Treasure of the Galactic Lights (Jason King: Agent to the Stars--Episode 2)

by T. R. Harris

  I know it shouldn’t have even been question; however, I didn’t know any of those nine billion people. At this point, it was a toss-up.

  Besides, this was no easy task I was contemplating. For me to prevent the destruction of Earth, all the Galactic Lights would have to be destroyed. This line of thinking also left me with the name Annoc-Conn echoing in my brain. The Lights were here, and if I could find a way of destroying them to save the Earth then, Annoc-Conn would have to be sacrificed.

  I mentally shrugged in my fake unconsciousness. So be it. I had my own priority list of worlds whose welfare I valued above all others. So sorry, huge purple bugs, but Earth took precedence.

  The vehicle came to a stop. As everyone began to exit, I knew I couldn’t keep up the charade much longer. But that didn’t mean I had to snap out of it completely.

  I stumbled and bobbed my head, letting my eyeballs wander around in their sockets.

  “How hard did you hit him?” Lefty bitched at Bennett, as Angela was led away by a pair of brown-skinned aliens.

  “He must’ve already had a concussion,” Roger said in his defense. “It shouldn’t matter; he’s still alive.”

  “Make sure he stays that way.”

  “What about blondie? With King out of it, what do we need her for?”

  “Keep her around. I’d like to see the look on her pretty face when we get the fifty million dollars. Besides, we’ll them both here on Annoc-Conn when we go. Jason’s a friend of mine. I’ll let the Lights kill him for me…and his girlfriend, too.”

  I was helped along by two tall aliens, who appeared winded and distressed. Either they were both terribly out of shape, or the gravity of Annoc-Conn was getting the best of them. This opened up some interesting possibilities, should the opportunity present itself for some close-quarters combat.

  “Bring the Lights…into the chamber,” I heard Porlok order.

  We entered a room and I was placed in a chair. When I opened my addled eyes, Angela was seated next to me, tight-lipped and firm-jawed. Her eyes were locked on the tank holding the Lights, and I knew her thoughts were consumed by the same objective as mine. One of us had to destroy the Lights before they could be used to destroy Earth.

  That’s when I realized that I may not be the one who turns us all into radioactive stardust. In fact, Angela had a much better chance of doing just that. All her toes were intact.

  ********

  That bastard Bennett was watching Angela and me with an eagle’s stare, as half a dozen aliens scurried about the room, doing whatever aliens did to prepare to destroy a world. We hadn’t been unrestrained, and Roger wasn’t taking any chances with us.

  I was still recovering from the most-recent blow to my head—the third to my cranium in less than a day. Although I’d faked my unconsciousness, that didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling the effects of the trauma my head had suffered. The bottom line: Most of my wooziness was an act, but not all. I also knew the drugs wouldn’t last forever. Something had to be done soon, otherwise I’d be out of it for real.

  The container with the Galactic Lights had been placed on a metal table about twenty feet long. Also on the table was bolted a magnetic rail system running about half its length, with a bullet-shaped projectile eight inches long by three in diameter resting in a slot at the near end. A three-sided cradle sat at the end of the run, designed to hold one of the Lights firmly in its grip. The set-up was simple, yet effective. A timer could be set to release the projectile long after the bad guys had gone. Then wham—one ruptured Light, followed by one missing planet, as well as a couple of star-crossed lovers.

  Lefty handed Porlok the key to the tank. Once inserted, the obedient lid slid off as it had before, then using a specially-designed set of tongs, the alien reached into the tank and removed one of the Lights.

  As before, I found the object to be different than I’d imagined, and now that it had been removed from the magnifying effect of the water, it appeared even smaller than before. Its form was also misshapen and covered in crusty nodules. The glow from within continued—even out of the water—yet the effect was diminished.

  Porlok placed the Light in the cradle at the end of the rail gun. An assistant carefully closed the arms of the holder around the object, hoping that even this slight pressure wouldn’t be enough to fracture the surface.

