The Search for FTL

by Ted Iverson

  “Thanks for that information. Activate the shield. I am going out to chat with our friends.”

  The droid activated the shield, then cautioned, “Mr. Alec, sir, I do not advise you to go. They seem to be very hostile and, as I mentioned, I cannot guarantee that our shield will deflect their weapons.”

  “Well, PC, only one way to find out.” Alec left the cockpit and made his way through to the outside hatch. He ran down the ramp and jumped the final few feet down to the ground, landing in a squat. He then made his way to the front of the vehicle and appeared beneath the massive nose and called out, “Senator Axion. What brings you calling?”

  “Alec Bindl. It’s you. You should have never left the comfort of your cell. I promise you the next one won’t be so pleasant.”

  “Back your men off. I will take this ship out of here now. If you don’t leave, the takeoff will kill everyone here. You have ten minutes.” Alec turned to go back inside.

  “Alec,” Axion sounded disappointed. “Now, do you think that there is any possibility that I would just say: Oh no! He’s flying the ship out. We must all run for cover! Really now, if that thing could fly, it would have been gone upon our arrival. It’s still here and so am I. So, go, on and fly your ship out. I’ll be anxious to see this.” He laughed.

  Moving back to the nose of the ship, Alec called out, “So tell me, just what are your intentions?”

  “My intentions? Why, Alec, you should know. But, if you insist I spell it out, it’s rather simple. I am going to take over your family’s precious company. I believe I have the schematics needed to complete an operational ship, so this one here is expendable. I will tell you that if you and your brothers further interfere with me or Meteoric, I will simply dispose of you all. Perhaps I shall just kill you all anyway.” The senator turned, and walked out of view, gesturing as he did so. Suddenly there was a blinding flash and an earsplitting roar.

  Alec was sent sprawling to the ground as the ship shook violently and large chunks of rock bounced off the shield. He looked up. The shield had held. Getting up and running to the hatch, he screamed, “How we doing?”

  “It appears that the shield will only hold for four or five more hits. The weapons have an enormous amount of power.”

  Axion braced himself on a large boulder. Stalactites and rocks loosened by the blast fell all around him and his men. A few of his men went down with injuries. Axion watched the still intact prototype. Everyone could see the fluctuation of the shield’s energy.

  Axion was amazed. How resourceful, he thought.

  “Again!” he ordered.

  The second blast produced a bigger explosion. Alec lost his balance and dropped to his knees. He cringed at the sound of the rocks falling above him, but they were still being deflected away. He looked toward Axion from under the ship, but all he could see was rock and dust.

  Coming from inside, he heard PC on an internal com channel, “I have miscalculated. We can only take two more hits, then our shields will fail and the ship will easily be destroyed.”

  “Can you divert the side shields to one side?” he yelled back.

  “Mr. Alec, sir. I have already done so. There is nothing more to be done.” There was another intense flash and the crack of this explosion sent the ship sliding sideways to within two meters of the rock wall. Alec was now on his stomach with his hands covering his head. His ears ached from the noise. This time dust seeped in from the edges where the shield was losing its energy.

  “Young man, this is your last chance. You and I both know that that shield will not hold for much longer. Do you wish to surrender or do you wish to die like your father and mother? Do you know what happens when an energy shield fails? I’ll fill you in. When you are millions of miles out in the cold dark expanse of space and are traveling at close to the speed of light, you need an energy shield to stabilize the environment, to maintain balance, so to speak, between the inner pressure and the outer pressure. When that balance is thrown off and the delicate magnetic rings of an FTL ship get out of sync, it tears a ship apart. Here on Earth, when a shield fails, it is even simpler. Another Bindl dies. One last time, do you wish to surrender?”

  Hate was bleeding out of every pore. Alec realized that he really would not make it out of the cave alive. In one last act of defiance, he yelled out to Axion, “Not in this lifetime. Never!”

  The dust had settled and Alec now stood in plain sight, ready for the end. Then, through all the dust, he saw tiny red beams emanating from the top of the cave, six to be exact, all settling on Axion’s weapons.

