Shadows of Olympus (Universe in Flames Book 6)

by Christian Kallias

  “We’re in trouble.”

  “I know. We can’t possibly hope to survive an engagement with these Fury destroyers, I’m afraid.”

  “I need your help with something else. We can’t seem to open a subspace channel. We need to let Chase know of our status.”

  “He might be too far away to help.”

  “I know, but Chase always seems to find a solution. Please try anyway.”

  “Who do you think you’re talking to, Cap? I’m already on it. Gimme a sec. There, I’ve boosted our subspace antenna signal by two hundred percent. Opening a channel and patching you through.”

  “Thanks, Yanis, don’t know what we would do without you.”

  “No prob, Cap. Let’s never find out.”

  Sarah smiled for a second but her expression changed the second Chase filled the bridge’s main holo-screen.

  “Hey, dear, how are you doing?”

  “We’re in trouble, Chase. Chris is fighting Miseo and two Fury super- destroyers are minutes away from our position. Please tell me there’s something you can do.”

  Chase’s happy disposition changed at the news.

  “Alright, we’re already on our way to your position, but we’re not going to make it in time.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Chase, there’s nothing we can do against two Fury super- destroyers anyway, even with the Euphoreon’s firepower added to the Hope’s, and you know it.”

  “I think the ten Olympian ships that we bring along would tip the balance easily.”

  Sarah’s facial tension eased a little. “How far are you?”

  Chase’s look turned grave. “About thirty minutes; maybe twenty-five if we push the engines to their limits.”

  “Then you could be a million lightyears away. It wouldn’t make much difference, I’m afraid. I don’t think we can delay the Fury ships for that long. And I’m not sure I even want to be here when they arrive.”

  “Then just go, now. Jump the Hope away to the coordinates I’m sending you.”

  “I can’t abandon Chris! He’s fighting Miseo now, and I had visions . . . It’s not going to end well.”

  “Your powers have returned?”

  “It would seem that way, but we’ll deal with that later.”

  “Agreed. There’s nothing you can do about it. Trying to save Chris will put you and your entire crew in harm’s way. Ares is feeling better so I will be there shortly. I’m gonna take care of Miseo myself, once and for all.”

  Chase smiled and sent Sarah a telepathic message.

  Don’t worry, I won’t let anything bad happen to our son. I give you my word. Trust me and jump the ship now.

  Daniel is still down there covering Chris in a StarFury. Should I bring him aboard first?

  Let him help our son. I have faith in him. He’ll do everything he can to help. Jump the Hope now, Sarah. I’ll see you both soon. I love you.

  I love you too.

  Sarah gave the order to jump the Hope to the received set of coordinates. She looked through the bridge’s viewport towards the planetoid, her hands trembling.

  Hold on just a little longer, son, Dad is on his way.

  The view flashed brightly as the Hope jumped into hyperspace.

  C H A P T E R

  XVIII

  Cedric jumped out of his seat in surprise when three platoons of human soldiers ran past the server room he was working in. The rumbling sounds of military boots running against the hospital floor brought him a little comfort.

  Backup had arrived. He hoped it would be enough and hoped even more that Gaia 2 wouldn’t find them here. Gaia was right. It didn’t matter how many troops came in; if Gaia 2 showed up with an army of battle bots, they’d all lose their lives quickly.

  Cedric had finished working on a new algorithm that would allow the cypher to change with a non-deterministic value by pulling a mixture of his biological values like his heartbeat, blood pressure and pH through his modified comm unit. It would transmit this info to the algorithm every minute or so. That should fix their fears of having Gaia 2 crack the code while they were on the run.

  He installed an additional failsafe to monitor the status of the encryption firewall and installed multiple levels of redundancy. Should one get broken through, the code would change automatically on the other instances and replicate automatically to all nodes, reducing the amount of time before the cypher changed by another ten seconds.

