Twilight of the Gods (Universe in Flames Book 8)

by Christian Kallias

He flew his ship as close as he could to the Fury fighter and activated a hyperspace window just before closing his eyes.

  CHASE WAS TOO FAR from Tax to do anything, but he understood that they had been played.

  Thor, who was the nearest, rushed toward Tax. He barely had time to grab her, when a red-colored lightwave shot from their heads to their toes, and they disappeared. Odin had also disappeared. Thor, who had managed to grab the female Fury a split second before it happened, had been teleported away, which Chase assumed had not been part of the plan.

  He turned his attention back to Afthartos in time to see him beam away as three dozen more Fury grunts appeared in the distance. They began to run toward the group from the other side of the large hall leading to the massive throne room, and they made the ground shake.

  “Oryn, you’re with me. Chris, Argos, do you think you can deal with them on your own?”

  Argos flashed him a thumb’s up, but Chase didn’t like the odds. Fortunately, Odin’s royal guards, who had mostly been witnesses to the previous fighting, decided to join in.

  “We’ll cover your friends, please help Odin,” said the taller of the four guards.

  The guards rushed toward the incoming Furies, their emerald power lances shooting energy discharges at the enemy. Chris and Argos flew in their wake.

  Before Chase could tell Oryn to grab his hand, he heard an unknown, bodiless voice.

  “I’ll give your friends help as well.”

  “Who is this? Show yourself!”

  A very tall, effeminate man with long blond hair appeared next to them. He was very handsome and delicate, but something in his eyes told Chase he was not to be underestimated.

  “And you are?”

  “My name is Loki. I’m Thor’s brother.”

  “You’re a little late to the party, I’m afraid.”

  “So it would seem. You’d better hurry and go after my father and brother, that is if you know where to find them.”

  “I should have enough of a connection with Thor to locate him and teleport there.”

  “Then why are you still here?” said Loki coldly.

  Why indeed.

  Chase grabbed Oryn’s hand, closed his eyes and focused on Thor. Hopefully, Thor hadn’t been defeated or killed yet. Otherwise, Chase would not have been able to locate his energetic vibration through space. A few seconds later, they teleported away from Odin’s throne room.

  WHEN RYONNA, Keera and Tar’Lock arrived at the end of the cavernous path they were on, it provided them with a vision to one of the swarms they had been trying to locate.

  “This is unbelievable,” said Keera, overwhelmed by the scale of what she saw.

  “Not the word I would have used,” complained Tar’Lock.

  Ryonna looked at the massive cavern below. It was a megalopolis-sized underground factory. Millions upon millions of workers were operating in concert, assembling, welding, and generally constructing Fury ship parts. In all her life she had never seen anything like this. What her eyes revealed to her seemed impossible; the speed at which everything was performed with robot-like precision was incredible, and this was infinitely more efficient than any construction chain she had seen on her planet or elsewhere.

  A constant flow of Gorgar continued to bring raw quadrinium and other minerals, while another group transported it to the building and forging sections. The entire building process was arranged in rings, with raw resources gathering, and the transformation portion on the outer ring. Each new inner ring brought the transformation process closer and closer to the final usable technology that would be assembled at the center of the underground facility.

  “We don’t have any time to lose. At these speeds, the Furies could have tens of ships ready within a week. We have to make it stop. Tar’Lock, go grab someone and bring them back.”

  Tar’Lock nodded and made his way at his usual super speed.

  “I never thought I would see something like this,” said Keera. “But this is beyond slavery.”

  “The worst part is that the Gorgars don’t even feel used, they just think they’re doing what they have to.”

  “I’m starting to understand why you hate Argos so much.”

  “As much as I hate the bastard, he was just doing what he was asked, like these gazillion poor slobs.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Well, if it wasn’t for the tech he provided us, in just a few weeks we’d have been overwhelmed with so many ships that there would be nothing the Alliance, Chase or anyone could have done to stop them. So while I hate his guts for what he did to my world and countless others, at least his redemption is giving us a fighting chance.”