  The senator noticed the tiny streams at the same time as Alec. He screamed, “FIRE, FIRE!”

  One weapon let out a final shot and it found its mark. At the same instant, Axion’s six weapons exploded into pieces of scrap. The prototype rocked more violently than before. Its shield intensified, flickered, and was gone. Rock now hit the ship, bouncing off it in all directions.

  Alec managed to crawl under the ship for cover. He lay there trying to regain his senses. He found that he was bleeding, not badly but in several places, hit by flying shrapnel. He belly-crawled from under the ship, and looked up to see a plethora of ropes descending from the hole he’d fallen through.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  A seemingly endless stream of men slid down the ropes into the cave. When one was about twenty feet off the ground, he would let go and fall to the ground, landing in a crouch. Alec was amazed to see their weapons had moved from a shouldered position to their hands, ready for the battle as they landed. They wore uniforms that closely resembled those worn at the OBL.

  Axion was shouting orders to his men, who were scrambling to follow them. Then, without hesitation, he yelled, “Attack them!”

  The battle for FTL had begun.

  Energy bolts flew everywhere. Alec could smell the burned rock, moss, and, worst of all, flesh. There was another smell too. At first he couldn’t identify it. Then it dawned on him: burning wires, like in an electrical fire.

  A bolt hit near him. As he rolled to avoid it, he saw the source of the smell. One of the new mystery troops was on the ground near him with part of his face missing.

  Almost like PC, he thought, except that it’s disfigured and smoldering.

  Droids. These were droids and in uniform. Then he saw something that confirmed his suspicions. On the left breast of the dead droid’s uniform, where a pocket should have been, was Space Tech’s insignia.

  He didn’t have any more time to think. He grabbed the droid’s weapon, stood, and headed back to the ship, dodging blasts along the way. As he reached the hatch, he saw that it was closed. He leaned on the ship for a moment, gasping for air through the dust-filled, smoky air. He took the butt of the gun and was about to beat on the hatch for PC, when through the haze he saw two figures approaching. He brought the gun down and aimed. “Stop!” he ordered.

  The men stopped and removed their helmets. “It’s okay, Alec!”

  “Orion! What is this?” Alec’s voice rose above the firefight.

  “This, brother, is a rescue mission!” Orion dropped to one knee and removed the backpack he carried. From the pack, he removed two menacing blasters. He tossed one to his brother and shoved the second into the band of his pants. Then he stood again, discarding the pack.

  “This is DES. He’s my right-hand man, or should I say droid. I’m afraid we’ll have to catch up later. We’ve got to join our men!” He nodded to the battlefield and started to run. Stopping, Orion turned and yelled, “Come on, you’re part of this now!” This time DES and Alec followed.

  Only a few of the lights Axion had set up were still operating, and PC had cut the lights on the prototype. The few that remained lit gave the cave an eerie glow as the battle raged on. Stalactites and boulders were strewn everywhere, making it hard to navigate in the dim, smoke-filled cavern. The fight had now spread out into the many tunnels and smaller caves as the intensity of the battle grew. Alec was determined to find Axion. The man might’ve fled,
but there couldn’t be a lot of options for escape. Alec had to find Axion.

  Alec headed toward a large, three-boulder formation on the other side of the cave. Behind the formation, Alec could just make out a long, very wide fissure reaching from one end of the cave to the other. As he got closer, he saw a strange reddish glow coming from behind the formation. He took cover behind a large boulder and began firing, taking out men as he did so, and observing the glow the whole time. By this time Orion had joined him.

  “What’cha got?” Orion asked loudly.

  Alec pointed. “I could tell you that I have a bad feeling about this, but you probably already figured that out!” He actually laughed.

  Orion just shook his head. “Always the comedian.”

  As both popped their heads up to scan the battle, they saw Axion emerge from behind the rock formation. He was encased in some sort of body shield made of energy and was suspended about two feet off the ground. He had no weapon, but blasts were hitting with deadly accuracy wherever he pointed his hand. The worst part was that weapon blasts aimed at Axion bounced harmlessly off him.

