I sure hope that one wasn’t the scientist Argos wants us to bring back.
She had dispatched half of the Zarlack forces, and most of them were busy firing back towards the Earth Alliance platoon. They had suffered losses, but Ryonna hoped that none of them had been mortally wounded.
It was time to end this fight and, to that end, she activated the lasso mode on her blaster. She fired at the Zarlacks’ legs one by one. Soon they all fell to the ground and were easy pickings for the barrage of stun fire the platoon of soldiers was providing.
“Cease fire!” she ordered.
When the fire stopped a few seconds later, she scanned the bodies on the ground with her super-suit. All but one were unconscious. She walked to the conscious Zarlack as he tried to get out of Ryonna’s energy lasso that was restraining both his legs and trapping his arms at his waist. Zarlacks were almost as tall as Droxians. Its tail flailed close to Ryonna’s head, and she grabbed it and started squeezing.
The noise the Zarlack made in response indicated that there were enough nerve endings to cause pain, and perhaps she had accidently found another weakness in their physiology.
“Why did you start firing at us? We sent you a direct message from Argos.”
When the Zarlack failed to answer she squeezed some more, using some of her suit’s super-strength for good measure. The Zarlack squealed. “Stop! Please stop!”
“I’ll stop when you start giving satisfactory answers to my questions, not a second before.”
“We have standing orders to fire on any intruders, no matter what.”
“The message we sent you was supposed to counter these orders.”
“Standing orders can only be canceled in person. We couldn’t take the chance. Especially now we know there is another Fury looking exactly like Argos. He could have doctored that tape to make it look like Argos. Our commander decided to ignore the order inside your encrypted holo-message because of this.”
They think Chase recorded the message instead of Argos.
“While they look alike, Chase and Argos couldn’t be more different.”
“We couldn’t take the chance that we were being deceived.”
“What about the scientist we’re looking for? Where can we find him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer,” said Ryonna before applying serious pressure to the Zarlack’s tail. She heard many bones break inside.
The shriek the Zarlack unleashed was almost deafening at this range.
“One more lie and I rip your tail off and start breaking every single appendage and bone in your body. Do you understand?”
Ryonna saw the Zarlack trying to talk but he seemed unable to from the pain of her last squeeze.
“Nod back to me if you do.”
The Zarlack nodded nervously, his face screwed up with pain.
“Where is the scientist named Tanarok?”
“He’s in the brig for his own protection. The commander put him there right after seeing your holo-message.”
“Are there any more soldiers waiting to shoot us down?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Just the commander and his personal guards. So four more in total.”
“Where can we find them?”
When the Zarlack hesitated, Ryonna squeezed some more. She didn’t have to apply much pressure this time before the solider talked again. “I . . . I’ll get executed for this.”
“You’ll die by my hands if you stop being helpful to me, so what’s the difference? You actually have much better odds of survival if you help me get the scientist as well as a clone Kyrian snake that Argos tasked us to recover.”
The Zarlack pondered Ryonna’s words. In the meantime, Tar’Lock and Keera were helping the downed soldiers, administering first aid. Ryonna looked at Keera right after she checked the pulse of one of the soldiers who had lost a lot of blood. Keera shook her head.
“I need your answer now, lizard. You have two choices: you either help us achieve our goal, or I burn a hole in your sorry reptile brain. You have three seconds.”
Ryonna started counting down. “Three . . . two . . . one . . .”
“Don’t shoot! I . . . I’ll help you.”
* * *
“I should take a StarFury in stealth mode and try to check one of the destroyers,” said Daniel.
“No!” said Chris. “We can’t take that chance. I’ll remote-fly one. That way if it gets attacked by the same thing that trapped the destroyers, nobody will get hurt. Plus, maybe the Hope’s sensor will be able to pinpoint the source of the weapon and real-time scans of the weapon in action might give us some clue as to what we’re dealing with.”
“I’ve already alerted Yanis to set the scanners to maximum resolution,” added Sarah. “I think Chris is right. A remote StarFury is our best bet at this point.”
Sarah gave a pair of remote-control neuronal interfaces to her son.
“Thanks, Mom, but I don’t need these anymore. Father taught me how to do it on my own.”
Chris closed his eyes and his mind acquired a StarFury in the launch bays. Soon he was piloting it in space. He redirected all the power of the weapons to the shields. It would be interesting to see what happened if his remote-piloted starfighter got hit.
“Shouldn’t you use your cloak instead?” asked Sarah.
“I think we need to locate the source of the weapon first, see if it’s still active, and gather as much data as we can. I can always use another StarFury in cloak mode.”
“Not to be a killjoy, but these don’t exactly grow on trees,” said Daniel. “And we lost too many already during our last battle.”
Chris wanted to answer but then he felt something and directed his attention to his instincts instead. Something was coming quickly towards his remote ship. The trajectory of the energy beam was safe and he could dodge without endangering the Hope.
