Something happened inside Saroudis. Truth be told, he was mad at Argos more than the emperor. Ever since Chase had accepted his brother’s help, Saroudis had daydreamed of going to his quarters at night and killing the Fury. But he knew better. An eye for an eye was not the way to make this world better. And so some of that hatred he bore towards Argos had also vanished with the emperor’s apology and willingness to sacrifice himself in order to wash his sins away.
“I don’t deserve your kindness, Adonis. You are a great man. Better than I ever will be, in fact. I would like you to keep the dagger, though, as a symbol of our new friendship.”
“I can’t accept it. It’s a family heirloom. You should keep this to remind you of your father.”
“I insist, Adonis,” said the emperor. “I would be deeply honored if you accepted it.”
Saroudis took the dagger. It was a beautifully crafted, well-balanced dagger. The onyx handle was masterfully carved with a dragon with a fiery mane.
“Very well, in that case it is my honor to accept your gift in the spirit in which it is given. Thank you, Altair. May this friendship help both our people through the current shroud of darkness and into the light.”
The emperor smiled, his eyes filling with gratitude. “To quote a wise man I am now proud to call my friend: may it echo through the ages.”
* * *
“I’m sorry for blowing up many parts of your temple,” said Chase.
“This materialistic damage can easily be mended, unlike the pain that burns inside my heart. Please try to get my daughter back to me, Chase, and I’ll comply with your terms for the alliance.”
While it hinged on convincing a Fury to come to her Olympian father—a task Chase knew would not be easy—at least there was hope now.
“I still have a few things I’d like to discuss with you.”
“I’m listening,” said Zeus in a softer tone.
“Have you heard of the spirit ships?”
“What is it to you?”
“I’ve learned they could be invaluable in our fight against the Furies.”
“Only if you have enough Furies to pilot them. I’m unaware of any other race being able to use their formidable power efficiently.”
“Were they used in the last Fury war?”
Zeus nodded.
“So there were Furies fighting against their own people back then?”
“Like your father.”
Chase felt as if one of Zeus’ lightning bolts had hit him straight in the heart.
“My father?” he said, his voice trembling.
“Yes, the most courageous warrior I’ve ever known.”
“Can you tell me more about him?”
“Later. First bring my daughter. And keep your promise, Chase. Whatever welcome I gave you today will be nothing compared to my wrath if you speak any of what was discussed between us today to anyone.”
“Not even Ares?”
Zeus’ gaze turned icy cold. “No one.”
“Understood. But can you please stop what you’re doing to him? I need his help.”
“Consider it done. By the time you leave this planet he won’t feel his energy sucked away anymore.”
Chase hadn’t expected things to turn out so well. From the way it had all started, it could have turned a hell of a lot worse. But he felt compelled to ask for one more favor.
“One last thing and I’ll leave you be,” said Chase.
“Haven’t I answered enough questions already?”
“You have, and I’m grateful you did. But if we’re to cement an alliance in the future, I would like to know you’re serious about it.”
“Didn’t I just give you my word that if you succeed and bring Oryn back to me, you’ll get everything you want? What more do you want from me?”
“A gesture of good will. An advance, if you will.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Athena, Apollo and others have already been considering this alliance for a while, but they’re afraid of what it could mean if they defied you.”
“And they are wise to be so.”
“Yes, I get that. But could you please allow them to join our forces now with a few ships? It would go a long way, and I might need their help to complete the mission you’ve tasked me with. It will not be a walk in the park to go into Fury space to do as you ask, and you know it. I could use the firepower.”
“You also want to get your hands on our technology.”
“Well, we already have Apollo’s help, but I won’t lie to you. If we could openly appear with Olympian warships during our next engagements, it would send a powerful message of unity. And even if the cementing of this alliance is contingent on the success of the mission you’ve given me, this would help achieve that goal and perhaps put some much-needed fear into the heart of our common enemy.”
Zeus’s brows furrowed and Chase braced himself for the worst. Perhaps he had been too greedy.
“There is wisdom in your words, Chase. Your father would have been proud. Very well, you can enlist the help of any Olympian that is willing to follow you, but under no circumstances must they know of your mission, nor that Oryn is my daughter. I will make that announcement myself when the time comes. If Athena is willing to come with you, she can take ten ships with her.”
That was more than Chase could have hoped for. Even one Olympian ship would have been wonderful to have by their side.
“Thank you, Zeus.”
“Don’t thank me just yet. Make sure you bring back my daughter.”
“You have my word. I’ll do everything in my power to do so.”
“Then you may leave. May fortune smile upon your endeavors.”
Chase didn’t know how to answer that, so he bowed as politely as he could and left the private room. In the corridor that led back to the center of the temple, Chase heard explosions that shook the entire temple.
What now?!
When he arrived running into the main chamber of Zeus’ temple, Ares was standing over Argos, whose entire body was shaking. He was having a seizure.