  “How can you let them do this?” Angela spoke for the first time. “I don’t give a damn about Annoc-Conn, but they’re going to use the Lights to destroy Earth.”

  “Shut up!” Lefty barked. “Keep talking and I’ll end you right now—”

  “Yes…Earth.”

  Lefty turned to Porlok. “What about Earth?”

  “Strange.”

  “What’s strange?”

  “Sponsors insisted…no reason.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Lefty. He began to pace the room.

  “Added at…the end. We obey…Earth will be…destroyed.”

  “What do you mean?” Angela asked. “Earth wasn’t one of your original targets?”

  “Correct.”

  “Don’t bother with her,” Lefty snapped. “Can we get paid now? I don’t want to be anywhere near this system when that thing goes off.”

  The wide-eyed alien turned and purred. It was a strange scene. “Yes…you may. And your key-master…no longer needed. Lights will be transferred…into a new container. Illoc…show them credits.”

  Bennett and Lefty were out the preparation room a moment later, having shoved Angela and me ahead of them and into the corridor. A brown-skinned alien took the lead.

  “How can you let them do this?” Angela said again. “Aren’t you Human?”

  “I said shut up. You’re about to see why I don’t give a damn about Earth anymore.”

  A door slid open and we entered another room, a larger storage area with twenty-foot ceilings. In the center were two metal pallets, each stacked with bundles of Union credits four feet wide by three feet high. From the blue indicators on the credit card-size chips, I could tell they were thousand-unit denominations. I knew the approximate conversion rate for dollars to Union currency. Fifty-million dollars would be about a hundred and fifty thousand of the Union chips.

  “How the hell are we going to get all those back to the ship?” Bennett asked, gasping at the fortune before him.

  “I’ll worry about that,” Lefty snapped. “You keep your eye on Jason and Angela.”

  He turned to the alien who had escorted us to the room. “Do you have a forklift—some kind of lifting device—so we can load this into a transport vehicle?”

  “Yes…I will arrange.”

  The creature ducked out of the room.

  Lefty and Bennett relaxed visibly, at least as far as their bodies went. Their faces told another story. Both huge men were smiling like babies. Lefty stepped up to the closest pallet and took a stack of thousand credit chips in his hand. He walked up to Angela. “This is why I don’t give a damn about Earth anymore. Who needs it?”

  “How about the nine billion people who still live there?”

  “Relax, sweetheart. Getting rid of nine billion Humans would be a good start. In fact, erasing all that bloody history from the homeworld might give us all a chance at a fresh start.” He looked at Bennett with that wide, silly grin. “Starting with us!”

  I took a step toward the pallets, leading off with my left foot. Bennett lifted his weapon, but held back from firing when I lost my balance and stumbled forward. I fell against the stack of credits, upsetting about a million dollars’ worth of the chips in the process.

  “Dammit, Jason,” Lefty yelled. “I should make you clean that up.”

  That’s when I placed a hand under the first full stack of chips and flung them at my old Army buddy.

  Union credits are pretty thin to begin with, but in the reduced gravity of Annoc-Conn they were as light as a feather. The space between Lefty and me filled with a blinding shower of plastic confetti, allowing me to launch my drug-numbed bo
dy through the air. My normal one-hundred eighty pounds weighed only about a hundred on Annoc-Conn, providing my leg muscles with enough extra oomph to send me flying Superman-like through the air. I buried a shoulder into Lefty’s stomach, knocking him to the floor, me on top. All pretense of injury was gone; I was going in for the kill.

  Unfortunately, so was Lefty.

  Something strong and solid lifted me off Lefty and flung me into the air. I flipped over and landed on the concrete floor. Fortunately, the light gravity lessened the impact, but I was still at a loss at to what just happened.

  I scrambled to my feet, wincing as I applied pressure on my left foot. Lefty was also climbing to his feet, but with the use of only one of his legs—his prosthetic left. He squared himself to me and grinned.