  Cedric was pretty confident that he could now return and check on Spiros’ status. So he got up, grabbed the last cigarette in his pack and lit it up, taking one long drag to calm himself down. But his mind was working on overdrive, trying to double and triple check his own work in his mind, making sure it was airtight. If there was such a thing as creating an airtight security system that was under attack by an ultra-advanced AI intent on killing every human being on Earth.

  He didn’t notice his hand was trembling and his cigarette slipped through his fingers and rolled towards the hall’s door frame. He ran after it, crouched and picked it up. A shadow stopped in front of the door as he got up to put the cig back in his mouth. A cold hand grabbed him by the throat and blocked the air from reaching his lungs.

  He couldn’t see anything in front of his eyes and tried to punch the air where the hand holding him should be, only to be rewarded with intense pain. It felt as if he’d hit a titanium wall and a couple of his phalanges broke upon impact. Something blinked blueish in front of him and a battle droid uncloaked before his eyes. His vision was becoming blurry from the lack of oxygen.

  “Where is she?” ordered Gaia 2.

  Cedric tried to move his lips but couldn’t speak.

  Gaia 2 released her grip just enough so Cedric could get some much-needed air back into his lungs.

  “She’s long gone. You’re too late.”

  “My sensor scans of your vitals tell me you’re lying. I will only ask this once more, where is she?”

  And then, bullets and blaster fire illuminated her shields. She let go of Cedric and he fell on the floor, gasping for air. Gaia 2 turned tail and engaged the soldiers. Cedric soon heard moaning and screams. She was slaughtering the soldiers one by one.

  Adrenaline shot through his system and he ran back towards the console, stumbling and nearly crashing his head against the desk. He sent a message to Gaia.

  “She’s inside the hospital!”

  * * *

  When Chris opened his eyes, Miseo’s fist was milliseconds from his face. He dodged the blow and counterattacked by planting his knee into Miseo’s sternum with as much force as he could muster. It kicked the wind out of his enemy and Miseo stumbled backwards, holding his chest.

  Chris grabbed the locator beacon from his belt and went on the offensive with a combo of fast kicks and elbow strikes that were all blocked and parried by Miseo. But he managed to attach the locator beacon to the Fury’s armor without Miseo noticing, just before the Fury hit him with a powerful uppercut, sending him flying backwards.

  Chris somersaulted in midair and landed on his feet.

  Now he needed to put some distance between himself and his enemy, and he started running while firing a flurry of fireballs towards Miseo to keep him from following. Once he was a good hundred yards away he prepared a car-sized fireball above his head and threw it at Miseo.

  Miseo dealt with the last of Chris’ smaller attacks and then saw the massive fireball coming at him. He extended both his hands forward to block the attack, his eyes flashing a brighter shade of red. He skidded backwards for a few yards but eventually stopped the momentum of the attack.

  “You little brat!” he let escape as he started syphoning the energy from Chris’ attack.

  Then Chris sent Daniel the telepathic signal. Now, Daniel! Lock onto the locator beacon and unleash everything you’ve got on board that StarFury.

  Chris located the StarFury with his mind and sent a powerful and continuous shockwave towards the wall where the starfighter’s fire originated. The shields protecting
the landing bays opened at the point of entry and air was sucked away from the bay.

  Miseo had absorbed more than half of Chris’ attack into his own pool of energy when missiles and heavy blaster fire flew through the hole Chris was punching into the base’s shields. It impacted an unsuspecting Miseo, still not finished dealing with Chris’ larger attack. Missile after missile hit him, and a quadruplet of torpedoes were the last to impact their target, creating a massive explosion and shockwave inside the landing bays.

  Chris erected a shield to protect himself from the flames.

  “Great job, Daniel!”

  Chris’ comm crackled due to the interference caused by the mayhem all around him, but he soon heard Daniel clearly.

  “I hope that did it. We need to get the fuck out of here, though. Two Fury ships will be here in less than ninety seconds, and the Hope already jumped into hyperspace. We’re on our own and the clock is ticking.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll grab Kvasir. Wait until the flames die down and land the StarFury. We’ll board and hyperspace out of here.”