Chase ran to his side. “What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know. He started babbling incoherently, barking at me and everyone around here. He almost killed three Olympians by randomly shooting fireballs and then he collapsed. He acted as if he was in the middle of a battle.”
Chase saw an Olympian nearby with his arm badly burned. He fired a bright white healing fireball at the man.
“Sorry about that,” said Chase to the man before returning his attention back to Ares.
“I’ll take care of him. You have to get to Athena. Zeus just agreed to give us ten warships and let any Olympian that wants to join us do so freely without fear of incurring Zeus’ wrath.”
Ares shook his head in disbelief. “Mind telling me how you managed such a miracle?”
“Nope, that’s the one thing I can’t do. Now go!”
Chase applied his hands to his brother and tried to heal him but could not detect any damage.
Crap!
He grabbed Argos in his arms and ran back towards the shuttle. He opened a channel to the Euphoreon. “Have a medical team standing by in cargo bay three, stat!”
C H A P T E R
XV
Cedric was horrified when he entered the room and saw Spiros collapsed on the ground. Adrenaline kicked in and the bliss of his current high promptly vanished.
A spark shot from the back of Spiros’ neck.
“Fuck!” Cedric exclaimed.
He grabbed the data cable and ripped it from the data port at the base of the back of Spiros’ neck. Blood ran from his nose and eyes. Not a good sign, Cedric decided.
He slapped himself on the cheek.
“Nope, not hallucinating,” he said to himself. “PLEASE SOMEONE, HELP!” he shouted as loudly as he could.
“Don’t you die on me, Spiros. I can’t be left alone. Gaia 2 will have my ass for breakfast if you’re not here to stop her.”
/> But Spiros was out cold. Cedric checked his pulse. It was faint but it was there. But he would need to be put into a regen tank right away. Cedric didn’t wait. He grabbed Spiros and tried his best to drag him outside, but soon two nurses arrived and took over and put Spiros on a hovering gurney. He was about to follow them when an ominous bleep escaped from the holo-console where Spiros had been working.
“Take good care of him. He needs to be put in a regen tank right away! I’ll come to check on him soon,” he said, but the nurses were already far away.
He went to the holo-console and saw with horror that the decompression had stopped. A “data corrupted” message flashed on the screen.
“No, no, no . . . NO!”
Cedric took a seat and started entering commands madly on the console. If they lost Gaia’s latest higher-functions backup there was no telling what the consequences would be.
A reminder flashed on the top right corner of the screen. “Cypher safety limit expired.” A counter with a negative value of seventeen minutes kept running.
“This is not good.”
Three battle bots burst into the room and Cedric first thought they were Gaia 2’s agents. He lost balance and unceremoniously crashed to the floor, coccyx first.
“Ooooow,” he let escape.
“Are you alright, Cedric?” said the familiar and genuinely concerned voice of Gaia. “Where’s Spiros?”
“He’s been hurt. Two nurses are taking him to a regen tank. I hope he’ll make it.”
“Why don’t I like the sound of that?”
“Yeah, I wish that was the worst of it. Take a look at that,” said Cedric, pointing at the holo-display.
The lead droid quickly came around and checked the holo-screen.
“We don’t have much time before Gaia 2 finds us. We need to work together to fix this.”
Cedric was suddenly taken by a wave of panic. “Sure,” he said hesitantly, “but I’m no Spiros.”
“Well, if we are to survive this day, you’ll have to step up.”
Cedric swallowed hard at the realization of what lay behind Gaia’s words.
Two of the three battle droids left the room in a hurry.
“Where are they going?”
“Someone needs to protect Spiros while he’s in the regen tank. Sooner rather than later my counterpart will try to finish what she started.”
“What about calling some cavalry?”
“Already done, but I can feel my firewall layers cracking one after the other, so if we don’t fix this immediately, I can’t assure you whether the cavalry will be friend or foe.”
“Oh that’s just dandy!”
Cedric picked himself up and sat back on his chair. Gaia was already running data reconstruction algorithms. That allowed him to work on the cypher.
“Aren’t we too late?” he said while working.
“Even if that’s the case, should we just take what comes next lying down?”
“I guess not.”
“Then let’s agree to fix this together.”
Cedric entered commands on the holo-terminal as fast as he could. The urgency had given his mind a boost. He could feel his heart beating hard inside his ribcage and, even though he disliked the feeling, he had to admit that the fear of death was quite the motivator. He acted on instinct and felt as if possessed, not even sure his conscious mind fully comprehended everything he was doing. Then he opened a holo-communication channel on the next holo-screen.
“What are you doing?”
“Summoning a type of backup that can’t be turned against us by your counterpart.”
The image of a tired General Adams filled the holo-screen. It was three in the morning, after all. He yawned and rubbed his eyes with his fists.
“Oh it’s . . . you,” said Adams with a tone of voice that did nothing to mask his annoyance. “You’d better have one hell of a reason to call me at this hour!” he barked.
“How does the end of the world sound?”
* * *
Chris remotely piloted the StarFury towards the Zarlack destroyer and was taking fire. To maximize his reflexes and response time, Chris projected his mind directly into the cockpit of the ship.