He entered evasive maneuvers and the bright-yellow energy beam missed his starfighter by only a few yards.
“That was close!” he exclaimed. “What do the sensors say? The StarFury sensors didn’t even register the shot. Perhaps there’s a jamming field in place.”
“That can’t be,” said Sarah. “We don’t have any data either. It’s as if nothing fired on your starfighter.”
“This is not good,” Daniel added.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Chris.
Daniel looked at Sarah and smiled.
“Yeah, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? And to think he’s only two weeks old.”
“I’m feeling something else,” added Chris, staying focused on the task.
This time three yellow energy-based shots were incoming towards his StarFury. It took all his concentration to calculate the shots’ trajectories, deem them safe to dodge and go evasive.
“He sure knows how to pilot,” added Daniel.
“That’s in both his parents’ blood,” said Sarah.
“Right.”
“When you two are done chit-chatting perhaps you can tell me if the sensors caught something this time around?” Chris said urgently.
“Nope, still nothing,” said Sarah.
“Okay, time to test the cloak then.”
Chris cloaked the StarFury and vectored in the general direction of the shots. He thought the cloak was working, but then another shot was fired. This time one of the frozen destroyers had masked its approach and there was nothing he could do to evade it. His remote StarFury was hit. It turned bright yellow as if the shot had painted the craft and soon a thick, semi-transparent resin-like material grew from its armor and engulfed it. In less than three seconds, it was frozen like the rest of the armada around it.
Chris lost his mental connection with the ship and opened his eyes.
“That’s it for that StarFury. Please tell me you got sensor data of at least its firing position.”
Sarah shook her head.
“Hang on,” said Da
niel. “I’ve got something on the sen—”
“What is it?” asked Sarah.
“Oh crap, a Zarlack destroyer is entering the system and heading right for us.”
“How long until it reaches us?”
“Not long enough.”
Sarah rose from the captain’s chair, and opened a channel to the entire ship. “Battle stations!”
C H A P T E R
X
Saroudis looked through the viewport of his personal quarters in awe. The fleet had been on Alpha Prime for a couple of days now. But the most impressive sight was the empire’s arrival shortly after, bringing everything the emperor had promised and more. Workers were already hard at work assembling the first of five shipyards planned for this week alone, and they had brought with them a first wave of destroyers to help protect the area. A second wave of ships and personnel, as well as the jumpgate, were expected later that day.
Gotta give it to the empire; they’re efficient and work fast.
Still, Saroudis couldn’t help wondering if the empire was hiding its true numbers in terms of fleets. If they had found a way to hide the jumpgate power signatures from long-range scans, surely they could do the same with ships. He also wondered what they could do if so many workers decided to attack them and seize the facilities once they were done building them.
Saroudis wouldn’t put it past the emperor to already be playing the long game, having a large, hidden fleet either ready or in the works, to make sure once the Furies were dealt with they could resume their original goal of taking control of the universe. Except this time, he could do that with upgraded weapons and shields.
But right now it mattered not, Saroudis decided. Right now the empire was finally the ally they needed it to be. Saroudis’ train of thought was interrupted when his com-link rang.
“Saroudis here. What is it?”
His communications officer spoke. “I have a subspace holo-transmission for you, Commodore. It’s the emperor.”
“Patch him through.”
A holo-image of the emperor appeared on the wall opposite Saroudis’ bed.
“Hello, Emperor.”
“Commodore, how are things going?”
“Better than I expected, I must admit. Your workers are efficient. Do they ever take a break?”
The emperor chuckled. “They do, Commodore. They work twelve-hour shifts and rest for the remaining twelve.”
“That seems like a lot of work, especially in zero-G.”
“Don’t worry about my men, Commodore. They know what is at stake and they’ll be handsomely compensated for their effort. They understand that if we don’t all work towards the same goal, we could be extinct tomorrow. Fear is a powerful motivator.”
Saroudis wanted to argue. He disagreed about using fear as a means to exploit people but, right now, the Earth Alliance was so weak he didn’t have a choice but to let the emperor deal with the situation any way he deemed fit. After all, they were his men, his empire, and the Earth Alliance didn’t have any sovereignty over the internal affairs of its participants.
The original Star Alliance had been pickier regarding both its members and its charter, but that hadn’t prevented their extinction. So perhaps, over time, they’d impose certain rules within this new Earth Alliance, but, right now, the empire was saving their asses. Saroudis had no doubt that one day he would see the other side of the coin; but, for the time being, only the results mattered.
“I have to admit I’m impressed with how fast and how efficient you have been, Emperor. It won’t be forgotten.”
“Regarding our deal . . .”
“Don’t worry, your top scientists just received access to our databases. They’re currently conferring with our own scientists to decide how to implement the tech on your own ships, and see if we can perhaps work on a hybrid design that would benefit us both.”
“That’s a good idea, Commodore. If we can avoid churning out different types of ships, we can streamline the shipyards and achieve a better yield.”
