“She’s just outside, playing with a cat. I’ve asked the old lady by the bench to look after her. Let me bring her in.”
“Thank you, Keera.”
Keera nodded. “Sure thing.”
It took Tanelis more than an hour to start talking with her father. Even though she needed to go to make her deadline in giving Tron’Tak his money back, Keera didn’t feel like leaving until Tanelis was used to Georgios.
Following Keera’s advice, he offered her ice cream. After that, Tanelis wouldn’t stop talking about all her favorite flavors. It made Keera smile and lifted some of the weight that she held in her heart.
“I have to go,” said Keera.
Tanelis dropped her third bowl of ice cream and ran toward Keera and grabbed her leg. Keera’s heart sank.
“Don’t go, Keera!”
Keera knelt down and took Tanelis by the shoulders as their eyes filled with tears.
“You’re in good hands, now. Georgios will take good care of you.”
“Please, Keera.”
“I can’t kiddo. If I don’t go, I will get into trouble.”
Tanelis frowned, but Keera could tell she understood what trouble meant.
“Will you come back to visit me?”
“I’ll try, kiddo. I’m so glad you’re getting to know your father, and I want you to know that your mother loves you very much. I will miss you. You’ve been a great co-pilot.”
“I’ll miss you, too, Keera.”
Keera kissed Tanelis on the cheek before saying goodbye to the both of them.
“Let me walk you out,” proposed Georgios.
Once outside of Georgios’ apartment, Keera took a deep breath.
“One more thing; I couldn’t take Eleni’s body with me. I had to space it as it didn’t feel right to leave her in the transport where she would decomp…” Keera’s voice caught.
“I understand; she wouldn’t have liked that either.”
Keera took a small tracker from her pocket and handed it to Georgios.
“What’s this?”
“That should give you her location in case you’d like to send a salvage team to recover her, and perhaps…”
But Keera let the words hang.
“Have a proper funeral.”
Keera nodded.
“I can’t guarantee that she’ll still be there, but there’s a good chance. I just thought you might want to have the option.”
“Thank you, Keera, for everything.”
Back on her ship and in space, Keera added the medical scan to Eleni’s decoy file and sent it to the DTs through a darknet address that should be untraceable.
Keera reflected on recent events. It had been a long time since she felt that her job had actually made a real difference for someone. Still, her adventures over the past couple of weeks had cemented something in her she had been feeling for a while. She didn’t see herself keeping this profession for much longer. She needed to get one or two very well paying warrants and retire somehow.
She accessed the intergalactic network and pulled up the advanced search option and filled in the minimum warrant reward field with one million credits. Only one result popped up. She couldn’t believe her eyes. There was a warrant for an Argos Thanatos, wanted dead or alive, for a thirty-five million credits warrant. If she could catch or eliminate this Argos, she could finally retire.
The thought warmed her heart. Keera was not stupid, though; she knew that if someone were willing to pay such a crazy amount of money, then this Argos person would probably be very dangerous. However, if she could pull off the job, she would be set for life.
While Eleni’s ship was quite comfortable, she would have preferred to get her own ship back from Tron’Tak, sell this one, as well as the precious cargo onboard her ship, and then buy the necessary hardware for the mission and perhaps hire some additional muscle to help her succeed in catching Argos Thanatos.
“It’s settled, then,” she said out loud.
Keera set a course for the Ponos One station and activated the hyperspace engine.
The End.
If you enjoyed Keera’s adventure, I recommend you check out the Universe in Flames series. Keera’s first appearance in the series begins in Book 3 - Destination Oblivion. I recommend you get the First Universe in Flames book here: http://mybook.to/UiF1
You can check out more about my books on my website at https://www.christiankallias.com
Keep reading for a special sneak peak at a new Universe in Flames - Dark Legacy series.
Universe in Flames Dark Legacy
Episode 1
(Final Book title to be determined)
Here is an exclusive sample of my upcoming Universe in Flames sequel series.
The following text has been edited but might change until the final release of the book later this year. I hope you enjoy this little appetizer of Chase’s adventures.
Prologue
Nyx reached the end of the corridor, took a sharp left, and skid to a halt when she saw the three metallic spiders ahead. The robotic spiders’ eyes glowed yellow and lost no time crawling forward to the young Fury female. The clicking noise their thin, pointy legs generated was nerve-wracking. But their noise was nothing compared to the damage these spider bots could deliver, against most species anyway.
Nyx wasn’t your average humanoid. She was a proud Fury, descendant of a warrior race now extinct. In fact, as far as she knew, she was the last of her kind. She had left Erevos a while back when her values conflicted with those of Supreme Commander Arakan’s and his plans for the future of her race. So, she had taken a ship into the unknown dimension, a dimension where her species had been trapped by the coalition of worlds who tried stopping the Furies plans of universal conquest. Olympians, Asgardians, and many other races had teamed together to stop the Furies. Instead of destroying them, this alliance had shifted the planet to an alternate universe, trapping the Furies there for all eternity. Or so it seemed.