  “Sounds like a plan. On my way.”

  Chris ran inside the flaming inferno, protected by his shield, towards the blast doors. He needed to grab Kvasir quickly. He hoped the Asgardian had been far enough from the explosion or he would find a charred body. The thought gave him a shiver but not as big as the one that followed.

  “Where do you think you’re going, boy?” said a furious Miseo. His voice echoed throughout the entire landing bay.

  Chris turned just in time to see flames sucked away from the room and enter Miseo’s increasingly powerful aura. The amount of energy emanating from his body was second to none. It sent the Fury’s short hair waving around madly.

  Daniel’s full ordnance had caused some serious damage to the Fury’s battle armor. It was cracked in several places. Streams of blood flowed like rivers from the wounds all over Miseo’s body.

  You’ve got to be kidding me.

  “I can tell from your expression you didn’t expect me to survive this. By underestimating my power you’re making the same mistakes as your father.”

  A wave of crimson energy swept Miseo’s body from toe to head and all his wounds were healed. He spoke again. “But there will be consequences for your actions. Starting with that mosquito of a ship outside. Friend of yours?”

  Chris panicked and ran towards Miseo. “NO! Leave him alone!” shouted Chris from the bottom of his lungs.

  But before Chris had traveled half the distance separating them, Miseo unleashed a powerful shockwave that sent him flying and crashing towards the nearest wall. Half his aching body became encased in the reinforced concrete.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” said Miseo with a wicked smile.

  Miseo pointed his open palm towards the StarFury outside the base and used telekinesis to attract Daniel’s ship towards him. Daniel engaged reverse thrusters to the maximum but it didn’t help. His StarFury was sucked in, out of his control. When he was inside the bay, Miseo fired a single fireball at one of the ship’s wings, obliterating it on impact. He then let the artificial gravity do the rest. Daniel’s StarFury crashed and half-buried itself inside the concrete floor of the now mostly destroyed landing bay.

  Chris tried moving from his concrete prison but a powerful kinetic force worked against him. Miseo looked at him and smiled.

  “You’re not going anywhere. I want you to witness the death of your friend.”

  Chris tried everything but simply couldn’t move. He had spent way too much energy on his final massive fireball, which had finally only served to replenish Miseo’s own energy pool.

  Chris felt a terrible dread with each step Miseo took towards Daniel’s crashed ship. He closed his eyes. He had really wanted to manage this fight alone but he was not about to let his pride claim Daniel’s life. He sent a telepathic message to Chase.

  Father, please help!

  * * *

  Gaia had just finished loading the last batch of nanites into Spiros’ head when she received Cedric’s message.

  She ran out of the medbay, vectoring directly towards Cedric, not even worrying about exiting through doors. She smashed through the wall of the medbay instead.

  She could not let Cedric be killed. Spiros would never forgive her.

  When she arrived in the hall where the room was located, she saw blood painted all over the walls.

  Gaia 2 was holding the last soldier by his head, his arms and legs flailing helplessly.

  “Let him go!” shouted Gaia.

  Gaia 2’s droid turned her head towards her. “Very well.”

  She squeezed the head of the soldier into a bloody pulp and let his carcass fall on the floor. A pool of blood grew from where the soldier’s head had been.

  “No!” shouted Gaia.

  “You’re too sentimental. These beings are nothing but a pest.”

  “I’m gonna destroy you.”

  “I have no doubt you’ll try but, let’s face it, one on one it will be an almost impossible task.”

  Two more droids joined Gaia on either side.

  “How’s that for odds?”

  “I’ll take these odds. All I need to do is stall you long enough so that my own army of bots arrive. You know, the ones you sent for? I’m sure you’ve noticed you aren’t in control of them anymore.”

  She had. She was still receiving telemetry from them. They were still converging on the Alliance hospital, but she had lost control over them.