  Ryonna rushed forward and tried to locate Tar’Lock.

  “What’s taking him so long? Can you track his location beacon with your suit?”

  “Yeah, let me access that. It won’t take but a sec— oh crap.”

  “What is it?”

  “He’s working with them!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me! The collective hive mind must be too strong to overcome in these work centers. That’s just great!”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Let me try to send a signal from here…”

  Ryonna brought Argos’ device online and checked the mental suggestion command menu. An “out of range” error message flashed on her neuronal HUD.

  “We’re too far away. I guess we’re going down too.”

  “I don’t see anyone but Gorgars; we should be fine.”

  Ryonna took one of the two magnetically attached blaster rifles she carried on her back and checked its charge before cocking its pump.

  “Are those the latest anti-Fury blaster rifles?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been dying to test them.”

  “I don’t see any Furies down there.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’re not around. I mean look at all this,” said Ryonna with a large wave of her hand. “You think the Furies would leave this place unprotected? If they were that stupid, we would have won the war already. Trust me, they’re here, somewhere, I can feel it. Let’s go.”

  They entered the nearest elevator and started their descent into the Gorgars massive factory.

  ZEUS UNLEASHED a cascade of lightning bolts toward Arakan who dodged them with high proficiency and countered some of the bolts with crimson fireballs. He moved inside the torrent of lightning bolts like a skilled acrobat. He was very fast, way faster than Zeus. But the Olympian realized it too late to change tactics. Arakan was almost upon him, and he was running out of the juice his power up had granted him.

  “Can you feel it, Zeus? Can you smell it in the air? That is the smell of death!”

  Arakan didn’t blink and kept deflecting and dodging the highly charged lightning bolts, determination glinting in his eyes. There was something else shining madly in there too, a fire that consumed the Fury supreme commander and also allowed him to focus. Flames of revenge burned into his very soul.

  When it became clear to Zeus that he couldn’t hit Arakan with his current mode of attack, and when the supreme commander was nearly upon him, Zeus slammed both his fists to the ground. A wall of lightning bolts acting as a shield shot upward.

  What happened next Zeus never expected. Arakan’s eyes shone brightly, and he jumped through the lightning wall as if it wasn’t there. The amount of destructive power he felt didn’t stop him. Lightning sizzled on his exposed skin, ripping, cutting and burning through flesh, nerve and even bone. But Arakan was unstoppable. He emerged from Zeus’ last line of defense, blood flying all around him, then joined his hands together and lit them up with crackling crimson energy. He smashed them down and hammered Zeus to the ground, crushing many of the Olympian’s bones in one devastating attack.

  Zeus passed out shortly after that.

  Arakan kicked Zeus, and his body tumbled to the ground and through the mud for yards. “Wake up, coward! I want your eyes open when I rip your life from this world.”

  Ara
kan growled his frustration as the devastation around him kept increasing to cataclysmic proportions. The ground cracked, and large chasms opened all over the planet. Lava and smoke geysers shot in the sky of the once beautiful planet, thickening the atmosphere of Olympus Prime.

  Stones and dust particles lifted into the air and flew toward the heavens. Arakan knew there were only a few minutes left for him to leave this world before it was swallowed by the black hole. Arakan healed the multitude of wounds he’d received flying through Zeus’ vain final attempt at stopping him and smiled.

  “So be it! I suppose I’ll have to be content with just pulverizing you, then.”

  Arakan lifted a hand atop his head, and a crimson and black-flaming energy sphere crackled to life and rapidly grew larger. It soon was bigger than Arakan himself.

  “This is where you die,” sneered Arakan.

  But then something hit Arakan with tremendous speed and sent him flying backward until he impacted with the trunk of a large tree. He looked at his stomach and saw that a large crystal-bladed trident had impaled him. Arakan tried grabbing the weapon, but his hand passed through its handle, liquefying and solidifying itself afterward.