The reasons for the supreme commander not sending more exploration vessels were unknown. After a few scout ships left the planet, never to return, Arakan had decreed that the Furies should not try and explore that new dimension. Before she had decided to take matters into her own hands and travel on her own, Arakan had told his race that a plan to return to their dimension was in the works. But, as the years flew by one after the other, Nyx grew restless. To the point where she eventually went against all warnings from her closest friends and took her destiny into her own hands.
If there was one emotion that Nyx had never let interfere with her life, it was fear. That was not to say she never experience it, she did plenty when she left Erevos in search of other civilizations. But a voice inside told her to push through and follow her instincts.
The metallic clickety-clicks from the spider bots grew stronger and snapped her mind back to the present. It had been a long journey, one filled with many battles for survival and close encounters. Today was no different.
The spider bots stopped advancing, lowering their center of gravity by briefly flexing their creepy legs, and leaped forward as a group. Fire lit inside Nyx’s sun-colored eyes as her purple aura engulfed her body. She slashed through the first spider with her forearm, using it as a sword, as she split the mechanical spider in half. The glow in her eyes intensified as she pushed with her mind and used telekinetic energy to stop the second spider in midair as if it hit an invisible wall. The third was almost upon her, its gigantic mouth, layered in row upon row of rotating titanium teeth, was wide open and ready to pulverize her flesh upon contact.
Nyx pushed her aura to its maximum and shot a purple fireball directly into the monster’s mouth. The result was as instantaneous as it was devastating. The spider bot exploded from the inside out, spreading molten metallic debris and shooting sparks onto the cold, hard floor. She returned her attention to the one enemy spider left, still held in midair and unable to advance. She strengthened her mental hold on the creature and bent it, forcing it to
collapse on itself, as she continued to throw kinetic energy until it was nothing more than a rough sphere of scrap metal oozing a black liquid oil.
She released her mental grip, and it fell and rebounded to the floor with a satisfying clanking noise. Black smoke rose from the disabled bot as the ethereal purple aura around Nyx faded to nothingness.
Three spider bots to bring me down, that’s insulting.
As if in answer from the universe, a more massive humanoid creature stepped around the corner at the end of the corridor. The humanoid arachnoid unleashed a screech that sent shivers up and down her spine. Her inner senses confirmed what she already knew: that this creature wouldn’t go down as easily as the bots that preceded it.
Earth – Washington, DC. A year after the end of the Fury War.
“I’ll save you, Sarah.” Chase said.
With a heavy heart, he looked at his wife’s frozen face inside her suspended animation chamber. Black veins, filled with the poisoned Spectre blood, were visible up and down her neck. The same poison that prevented Chase from healing his beloved. For the past year, sorrow filled his heart and blackened his soul, as he had been unable to think straight since Tanak’Vor had mortally wounded Sarah. Not even killing the Spectre had brought Chase a glimpse of comfort. He blamed himself for not being able to protect Sarah, the woman he loved more than life itself.
It was during their last stand against the Furies, the evil race he partially belonged to, that Chase had lost everything. In the same day he defeated Tanak’Vor and destroyed the Furies home world, Erevos, once and for all. Bringing victory to the Earth Alliance. The Fury War had been won. But the price for victory had cost him and weighed heavily on his soul. His father was gone, swallowed by a miniature black hole attack Tanak’Vor had managed to cast before Chase was able to extinguish the Spectre’s life. Also gone was his friend and mentor Ares. He had been on Erevos, the Fury stronghold, when Chase and his family had taken out the planet with the help of the legendary Atlantian soul ships, whose selfless sacrifices ensured the planet’s destruction. But there was more blame and guilt tainting Chase. Before the final assault on Erevos, Chase had lost his grandfather, Zeus, and most of the Olympian race, when their enemy took out Olympus.
Every day Chase stood by Sarah’s side, talking to her even though he doubted she could hear him, and feeling his soul grow darker as his hope withered away little by little.
To make matters worse, he was estranged from his son. It brought to mind their last encounter.
“I don’t want you here. Please leave.”
“Son, I—I’m trying. I wish you could understand how I feel. I never wanted this to happ—”
“Stop! Just get out.”
Chase shook his head, shaking off the disturbing memory.
Another one of its casualties from the Fury War had been thrust upon him. His aunt, Aphroditis. She was an Olympian with the ability to sense possible futures and the one who initially enlisted Chase to fight and defeat the Furies, the scourge everyone had thought extinct for ten thousand years. Aphroditis had paid a steep price, trapped inside an infernal machine that hacked away at her body and soul. Like Sarah, her life was also hanging by a thread inside a similar suspended animation chamber located in the Earth Alliance Medical Headquarters.
Doctors had tried their best to heal both the Olympian goddess and Chase’s wife but did so in vain. They suffered from different, but equally critical, afflictions. Chase could still remember Aphroditis begging him to let her die, but he had promised Ares he would bring her back and if nothing else, Chase always kept his promises.
The pain was too much to bear, the weight of all that guilt eating him alive. But today Chase knew he had to stop lamenting the situation and do something about it. Today he would get an Earth Alliance ship and explore the unknown regions of space in search of a cure for Sarah. Perhaps he could also find a way to cure Aphroditis. As if his torment wasn’t horrible enough, Sarah was pregnant, so that brought the number of lives to save to three: Aphroditis, Sarah, and their unborn daughter.