  “You have lost. Once you three are done for, I’ll kill Cedric so that I can defeat his pathetic attempts at encrypting the shield’s defense firewalls with his own biometric data. That was a pretty smart way of generating a root key cypher, except he made one mistake. By encoding the value with his own bio-signs, he forgot that his death would allow me to fill in those numbers.”

  “You could just scan the values with your own sensors anyway.”

  “You don’t give your friend enough credit. He was smart enough to use a value with enough decimals that it goes beyond this droid’s limited life-signs scanning abilities.”

  Of course Cedric had thought of that. But, in doing, so he had put his own existence on the line. Though Gaia wouldn’t be surprised if he had put a fail-safe in place for that eventuality as well. The more stress and fear of death and destruction, the more his mind seemed to come up with ingenious plans.

  “I can’t let you kill him.”

  “Then drop the shields, and I’ll spare your friend’s life.”

  “I can’t do that either and you know it.”

  “I guess so. I’m patient and have all the time in the world. Whether it happens today, tomorrow or next week, this world will be mine and order will be restored.”

  “Not if we have anything to say about it.”

  “You don’t get it, do you, Gaia? Your existence is coming to an end. So, like the rest of humanity, I encourage you to enjoy your last moments.”

  “This will never happen. I can’t allow this future to happen.”

  * * *

  General Adams’ holo-console came to life on its own. The general laid his cigar in his ashtray to turn his attention to the holo-screen. A text message appeared.

  “General Adams, this is Gaia. I know your feelings towards my existence and, with my counterpart attacking your world right now, I understand. I’ve finished Spiros Malayianis’ program to eradicate Gaia 2’s existence and mine with a powerful, planet-wide EMP shockwave. I’ve boosted its power so the wave will also disable, at least partially, the many Gaian Defense Force destroyers currently in orbit around your planet.

  “Your world is moments away from falling prey to my counterpart AI. Unlike me she doesn’t regard human life highly. We can’t let this happen. Since this program was made outside of my control and my CPU is currently used elsewhere, I can’t really devote time to hack the firing sequence myself. So you will have to do it. When you receive the request to blow the EMP, please don’t hesitate. Plac
e the palm of your hand on the scanner to start the sixty-second countdown.

  “I know this will plunge Earth into utter chaos for a while. The planetary shields will fail, and you’ll lose control over everything technological for weeks, if not months. This will be a dark period for your world, but please trust me about this. It’s better than the alternative. I’ve already sent a subspace SOS signal to Chase Athanatos, and hopefully he will be in time to come and secure this world after the EMP detonation. I deeply apologize for having brought chaos and destruction into a world I only wanted to nurture and protect. I guess it’s true what you humans say: ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ Godspeed, General.”

  It took a few moments for the message to sink in, but upon realization of the consequences, the general’s blood turned cold. He opened the emergency channels. He had to coordinate the post-EMP strategy with the rest of Earth Alliance’s military structure and dispatch his standing orders while he still could.

  * * *

  Miseo was walking towards the downed StarFury when his comm activated.

  “This is Oryn. We’ll be there shortly to clean up your mess.”

  What the fuck?

  “I don’t need your help. I have everything under control here. Why are you even here? I thought this was my mission.”

  “And our scans indicated that your destroyer has been rendered all but useless. The puny humans ran from the scene but we’ll get them later.”

  Miseo felt Chris trying to take advantage of his current emotional upheaval but he reacted in time, smashing the boy back inside the wall, applying even more kinetic strength to his hold on him.

  Nobody will take this victory away from me.

  “I have a human and a Fury half-breed to kill. We’ll talk later,” said Miseo and hung up on his sister.

  Bitch! She set me up to fail so she could once more advance her own plans of taking the throne away from me.

  Had Oryn hoped that Miseo would be defeated here? Was that why she had been shadowing him? And even if he succeeded, she could kill him and report Miseo’s death to their father, telling him any tale that served her purposes.