground.

  “What’s going on?” I yelled at Rick, seeking to get some answers.

  He was barely listening as he had made his way towards the hatch door. I followed slowly behind him, curious to see what he was about to do next. He was acting strange, the last minute he was furious and shooting at me—and now, he was running away, holding a small pellet in his hand. Rick climbed up the hull and opened the emergency exit door. He proceeded to throw the pellet as hard and as far as he could, before closing the hatchet quickly. As I watched him do all this, I heard a huge strange explosion that rocked the entire ship. It felt like there was an earthquake all around us. The com link system went static and the ship began to spin out of control.

  “Get down, you idiot,” Rick screamed at me from the floor. “All this is your doing, Den, remind me to shoot you when this is over.”

  “Oh really,” I blasted him in my loudest voice, while falling on the ground. “All this happened because you shot my arms with your stupid looking piece of a trash gun.”

  “Do you want to go again, Den, because I am ready to go?” Rick snarled while holding onto a part of the ship.

  Just what was he going to do in such a predicament as this? He couldn’t even shoot me straight, considering how much spinning the ship was doing. The shaking stopped and the ship started to stabilize itself. Did that fallen pellet cause all of this? No, it couldn’t have done all that, could it? I mean, it was so small and looked harmless enough, but then again, I could be wrong.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you said something about this piece of trash gun,” Rick hissed, pointing his gun at me so quickly that I didn’t know what to do.

  “Knock it off, Rick,” Dalla said as she entered the room. She looked at me irritated and punched the wall closest to her—probably, not too happy with me for stunning her, too. “As much as I would like to help you beat up Den, we have far much more troubling problems to deal with. That strange explosion knocked out our sensors and engines. We are practically sitting ducks out here in terror beasts’ territory.”

  Okay, that definitely didn’t sound good at all from any perspective. I mean, what else could go wrong? Dalla took a few more steps towards us and picked up a few guns and a proton dagger, before heading out. She barely said anything to us as she left to go outside.

  “Your sister looks pissed,” I snickered in a remark, trying to start up a conversation.

  “Well, if you think she’s angry now, wait till she finds out that it was us that caused the explosion,” he mumbled as he placed his gun back inside.

  As I thought about his words, a cold chill crawled up my spine, making me shiver. If Rick was like this when he got mad, I would hate to see what Dalla would do to me.

  “It’s best not to think about it, trust me,” Rick whispered to me. “Whatever you do, act surprised and don’t say anything.”

  Easy enough, even I could do that; although, I was very bad at keeping secrets especially as big as this one. At some point, Dalla would figure it out. I just hope I won’t anywhere near her at that particular moment.

  “We’ll postpone our fight for now, so take this and you will be fine,” Rick said and injected me with a serum of some sort.

  For some reason, I started to feel something in my arms which was good. The pain was still there, but at least movement in my arms was coming back slowly.

  “Just what is in those bullets?”

  I still couldn’t explain what had happened to me at all; those bullets shouldn’t have been able to piece my armor and even harm me, for that matter.

  “It’s simple, really,” Rick replied, speaking in his confident voice. “Every bullet in this gun contains a dosage of neurotoxin venom that could take down even a wild tiger, given half an second or so. I didn’t need to piece hard through your armor for the poison to enter your body. There is tiny thread like needles in each bullet. You can’t see them, but they are powerful enough to pierce armor and enter your flesh. Den, you are lucky, had I shot you one more time, you’d be a goner.”

  “In other words, you poisoned me,” I panted, stretching my stiff arms.

  “Well, when you put it like that, then yes,” Rick walked away, following his sister.

  Great, just perfect! Getting poisoned by neuron toxins was the last thing I wanted inside my body, since I was still in the midst of recovering from neon alpha poisoning, which in itself was fatally dangerous. My only hope was that my immune system was strong enough to hold off the toxin and the neon alpha poison, at the same time.

  “Let’s go,” Rick said, coming back again to grab a few flash canisters and stacking them in his armor compartments. “The feeling in your arms should have come back by now.”

  He was right, my arms had returned to somewhat normal. There was still pain; however, it was mostly numbness. As gentle as possible, I grabbed some wea
pons and headed towards the cockpit of the ship, to get my helmet. This current ordeal had cost us a few hours of travel, further delaying our mission. A lot of things were about to make a turn for the worse. That last explosion was strong enough to be detected from a 100 mile radius, which was the last thing we wanted. As soon as I had all my gear and armor on, I advanced outside to check out the scenario. It was a total wasteland, like a nuclear bomb had exploded somewhere close. The trees and grass were all gone, leaving nothing other than a pile of debris on the ground. My horizon was completely limited, the amount of radioactivity on my scanners were reading off the charts. I couldn’t believe that we had caused this much damage in just a few minutes. The old man had more than likely seen this, and I would imagine, he was very angry with us. I walked around the debris firmly holding onto my newly acquired proton assault rifle. Despite knowing how useless it was against a terror beast, holding it in my arms made me feel at ease.

  “Darn, look at this, Rick,” Dalla commented, checking the engine. “The engines were overheated, too many pipe faucets burst. We won’t be able to go anywhere for a while.”

  Rick strapped his gun in and walked towards his sister quickly, “Can you fix this?”

  Dalla posed for a while, observing the simmering heat gushing out of the turbine shafts, “Yeah, maybe; nevertheless, it may take a while to seal the pipes and reboot the system. Just what happened here, Rick?”

  Rick laughed out loudly, scratching his helmet like he had lice, “no idea, sis, I wish I knew too, but I have no clue.”

  “Good one, Rick,” I whispered and gave him a quick thumps up.

  Fortunately, I was able to lower my hand down before Dalla looked towards me. She glanced at me and turned around shaking her head, “I know you two are hiding something.”

  “Nothing at all, sis, now let’s link our com link and set up parameter, Den,” Rick said as he moved away from his sister, while typing in something into his exoskeleton suit.

  He released two drones from his armor and took out two revolvers. At first, I thought he only had one gun. However, I was wrong. Meaning, there were more things he was hiding and probably would not tell me. I looked at his other gun curiously. Did it fire paralyzing toxins, too? Oh well, I would find out soon when he used it. I dragged my feet through the rubble, dodging tree debris. Rick signaled me to follow him. I paced myself rapidly behind him, to the other side of the ship, to set up grid line sensors while Dalla stayed behind and fixed the engine. Rick took out some gear from his satchel and dug through the ground. He placed small C19 mines with proximity sensors and moved away slowly.