  “Oh, brother,” Orion moaned as he took cover from a blast.

  “What is that?”

  “That, Alec, is not good.” Orion returned fire as he began to explain, “It’s an energy suit, pretty much like a shield really. TAPS: Torus Armor Protection Suit. It is the ultimate virtual battle armor with a self-contained armory. Zach has been working on it for years. You know Zach—always ahead of his time.

  “The bands—two at the ankles and one at the waist—are made of the sturdiest, lightest weight wires to be found. The ten horizontal wires are in layers, and one continuous vertical wire encircles the others at a forty-five-degree angle. They’re like the inner framework of a rigid inner tube. The waistband has a touchpad to activate and deactivate the suit, while the wristband has Kevlar gloves attached. And the left glove has a small touchpad on the back to control the strength of the armor and the weapons. When someone wears it, it’s like they’re free-floating, like magnets repelling off each other with no wires holding them in place. When they’re activated, the bands combine to create an all-encompassing, magnetic, plasma shield that nothing can penetrate. It also has an enormous electrical current that can repel anything that touches it.

  “How did he get it? Zach has been in school at the OBL for years.”

  More blasts ricocheted off the boulder.

  “A project he was working on when he came home for visits. He kept it in the vault at corporate.” Orion popped up and took out a few more men who were approaching them.

  “How do we disable it?”

  “He never found anything that could. That’s why it’s not in production and was locked up. Since it could never be disabled, I found TAPS to be a very appropriate nickname,” Orion had to raise his voice above thunderous fighting. “That’s the good news,” he screamed out.

  Alec shot him a quick glance and shouted, “Good news? What’s the bad?”

  “He saw us and is headed this way. Run!” They fled as the boulder they had used for cover disappeared into tiny bullet-sized rocks. Alec and Orion were thrown to the ground. As Axion stopped to fire at them, Alec jumped to his feet, and began moving while, at the same time, firing at Axion. As he’d seen with the other shots, the blasts bounced harmlessly off.

  Alec turned to discuss the options with his brother and found Orion lying face down on the ground. Even from where he was standing, Alec could see the blood seeping through Orion’s uniform. Alec tried to make his way back to Orion, but Axion’s onslaught of blasts was too much. He was forced to take cover behind another large boulder. With his back against the rock, he tried to come up with a plan, one that started with saving his downed brother. As he desperately tried to come up with a workable plan, two figures appeared from out of the dust. Alec couldn’t make out their uniforms. He watched in horror as they picked Orion up by the arms and dragged him hurriedly away.

  More infuriated than he’d ever been, Alec lost control. Without thought, he stood and charged Axion, weapon blazing. The charge, coupled with the rapid firing, caught Axion off guard. He stepped backwards and stumbled on a fallen stalactite. He tried to regain his footing, managing to stabilize himself about twenty feet away from the fissure. By that time, Alec was upon him, lunging. As he made contact, an electrical current rushed through his body. He and the senator hit the ground hard.

  Alec rolled off to the side and they both struggled to stand. The pain the current had caused was immense, but Alec rose and fought on. He ran over and gave the now-kneeling senator a kick to the mid-section. As his foot made contact with the suit, a current of unbearable pain once again shot through his entire body. He fell again, rolling in misery.

  Alec heard Axion laugh and looked up just in time to see the shimmering red glow of a boot coming down at him. He rolled quickly to one side and jumped up. The foot made contact with the space he had just vacated.

  When Axion’s foot landed, Alec attempted a roundhouse kick that failed. Axion grabbed Alec’s foot and held it. Hopping on the remaining foot, Alec desperately tried to keep his balance even as more electrical current shot through his body. Axion kept twisting Alec’s foot and ankle. Then suddenly, he just tossed Alec aside like a rag doll. Alec rolled precariously close to the chasm. Exhausted from the fight, he managed to stand yet again, ready to continue the battle.