  “Buddy, you messed up now.” He rapped his left leg. “This thing is my secret weapon.” And with that, he launched himself in the air. The ceiling was twenty feet high. Lefty reached it easily and pushed off his hands, propelling his body toward me with the speed and power of a locomotive.

  I couldn’t get out of the way before Lefty landed on me. It felt like I’d been hit by a sledgehammer, and if not for the pain-numbing drugs in my system, I would have passed out. Instead I was flattened out on the floor with Lefty on top of me.

  I could see Angela and Bennett from where I lay, becoming momentarily distracted by the incredible scene I witnessed.

  Bennett—having himself been distracted by my attack on Lefty—allowed Angela to deliver a staggering roundhouse kick to his chin. In fact the windmill move was so powerful that Angela spun in the air like a pinwheel from the momentum. She hadn’t taken into consideration the light gravity of Annoc-Conn and ended up high-jumping over the six-foot-tall man in the process. Bennett staggered back into her, pinning them both against the wall.

  A flash bolt lit off from the weapon in Bennett’s hand, more a reaction to the hit than any defensive move. It struck the floor and flared out in my direction.

  Lefty saw it too, and rolled to his right. I covered my head with my arms as the wave of intense heat swept over me, singing hair from arms, the sickly smell now filling the room.

  It was my turn to roll, and none too soon. The moment I cleared the area, a shuddering thud echoed in my right ear. I looked over to see Lefty’s left foot resting in a section of cracked and splintered concrete, which just as easily could have been my skull.

  I did a Superman pushup which propelled me off the floor and into a standing position. Lefty hesitated a moment before attacking, his face twisted into a savage snarl. He appeared confident in the outcome of the fight. He was probably right. I hadn’t counted on him having a bionic leg.

  I looked desperately around the room for a weapon—any weapon—to help counter his deadly appendage. All I saw was Bennett’s flash weapon.

  Another bolt erupted from the barrel, but this one was aimed harmless away from Lefty and me. In the meantime, Angela continued to pummel Bennett with a series of powerful blows to the man’s solar-plexus. He was already stunned by the kick, and a moment later he dropped the weapon and spun to face his attacker. That was a mistake. The much shorter woman answered by jumping off the floor, smashing the top of her head into the prominent chin of the ex-Army Ranger. The contact shattered teeth and bone. Bennett went erect and then tumbled to the floor like a falling redwood.

  I focused on the gun. It was only ten feet away.

  Lefty saw it, too.

  I launched myself again in an all-out dive through the air. Ten feet in the light gravity wasn’t a problem. The problem came from the fact that for Lefty’s bionic leg, it was even less of a challenge.

  I lie face down on the warm concrete floor, staring at the black laces of Lefty’s boot, placed strategically positioned between me and the gun. I half rolled over and looked up at the towering figure. I grinned.

  Lefty didn’t grin back.

  But he did disappear.

  More correctly, he was sent cascading stage left as Angela’s flying body struck him from the side. The two of them tumbled apart a few feet away.

  I refocused on the gun, reaching out with my right hand. I gripped it and rolled, aiming the barrel at my old friend. He was on his feet, his prosthetic leg raised and ready to be lowered onto Angela’s moaning body.

  The flash lit up the room. Lefty fell away, screaming as he clawed at the right side of his face. Even though it had been a glancing strike, it was enough to sear flesh, turning it into a bubbling mass of charred and smoking skin. Lefty’s agony didn’t last long. In shock and blinded in his right eye, he collapsed to the floor and fell silent, wisps of pungent smoke rising from his scared and blackened face.

  No matter how strong the drugs had once been in my system, the combination of time and abuse was causing them to wear off at an exponential rate. I limped over to Angela, feeling each agonizing step in every part of my battered body.

  She had been knocked silly after tackling Lefty, but now her senses were returning.

  “The Lights!”

  “That’s the next thing on my to-do list.” I helped her to her feet. “Are you okay?”

  She frowned and eyed my bleeding lip, torn clothing and swollen face. “Better than you, by the look of things.”