He glanced at the ship’s telemetry which indicated that a base on the planetoid was about to lose its shields. Chris needed to divert the ship’s aggro to his craft instead. He armed every missile and torpedo and fired them simultaneously at his target. The laser batteries took out a couple of missiles and one torpedo but the rest of his ordnance found their target and illuminated Miseo’s ship’s shields a radiant red for a few seconds, draining them to forty-five percent on the port side.
That did the trick and the destroyer redirected a large amount of its laser batteries to lock onto Chris’ StarFury. He hoped it would give the base’s shields some time to recharge. He only needed to buy whomever was in there a few seconds until the Hope came to add its firepower to Chris’ little diversion.
Now he needed to make his next maneuver count, but in order to achieve that, he would have to do some pretty fancy flying. He redirected every ounce of juice from lasers, inertial dampeners and life support to the shield generators. Multiple impacts on his shields bathed the interior of the StarFury’s cockpit with blue light.
He entered a wild dance of evasive maneuvers, flying completely on instinct. He closed his eyes and tried to feel the pattern of fire that was coming from the destroyer. Soon he didn’t hear many more laser impacts on his craft’s shields. He was flying better when sensing the energy from the outside than when he used his eyes.
A beep inside the cockpit forced him to open his eyes to check his radar. The Hope was exiting hyperspace, but they would need another twenty seconds to enter firing range at maximum sub-light speed.
That was more than he needed to finish what he had started. He mentally sent the command for the main power cell to overload and entered a set of jump coordinates right in front of the ship’s shield and activated his StarFury hyperspace engines for a micro-jump.
The onboard computer bleeped a warning that the cooldown time for another jump had not yet passed, but Chris pushed with his mind and overrode the safety measure. It mattered not if the ship exploded. In fact, he counted on it; just preferably after exiting hyperspace.
The ship jumped and, a fraction of a second later, it exploded against the Zarlack’s shields, draining them further.
* * *
Sarah saw her son jerk brutally, probably due to his consciousness returning to his current physical positon following the explosion of his StarFury.
Chris gasped for air as if he hadn’t been breathing for a while.
“What’s wrong? Are you alright, Chris?” asked Sarah.
Chris raised an open palm to her. “I’m fine, don’t worry. Just make that ship disappear.”
“Fire at will!” she exclaimed.
Daniel locked the main guns of the Hope to fire at the exact coordinates where Chris’ remote StarFury had impacted a few seconds ago and opened fire.
The Zarlack’s shields lit up bright red, blinked and let some of the plasma beam through, which resulted in three successive explosions on the port side. Multiple decks were exposed to space. A flurry of equipment, debris as well as many Zarlack crew were sucked out of their ship and into space where a quick but certain death by freezing awaited them.
“Bullseye!” exclaimed Daniel.
It would take a minute for the main guns to be operational again and strike a final and deadly blow. Sarah knew that, but she didn’t want to take any chances.
“Lock all torpedoes and laser batteries on that ship and fire everything we’ve got.”
“Roger that, Captain,” said Daniel as he complied.
I can’t believe we’re about to kill Miseo, thought Sarah.
It’s too early to cry victory, Mom. If Argos and Dad can survive in space, so can Miseo.
Chris was right, of course. The destruction of his vessel wouldn’t necessarily mean Mise
o would perish in the attempt. In fact, it could make things worse. He could come knocking on their ship.
“My thoughts exactly,” said Chris out loud this time.
“Daniel, try and disable the ship’s weapons system, their shield generators and hyperspace engines, but don’t destroy them just yet.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Just trust me, okay?”
“You’re the captain. Changing targeting priorities. I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”
So did Sarah.
“Incoming transmission from the planetoid’s base,” said Daniel.
“On screen.”
A lean old man with pale blue skin and bright-green flashing tattoos filled the bridge’s main holo-screen. His tattoos emitted light and moved slightly as if they were alive. They gave him an unreal quality.
“My name is Kvasir, and whoever you are I thank you for coming to my aid! Another minute and I would have been destroyed. I owe you a debt of gratitude.”
Sarah rose from her chair.
“I’m Commander Sarah Kepler of the Earth Alliance. We’re glad we could be of assistance.”
“Earth? Are you from Midgard?”
Sarah smiled, remembering the many books she had read on Nordic mythology.
“Yes, we’re from Midgard.”
“I had no idea you were a space-faring species now.”
“It’s a long story. Am I right to assume you’re an Asgardian?”
“Absolutely, and formerly of the Asgard Federation, until my government banished me here, for all eternity.”
Sarah kept an eye on Daniel’s console. The Zarlack destroyer was still getting pounded by their laser batteries and torpedoes. Multiple new decks exploded into space.
“Daniel, cease fire for the time being. That ship is no longer a threat.”
“But, Captain—”
“Please just do as I say, Daniel.”
Shadows of Olympus (Universe in Flames Book 6) Page 19