by Lucas Flint
Still, I managed to land on the ground expertly and look up to see the brute rubbing his jaw where I had kicked him. One of his teeth had been cracked, which must have been the source of the cracking sound I’d heard.
“Chipped a tooth, buddy?” I said. “You might want to see a dentist about that.”
The brute growled, but instead of running at me, he made a weird sucking sound before spitting something at me. I tried to dodge, but the disgusting spit struck my foot and instantly solidified, sticking my foot to the ground. A quick glance showed me that the brute had actually spat out blue glue, which was just plain nasty.
I tried to break it, but as always, the blue glue was stronger than steel. I looked up at the brute, which was now smiling evilly, like it was just imagining how I’d look after it skewered me with its sword.
“Uh, guys?” I said, looking back over at Wind and Blizzard. “A little help here?”
“Be right there,” said Wind.
He launched himself through the air, over the brute’s head, and landed on the ground in front of the brute as perfectly as if he had been practicing that move his whole life. He stood up, now standing between me and the brute, showing no fear at all as he looked up at the huge behemoth that towered above him.
“You look pretty darn ugly, fella,” said Wind, putting his hands on his hips as he observed the creature. “But even the biggest creatures need air to survive, so let’s see how you do without it.”
Wind raised his hands and pulled his fists back. I heard a sucking sound, followed shortly by the brute gasping for air. It dropped its sword onto the ground and fell to its hands and knees, grasping its neck as it breathed desperately for the air that was no longer there.
“There,” said Wind in a satisfied voice. “You just lie there, now, you hear? I’ve got more where that came from if necessary, so don’t even bother fighting back.”
The brute just continued to choke and gasp, while Wind turned around to face me, a smirk on his face. “Wasn’t so hard to beat. Don’t know why you had such a hard time.”
“Because I can’t take away another being’s air,” I said in annoyance.
But my annoyance quickly turned to horror as the brute rose up behind Wind, who seemed so satisfied with himself that he didn’t even notice it rising. That was probably because the brute had stopped choking, even though I was certain that it was still missing air.
“Wind, behind you!” I shouted. “Watch out!”
Wind frowned and looked over his shoulder just in time for the brute to slash him in half with his sword. And damn did its sword move fast; one second it was by the brute’s side, the next it was covered in blood, with both halves of Wind’s body lying still on the ground in rapidly expanding pools of blood. Wind didn’t even get a chance to scream.
“Wind!” I screamed. “No!”
The brute seemed to have forgotten about Wind already. It just stomped toward me, its sword dripping Wind’s blood, as I desperately tried to break free of the blue glue, but it was no use. It was still too solid for me to break.
Then, all of a sudden, a thick ice spear flew through the air out of nowhere and struck the brute in the stomach. The ice spear actually impaled the alien, going straight out its other side. The brute yelled in pain, yelled in a really weird, monstrous voice that made the hairs on my arms stand on end.
I looked over to see Blizzard standing with her arms out toward the brute. She looked tired, as if summoning that ice spear had taken a lot out of her, but she didn’t lower her hands. She just twisted her hands and brought them down hard.
Instantly, ice began expanding from the ice spear, rapidly covering the brute’s torso until soon it looked like it was wearing a big block of ice as its armor. The brute was growling and snarling in pain, but it hadn’t gone down yet. It seemed to have finally realized that Blizzard was there, however, because it turned to face her and began stomping toward her instead of me.
“Bolt, hit him now!” Blizzard shouted.
I didn’t hesitate to act. I raised my hands and unleashed a blast of red lightning at the brute’s body. The brute had only enough time to stop and look over its shoulder before the red lightning struck the ice.
In an instant, the brute’s body exploded, sending chunks of frozen chunks of meat and metal flying everywhere. I raised my arms to protect myself from the worst of it, but I still got hit by a few chunks of alien meat due to the fact that I couldn’t dodge it.
Once the meat and metal stopped flying, I lowered my hands and looked at what remained of the brute.
There wasn’t much left. Its arms and legs had somehow survived mostly intact, but its body was totally gone and only half of its head was still around. Its sword lay on the ground, slightly cracked, probably from getting hit by some ice chunks or something. A terrible stink came from the blood leaking out of its limbs, a stink that would have made me hurl if the environ hadn’t been filtering it through my helmet and taking away the worst of the stink.
Regardless, the brute was obviously dead, and for that I was thankful.
But then I remembered what we were supposed to do with it and I looked over at Blizzard. “Blizzard, what was that? We were supposed to capture the pilot, not blow him up.”
“I know,” said Blizzard. “But it was either that or let him kill you. Aren’t you glad that I saved you, at least?”
“Yeah, I am, but—” I said, but then Nicknacks walked past Blizzard and said, “It’s fine. There’s no need to argue. With the brute dead, we can still take one of its body parts and use that to hijack the ship. Its DNA is still good whether dead or alive.”