  “Good. We have about twenty aliens to fight our way through.” I checked the charge on the flash weapon. “And only two bolts left.”

  “I’m not worried. You saw these aliens trying to deal with the gravity here. Should be a cakewalk.”

  Putting my macho tendencies aside, I stepped away and waved an arm toward the exit. “Lead on, my lady.”

  “Today I’m not any kind of a lady.”

  I looked back at the sleeping Lefty Rodriquez and the two pallets of Union credits. A few moments later I joined Angela at the door.

  Chapter 22

  We made first contact with the aliens when she opened the door. The one who had directed us to the room was in the corridor, blinking rapidly at the surprise encounter. Behind him were two more aliens manning a basic forklift like contraption. It had an L-shaped lifting component running attached to a thin frame with screw tracks and four wheels. There was a small control panel behind the five-foot-tall back section.

  To my surprise—as well as the alien’s—Angela bowed. Instinctively, the aliens followed suit. That was their last mistake.

  Angela slipped past the lead creature, leaving him to me, and moved to engage the two at the forklift. As the leader lifted his head, he met my incoming fist. I was startled to see the neck extend out by several inches, stretching the skin almost to the breaking point. He slumped to the floor, his head having snapped off his neck. The only thing holding it on was the leather-like skin.

  I didn’t see how Angela handled her two aliens, only the aftermath. They were on the floor and no longer a concern.

  Only the leader was armed, so I took his weapon and handed it to Angela. “This will help.”

  “So will this.” She stepped behind the forklift and the shield formed by the tall back panel. She twisted a hand knob and the device moved down the corridor.

  “I hope they don’t detonate the Light once they see us coming,” Angela said.

  “They shouldn’t, not until they decide they can’t escape with the rest of the Lights. At that point all bets are off.”

  The entrance to the preparation room was only a hundred feet along the corridor. Six aliens were standing outside the door, looking exhausted. Now they stared at the narrow forklift humming toward them. All these alien bastards were armed.

  There wasn’t a lot of room to hide behind the forklift, so our ruse was discovered almost immediately. Flash bolts erupted from the barrels of alien weapons, striking the metal shield. Angela and I huddled close together, doing our best to remain sheltered. I fired my last two bolts, eliminating two of the guards.

  Angela was a crack shot, and took out the other four, yet by the time we reached the entrance to the prep room, more guards had been alerted. They st
aggered from the prep room, not looking to have much enthusiasm for a fight in their movements. One more shot from Angela’s weapon and it was dry, after which the fight—if you call it that—devolved into close-quarters, hand-to-hand combat.

  I took out my share of the brittle-boned aliens, but then with gentlemanly-like manners, I deferred the remainder of them to my beautiful partner. It was something to see.

  Angela Cole was a deadly martial arts master. Combine that with the light gravity, and she looked like something out of a cartoon, a tornado of deadly spins, kicks and vicious blows. At one point I even heard her yelp with excitement. She was having fun.

  It was no contest, and soon nine more aliens lay limp to the floor. All too soon, the fight was over, with no one left to kill. Angela was hardly winded. For my part, I was rapidly being consumed by the plethora of punishment I’d been through. The painkillers were wearing off.

  We entered the preparation room…and immediately had to dive away from a flash bolt splashing against the metal door. More hair was singed, this time off the top of my head.

  Porlok Grunge and two remaining guards stood at the far side of the room, firing at us with reckless abandon. We took cover under the long rail table. Even if we had weapons, we wouldn’t fire, not wanting to risk striking the tank holding the other four Galactic Lights.

  In the end, we didn’t need weapons. The aliens exhausted their supply of flash bolts and Porlok ordered his two guards to rush us. They obviously hadn’t gotten the message we’d left in the hallway.

  Obediently, the two aliens attacked. Angela and I came out from under the table and waited patiently for them to cover the distance. They looked like they were going pass out. Unfortunately—for them—they reached us. What we did to them wasn’t pretty, but it was artistic.