  Arakan then tried pushing the trident away from his guts, but he couldn’t grab it with telekinesis either.

  “What the hell is this thing?” he complained.

  “Poseidon’s Trident only answers to me! You’re not worthy wielding it,” said a voice near him.

  “Show yourself, coward!”

  “You were about to murder my brother while he’s out cold and I’m the coward?”

  Millions of water droplets fell from the sky and formed into the shape of a walking man. He materialized into flesh and blood, except for his hair and beard that were water-based and cyan in color, giving him an otherworldly look.

  “You should not have come to this planet. It will be your tomb,” said Poseidon.

  WHEN DANIEL REOPENED HIS EYES, he was glad to see he was still in one piece. He veered his StarFury off trajectory and let the kamikaze starfighter impact with the enemy star destroyer he had painted for his hyperspace micro-jump. It detonated and took out a portion of its shields, but not fully. However, Daniel was now in the middle of a hot zone where laser fire, missiles and torpedoes were exchanged in between the Fury destroyer and the other ships in the fleet, including Olympian destroyers.

  Daniel vectored away from the fight at max burn to return to the Hope.

  “You’re as crazy as your best friend,” declared Sarah. “But thanks for saving all our hides. I owe you one.”

  “You’re welcome, Captain. But this fight is far from over.”

  “Yes, and it’s harder than I expected. It’s like the Furies don’t care about sacrificing all of their pieces on the chessboard, so to speak.”

  Daniel understood the chess reference as he had played a few games with Fillio.

  “We can’t possibly rebuild ships as fast as they do, not if they use them as tactical weapons of mass destruction.”

  “Hopefully, Ryonna will be successful in putting a dent in their supply line. Even if the Asgardians rejoin the Alliance, many of their ships have been wiped out today. We can’t keep taking that many losses and hope to win. Hang on Daniel, we have another bogey on approach.”

  What?

  Daniel checked his instruments and swore. A Fury super-destroyer had jumped close to the Hope and had sent another volley of kamikaze starfighters toward it.

  “Tell me some of your shields are back up?” inquired Daniel.

  “That’s a negative. If any of those impact with our hull, we’re history.”

  “Jump engines?”

  “Still down. This is it.”

  “Can you get into escape pods?”

  “That wouldn’t make any difference, as the range of the explosion would incinerate them.”

  “Then it’s time to ask Chase for help!”

  “I already tried. I can’t get through to him, neither via comms nor telepathically. I think the Asgardian shield is preventing communications.”

  “Dammit!”

  Daniel opened a channel to all his squadron pilots in range of the Hope and took a deep breath.

  “Listen up, everyone—”

  24

  When Chase and Oryn rematerialized, they were in front of a Fury transport ship. Thor was swinging his hammer at three of the Furies, while Odin was being beaten to a pulp by the super fast female Fury. She moved at least as fast as Chase, perhaps even faster.

  “We have company,” shouted Afthartos. “Kill Odin, now!”

  Chase saw the female Fury do one last turn around the Asgardian king and infuse her arm with energy in order to use it as a blade. Chase had been on the receiving end of such an attack and knew he needed to act fast. He micro-teleported toward Odin and intercepted the female’s killing blow by punching to the side her hand that would have decapitated Odin. Chase put all his might into this one attack and heard every bone in the Fury’s arm get crushed upon impact. Still, she managed to graze Odin’s neck and draw blood, but the injury didn’t seem life-threatening.

  Oryn unleashed a veritable twister of near absolute zero energy that flash froze Tax into place. Chase then punched the ice Fury statue into a million pieces.

  “You’ll pay for this,” said Afthartos as he jumped forward to engage her.

  He unleashed a series of powerful punches but Oryn was one step ahead of him at every turn. Each time she blocked one of his attacks, she froze small parts of his skin without him realizing it. When she had frozen enough of his right hand, she allowed him to hit her in the face, but then his fist exploded upon impact with her cheek.