Nicknacks quickly walked over to one of the brute’s arms and then pointed his spear at it. Flame leaped out of Nicknacks’ spear and cut off the tip of one of the brute’s fingers, probably because even the brute’s fingers were too big and heavy for us to carry. Nicknacks picked up the finger tip and looked it over before lowering it to his side and saying, “All right. Now we must get onto the ship quickly, because his comrades will likely be back from ransacking the House soon and I don’t want to give them an opportunity to stop us.”
“What about … what about Wind?” I said. I gestured at his two halves, but without looking at them, because even just looking at his corpse was enough to make me feel sick. “What are we going to do with his remains?”
“Leave him for now, unfortunately,” said Nicknacks with a sigh. “He knew this was a possibility when he signed up for the mission. If this mission is successful, we will have plenty of time to give him a proper funeral later.”
“Okay,” I said. I tugged at my glued foot. “And what about my foot? This blue glue stuff can’t be broken by conventional means. We need the red liquid the Pokacu use to dissolve it.”
“Not to worry,” said Nicknacks. “I happen to have some right here.”
Nicknacks stuck a hand into one of his armor’s compartments and pulled out a small vial of red liquid. He tossed it to me, which I hastily caught before it could fall on the ground and shatter.
Looking at the red liquid in my hand, I said, “Nicknacks, where did you get this? I thought that only the Pokacu had this stuff.”
“I stole it from Graleex and his men during our initial clash earlier, before I ran to meet up with you and the others in the warehouse,” Nicknacks explained. “I thought it might be useful in case any of us were hit with blue glue. Anyway, we don’t have time to waste, so use it or lose it, as you humans say.”
I immediately smashed the vial against my solidified foot. The red liquid rapidly dissolved the blue glue, until soon my foot was free again.
“Good,” said Nicknacks. “Now hurry. We must get on the ship and fly it out of here as quickly as we can, because I have no idea how much time we have before reinforcements show up.”
Chapter Fourteen
As Blizzard, Nicknacks, and I walked through the interior of the soon-to-be-hijacked Pokacu spaceship, I was reminded far too much of Graleex’s spaceship
deep beneath the ocean. But this ship was pretty different from Graleex’s; the hallways were wider and higher, thus lessening the chances that we might hit our heads against the ceiling, and the air was a lot drier and it didn’t smell like ocean water or mold. Also, there were weird patches of flesh along the walls, which sometimes even moved, but we were not attacked by anything on our way to the control room, which was somewhere near the ship’s bow. We also didn’t run into any Pokacu soldiers, either, but because we didn’t know the locations of every member of this ship’s crew, we kept our guard up and proceeded with caution the whole way. About the only sounds we heard aside from our own footsteps and breaths was the low hum of electricity, as well as air that flowed in from the vents, though the air was too hot and wet for my tastes.
It took us only a few minutes to reach the control room. It looked like the control room of Graleex’s ship and the Spinner, except with more seats, more controls, and a bunch of screens that displayed a whole bunch of words and information I didn’t even understand. Nicknacks, however, didn’t seem at all confused by it. If anything, he actually looked relaxed, as if he had come home after a long trip to a foreign country.
“Here we are,” said Nicknacks, stopping in front of the controls. “These are the ship’s controls. They look the same as I remember them, so I should have no problem flying the ship out of here quickly.”
“Good,” I said. “How long will it take to get the ship started?”
“A few minutes at most,” said Nicknacks. “It has been years since I last flew one of these, but I still remember how the controls work, though I may have to play with them for a little bit to jog my memory.”
“All right,” I said. “But don’t spend too much time playing. We don’t have all the time in the world, you know.”
“Of course,” said Nicknacks.
Nicknacks placed the chunk of Pokacu finger on a large touch pad on the control system. Instantly, the entire control panel lit up, along with all of the buttons and touch screens. A large text box appeared on the main screen, which Nicknacks seemed to understand, because he tapped the screen and the text box went away, showing another confusing display of Pokacu words and numbers that looked like little more than gibberish to me.
While Nicknacks played with the controls, I looked around the control room. Blizzard was leaning against one of the seats, but I knew she was just as aware of our surroundings as I was. It seemed unlikely that a Pokacu soldier would suddenly burst in on us, but in the event that they did, it would be up to me and Blizzard to stop him, since Nicknacks was too focused on getting the ship ready to fight.
But because things were pretty calm at the moment, I found myself wondering about Mom. I had half-hoped that she might be aboard this ship, but it was pretty clear at this point that she wasn’t. I wondered whether or not she was on that larger ship, the one that hovered over the Triangle Prison. It was probably a lot more secure than your average Pokacu ship, but that still didn’t mean that she was actually safe. For all I knew, they could be torturing her even now, a thought which filled me with dread.
Then an idea occurred to me and I looked over at Nicknacks. “Hey, Nick, I have a question about these Pokacu ships.”
Nicknacks—whose eyes were glued to the various screens as he tapped the keys and touch screens—said, “Yes? What do you wish to know?”
“It is possible to use the ship’s computers to, I don’t know, scan for prisoners being held aboard other ships?” I said. “For example, could we find the ship that my mother is being held captive aboard?”