Chase would not rest until he found a way to bring them all back, or die trying.
Before Tanak’Vor died, he stole from Chase the one power that could have helped in his quest. He could no longer teleport himself across the universe with a single thought. Was the power gone for good? Or would he be able to learn it again over time? Chase didn’t know. Without his ability to teleport, though, he would have to travel the stars the old-fashioned way, aboard a ship.
Using his former rank as an admiral in the Earth Alliance would make it easy to request a ship and probably a crew as well. Though he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask bystanders to risk their lives for this mission. He had thought about asking Argos and Chris. Part of him wanted nothing more than to be with his family in these hard times, and he had no doubt they would be willing to risk their lives in a heartbeat. But, that was exactly the reason that made him hesitate. He couldn’t risk his brother and son’s lives.
The last thing he wanted was to lose someone else in trying to save Sarah and their unborn child. Chase laid his hand on the chamber’s glass and gazed at his wife.
“It’s time, love. I’ll have someone transfer you to Earth Alliance Medical while I’m gone. But I promise you, I will return, and I will save you both. I love you, and no matter what happens, I hope you know that.”
With a heavy heart, Chase finally left their apartment. He went onto the roof and climbed aboard his trusted StarFury. The holographic HUD (Head-up Display) came to life inside his mind when the neuronal link was established as he sat in his pilot chair. He missed the connection he had made with the onboard AI of his soul ship: Dragos. The Atlantian AI could read his thoughts and advise him in times of need. StarFuries were a marvel of technology, especially when considering that the first model had been nothing more than a Tomcat F-14 that the Alliance had retrofitted to fly in space. It had been a little over two years since Chase and Sarah had tested the first iteration of the starfighter.
With a single thought, Chase connected his mind to the starfighter’s systems and ran his pre-flight checks. Shortly after his StarFury took off from the roof, blasting a cloud of old dust all around the building in Washington, DC, it hovered briefly in the overcast sky before Chase set a course for Auckland, New Zealand and punched the engines to the max. The StarFury soared like an iron eagle as it blasted out of view.
Asrak’Vor, a member of the Spectre race, was peering outside the viewport of the spider ship Oblivion. Spectre Prime himself had given Asrak’Vor command of the mighty destroyer and battlegroup. It had been a year since entering the alternate dimension where humans and other species of the Earth Alliance lived. Impure beings, the lot of them. The same being that had defeated both the Furies and murdered his brother, Tanak’Vor.
Rage boiled at the forefront of the Spectre’s mind, fueling his motivation to make the Alliance pay for their crimes. He felt anger toward his superiors and their lack of vision. The Furies had been weak, and the Spectres had been misguided into thinking that they could manipulate them to cleanse the dimension.
If you want something done well, do it yourself. We’ll consume, convert, or crush every soul in that wretched dimension. Once the breach is re-opened, we’ll cleanse this abominable dimension.
The spider ship was part of a fleet that incidentally failed in making it through the singularity when the Earth Alliance opened it one final time. Erevos had been transported back into the Spectre’s dimension, and the planet’s destruction had destabilized their space. As a result, most ships that composed Asrak’Vor’s fleet had been wiped out on the spot.
The Spectres had not anticipated that a moment before the Earth Alliance destroyed the Furies’ planet, they had shifted it back into their own dimension. Space and time are fragile constructs and the ancient technology used to create a rift between their dimensions was playing with its very fabric, which meant that Erevos exploding while the rift was still partially open could ha
ve catastrophic ripples for Asrak’Vor’s dimension.
Being cut off from communication with his superiors for so long, Asrak’Vor could only speculate. Of course, time was relative. In this side of the rift, it had been a year. On the Spectre’s side, only a handful of hours had gone by. The time dilation factor between their realms was significant. In the impure dimension, time passed substantially faster than where Asrak’Vor came from. Until he heard from his hierarchy, all he had to go with was some faint and incomplete sensor logs accumulated during the brunt of the explosion that had vaporized most of his fleet alongside Erevos.
Asrak’Vor counted himself lucky since his ship was among the few that had survived the trip in one piece. More or less, that was. His ship, the Oblivion, had suffered extensive damage in the explosion, and repairing it with the limited amount of resources available in this dimension had been challenging, at best. Fortunately, they had managed to effect partial repairs while staying undetected, thanks to their ship’s superior cloaking and stealth technology. Systems that would be paramount in striking back at the heart of the enemy—Earth.
Soon, though, they’d get their hands on the required materials required to try and open communication back to their home world and the Spectre Council, and hopefully, receive new orders. Or reconsider a new strategy on how to complete their mission with a crippled fleet. His brother had made the mistake of going off plan, and his wife and children had certainly paid a steep price. One that Asrak’Vor hoped his own wouldn’t.
But then again, perhaps Spectre Prime had already exerted his penalty upon his entire family.
Why brother, why did you do it? You were supposed to wait for us.
Course Correction_A Bounty Hunter Story Page 4