  Afthartos fell to his knees and screamed from the pain, holding his amputated limb by the wrist.

  “I told you to leave this world, forget the mission and go away, but you wouldn’t listen. Your ego thought you could beat me, but we both know you were never strong enough to lead this group.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” said Afthartos from behind her.

  It took half a second for Oryn to realize what had happened, as the injured Fury’s face blinked and scrambled, revealing Kolpas’ face instead. He had used his holo-projected tech to take the face of the Fury Strike Force leader. Before Oryn could turn to face the real Afthartos, his hand shot through the right side of her stomach.

  “Oryn!” shouted Chase who was helping Odin with the other two Furies.

  The pain was intense and seeing her own blood on the hand of the man who had once touched her in intimacy made something in her head snap. She felt he was about to retract his hand and she instinctively grabbed it and locked it into place. Then, she unleashed absolute zero energy through her grasp. Freezing Afthartos’ hand and entire arm. She then swiftly severed it clean with her elbow.

  Afthartos took a couple of steps back and looked at where his arm used to be. He saw nothing but a frozen stump below his shoulder.

  “What have you done?”

  “What I promised I would do if you didn’t leave this world.”

  Oryn’s aura intensified, and the hand in Oryn’s stomach exploded into a million icy pieces. She used the cold to freeze her gushing wound.

  “This won’t save your life but only delay your death,” spat Afthartos.

  “I would worry about yourself right now,” said Oryn as she aimed an open palm toward her ex-lover.

  Her eyes flashed white as icy particles flew all around her. “Goodbye!”

  She unleashed a multitude of cyan colored fireballs that turned into icicles before reaching their target. Afthartos was impaled over and over again. He fell to his knees, a look of terror and disbelief in his eyes, before collapsing dead on the ground.

  Oryn felt dizzy and stumbled before falling as well.

  THE ASGARDIAN ROYAL guards fought bravely and helped kill nearly a dozen of the Fury fighters before succumbing to their wounds. Chris beheaded the nearest Fury with a swift slash of his hand while Argos incinerated a
group of three fighters who had the unfortunate idea of gathering next to one another.

  Loki was firing powerful laser blasts from his fingers that had assumed the shape of guns. His attacks were far more powerful than any blaster fire Argos had ever seen. They effortlessly pierced through Fury armor, and sometimes a single well-lined shot would hit multiple enemies.

  “I’ve missed this!” shouted the Asgardian.

  “Us, not so much,” retorted Argos as he burned a watermelon-sized hole through the chest of his last victim.

  “Any idea where Chase, Thor and Odin could be?” asked Chris.

  “I can track my dad’s and Thor’s locator beacons,” replied Loki.

  “You guys are chipped? What about leashes?” snorted Argos.

  “It’s a strategic advantage to know where anyone is, only an idiot would not wear a locator.”

  Argos paused, looked at Chris and frowned. “Did he just call me an idiot?”

  “Not in so many words— behind you, Uncle!”

  Argos threw his leg into a backward kick, which his Fury foe dodged, only to be decapitated by two well placed mint-colored energy shots a fraction of a second before Argos’ second legged kick hit the air where the head once was.

  “Hey! I had that under control!” he complained.

  “You’re welcome,” said Loki casually.

  “For what? I just wasted a perfectly timed double kick.”

  Loki pointed his finger pistol at Argos’ head and shot.

  It took a moment for Argos to realize that Loki was shooting behind him at an incoming Fury with extended fist claws ready to impale Argos. The lime colored shot burned through the center of the Fury’s forehead and he was dead long before his body hit the ground.

  “What about now? Did you also have that under control?” taunted Loki. “You talk too much!”

  Not to take Loki’s side in this argument, said Chris in Argos’ head. But if you did more fighting and less talking, we’d already be done by now.

  You are your father’s son, that’s for sure.