“Actually, we could,” said Nicknacks. “In your typical Pokacu fleet, each ship’s systems are connected to the main ‘mother ship,’ which is what allows communication between individual ships and allows them to share things like data and information and coordinate attacks and strategies among themselves in a quick and efficient manner.”
“Great,” I said. “So what’s the mother ship of this particular fleet?”
“Most likely that huge ship that attacked the NHA and INJ earlier,” said Nicknacks. “Those type of ships typically act as mother ships due to their massive holds, which can hold up to ten smaller ships inside them.”
“Then why don’t we use this ship’s communication systems to find out which ship Mom is on?” I said.
“Because that is not something you can just ‘do’ without being noticed by the other ships,” said Nicknacks, again without looking at me. “If I attempted to connect to the main network, I would be forced to identify myself, which would mean that the rest of the fleet would know about us and would stop us before we could even take off.”
“Are you saying that we’re just going to abandon Mom?” I said.
“Not abandon her, exactly, but yes, we will probably not be able to save her right now,” said Nicknacks. “It would be a waste of time to search among the fleet for her, and that is if we could do it without being noticed by the Pokacu.”
“A waste of—?” I said. “What are you talking about? She’s my mother. Don’t you understand that? Don’t you care that an innocent person is in the clutches of the Pokacu?”
Nicknacks suddenly stopped tapping and typing. He turned around to look at me, and for the first time since I’d known him, I thought Nicknacks actually looked scary, more like a hostile alien than a friend.
“Bolt, I know how important your mother is to you, but you must think through this logically,” said Nicknacks. “Once we have this ship up and flying, the rest of the invasion fleet will immediately notice. It will take them a short time after that to figure out that we are not their fellow Pokacu, at which point they will not hesitate to shoot us out of the sky. By that time, we will hopefully be far from Earth, but only if we move fast.”
“I know,” I said. “But—”
“That isn’t even taking into account the deadline Graleex has given the world,” Nicknacks continued. “We currently have less than forty-six hours to end this invasion before they destroy Earth. We cannot waste even one second of that time on anything that will not take us to the Mother World, including searching for your mother or any other prisoners the Pokacu may have.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But—”
“So as you can see, I am not unsympathetic to your mother’s plight, but am just being practical,” said Nicknacks. “What is that phrase from one of your Earth films? ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’? That is the principle this entire mission is predicated upon. I hope you understand.”
My hands balled into fists as I tried to think of a good argument for finding Mom. “I know, but come on. There’s no telling what the Pokacu might be doing to her right this very moment.”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean we should behave irrationally,” said Nicknacks. “That is, unless you want the Pokacu to destroy Earth, as they have done to countless other worlds in the past.”
Nicknacks’ words got to me, even though I didn’t want to admit it. I was just thinking about how I had already lost one parent. I didn’t want to lose another, especially not so soon after losing Dad. The very thought of losing Mom was intolerable to me, but at the same time, I couldn’t deny Nicknacks’ logic. In the grand scheme of things, finishing the mission was more important than saving Mom. And maybe, if we finished the mission, there would be time for me to save Mom afterward.
So I grudgingly nodded and said, “Okay. You’re right. Finishing the mission and stopping the Pokacu is more important than spending time trying to find my mother.”
“Glad to hear that you have seen reason,” said Nicknacks. He immediately turned around and resumed tapping and typing on the ship’s controls. “Now you and Blizzard should take your seats, because once we get flying, we will move very fast and I don’t want either of you to go flying around the ship’s interior due to not being strapped in properly.”
I nodded, and a few seconds later Blizzard and I were strapped into two seats on the right side of the ship. We held hands as the ship
’s engine began to hum, a sign that we were about to lift off.
Nicknacks also took a seat, but unlike our seats, his floated and could be moved around. He pressed a couple more buttons, swiped across a few more touch screens, and then said, “All right. We’re about to take off. Get ready.”
I looked at Blizzard, who looked at me through the glass of her helmet. We tightened our grip on each other’s hands as the ship began to rise from the ground. I could feel the ship shaking and humming underneath us, but our seat belts kept us pretty safe, so I never worried about being thrown onto the floor or going flying from our seats.
Once we were up in the air, I said, “Okay, Nick, what are we going to do now? You said that the ship has a worm hole generator, right?”
Nick suddenly looked over his shoulder at us with an expression that wasn’t very encouraging. “The old models did, correct. But this one doesn’t.”
“What?” I said. “What do you mean, it doesn’t?”
“I mean that I’ve looked at all of the controls and none of them seem to activate the worm hole generator,” said Nicknacks. “That means that we cannot simply activate a worm hole that could take us straight to the Mother World.”
“Is that it, then?” said Blizzard. She looked at Nicknacks in worry. “Are we destined to fail? Was all of this for nothing? Did Wind die for no reason?”
“Not necessarily,” said Nicknacks, shaking his head. “The fact is that the Pokacu most likely used a worm hole generator to get here in the first place. That means that they must have one somewhere, and I think I know where.”
“Can we get it?” I said.
“Possibly, but it will not be easy,” said Nicknacks. “The mother ship hovering above the area where the Justice Statue was erected; it most likely has a worm hole generator on one of its decks.”