“My thoughts exactly. I just wish my main chief engineer was here.”
“I’m sure your people and mine will come up with adequate designs.”
The commodore nodded. “Was there another reason for your call, Emperor?”
“I just wanted to ask you if you’d do me the honor of being my guest at dinner tonight. I’m on one of the ships that’s bringing the jumpgate. I shall be arriving in less than three hours.”
Dinner with the emperor?
Saroudis’ first reaction was—and he wasn’t proud of it—disdain. But he needed to appear friendly no matter what his true feelings were. Not that he wasn’t grateful, because he was. But the Obsidian Empire was still responsible for the fall of the Star Alliance. And even if they had been pawns or even slaves of the Zarlacks under Argos’ rule, that didn’t excuse the past. Both his sons were dead, in part because of this man.
Saroudis felt anger rise within his core. With all the gifts—the shipyards, the resources, the ships—he had felt like a kid at his birthday party. And it had made it easier to forget what had been lost. So could he ever forgive the emperor, no matter how generous and helpful he was now? And, beyond that, could he forget?
“Is something wrong, Commodore?”
“I’m sorry, Emperor, I was just distracted by my own thoughts. It would be my pleasure to come aboard your ship and dine with you.”
“I’m looking forward to it, Commodore. See you soon.”
Saroudis forced a smile and turned off the holo-transmission. His heartbeat grew stronger and he felt pressure on his rib cage. He felt as though he was dying and air couldn’t reach his lungs. He was about to call a medical emergency, but then he recognized the symptoms. He had had those when he was younger. A panic attack. He let himself fall onto the dull-grey, carpeted floor of his quarters.
He tried to take deep breaths but it wasn’t easy letting any air in, no matter how little. He closed his eyes and brought to mind a wonderful memory of a family dinner, when his family was complete. Laughter and smiles around the table brought his heart rate down and he felt his airwaves open slightly.
After a few minutes of lying on the carpet, he was breathing deeply again, his brain getting the right amount of oxygen and his anxiety levels diminishing with each new inhalation.
What the hell?
It had been nearly forty years since his last panic attack. What had triggered it? Could it be the idea of breaking bread with someone who was once their worst enemy? The emperor had been very helpful, and not only now that the Earth Alliance needed it the most but also before, when the Zarlacks and Furies attacked Earth.
Saroudis rose from the floor and went to the bathroom. He splashed cold water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror. Before he knew it he had smashed his own reflection in the mirror and was left with a bloody fist, glass shards planted in his skin.
* * *
Chase helped Argos take care of Ares. The sky was now just as blue as it had been when they had touched down with the shuttle a while back. The level of destruction to the once mesmerizing gardens of Zeus’ temple was substantial but, little by little, as if by magic, the damage was mending itself.
The first round had been more intense than Chase had thought it would be, and he didn’t expect to have to use force just to be able to request a simple dialogue.
But then he remembered what Ares had told him about Zeus’ personality. He was bullheaded and unlikely to listen or agree with anything they had come to say. Chase knew that coming in, of course, but he refused to go back without giving it everything he had to broker an alliance with Olympus.
There were many more issues at stake beyond the alliance. Chase hoped they would all fall into place on their own if an alliance happened, but if it didn’t, there was still the matter of the spirit ships, as well as finding a way to help Ares out of his troublesome situation. He didn’t have long to live in his current condition.
After infusing a
little energy into Ares, he got back on his feet.
“You shouldn’t waste your energy on me, Chase.”
“Shut up, Ares. I wasn’t gonna let you die here in front of your father’s temple.”
“For once I agree with an Olympian. You should keep your juice for Zeus,” said Argos.
“Don’t you start with me, Argos. You just do as I say and keep your remarks to yourself once we’re in.”
“Speaking of going in, are we doing that today?”
Argos had chosen the worst of days to revert to his old arrogant and sarcastic self. Argos’ behavior during the last few days had earned him some good will, but Chase wondered if it had just been an act. Still, Chase decided to give Argos the benefit of the doubt for now. After all, he had lost almost everything. His dreams of ruling the universe as the head of the Furies had gone up in smoke, partly because he had refused to fire on Chase’s ship when they left Erevos. The ship had been destroyed, but it was Argos’ idea to mask their escape in the explosion of the Iron Fire. The tactic had ultimately failed, but this had not been Argos’ fault.
He could smack the arrogance off his brother’s face today, but they had bigger fish to fry. Not to mention he still needed him to save Chris’ life.
“Let’s go,” said Chase.
The temple was massive. It took a couple of minutes just to climb the stairs. Two giant doors opened on their own, inviting them in.
“I guess that’s our cue,” said Chase as they walked towards the entrance.
Don’t trust my father, Chase, no matter what he says or does, warned Ares telepathically.
I won’t.
And don’t trust Argos either. There’s something he’s not telling us. I can sense it.
Shadows of Olympus (Universe in Flames Book 6) Page 14