  The two men that had dragged Orion off found their way to the prototype’s landing gear and propped Orion up to a seated position. Feeling the warm liquid on his side, Orion lifted his hand to see blood.

  What a shock, he thought.

  Another man came, kneeled in front of Orion, then peeled off a pack he was wearing and unzipped it. The man’s face was battered and bruised.

  “I see you’ve been busy too,” Orion said.

  The familiar voice of his brother answered, “Just a little.” It was Zach.

  Squinting through the dried blood and dirt, Orion could make out his brother’s face now. What a sight! Then he exclaimed, “Alec, where’s Alec? He’s engaged Axion!”

  Zach poured some water from the bottle onto a towel and tossed it on his brother’s lap. “Wipe your face while I tend to this wound.”

  Zach ripped open Orion’s uniform. He could see a sharp fragment of rock had grazed Orion. The cut was deep, but not life threatening. He dug through the pack, pulled out some antiseptic gauze and tape, and handed them to his wounded brother. “Today’s not your day, pal. Looks like we’ll still have to put up with you. I have to get back to the fight.”

  Before anything else could be said, Zach had vanished. The two men that had been standing patiently behind now removed the helmets that hid their faces: Ty and Ed. They knelt down beside Orion and helped bandage him up.

  The fight continued as it had been, with Axion winning and Alec losing, badly. For every move Alec made, the other man had a reaction. And every knockdown moved Alec ever closer to the chasm. The last one had Alec mere inches away from the edge. Axion started to laugh once more, as he had throughout the duel.

  On his back, which had become the norm, Alec thought to himself, I’m glad someone’s having fun.

  Orion filled the two men in on the battle. He explained as quickly as he could about the energy suit Senator Axion had obtained. “We knew Axion had gotten it. That suit, it’s the deciding factor. With that on Axion could defeat us single handedly. I’m afraid it’s over.”

  Ty stood, brandishing his weapon, “If we want to have any chance at all of defeating him, we need to go help Alec, and now. You’ll be safe enough here,” he said to Orion. As he finished his statement, a large blast landed close by, shaking the ground and tossing Ty and Ed to the ground.

  Ty glanced back to see if Orion was okay. He was. Ty then barrel-rolled over to where Ed was. “You okay?”

  Ed grimaced and pointed down to a tear in his pant leg. His leg was bleeding. Grunting as he stood, he said, “I’m fine, just a flesh wound.”
He stood, then staggered a bit, but managed to keep his balance.

  “If you go to find Axion, he’ll destroy you both. He can’t be defeated,” Orion said. “There’s nothing you or I can do now.”

  “Don’t ta—”

  Ty wasn’t allowed to finish. Ed grabbed his arm and ordered, “Go, you’re needed out there. Every man and droid is needed.”

  Ty was about to speak when Ed squeezed his arm till it hurt and brought him a little closer. “Didn’t you hear what I just told you?” His expression said enough.

  Ty nodded and headed out to join the continuing fight. Ed now moved closer to Orion.

  “Ed, you can’t beat that suit. It’s perfect. That’s the problem. Zach made it perfect.”

  “Young man, every problem has a solution. This is no different.” Ed smiled fiendishly at the seated man and raised an eyebrow.

  He opened his jacket as if he were a peddler on the street. He reached into it and removed an object from the pocket, brandished it at Orion, and then promptly replaced it in his pocket. Orion’s eyes grew ten sizes at the sight.

  “Now that...that just might work.” Exhausted, he fell back against the landing gear.

  “My old Scout Master always told me to be prepared. Now, which way to Alec?”

  Orion had nothing left to say. He just pointed. The man was gone in an instant, leaving Orion alone to pray.

  Axion had been toying with Alec, allowing him, time after time, to get up only to be beaten down again. It was beginning to have the desired effect: Alec’s advances were getting progressively weaker. It was time.

  Axion raised his arm to blast the oldest Bindl into oblivion. Instead, he felt blasts pounding him from behind. They caused no damage, but they were distracting. Axion spun around to face his new attackers. He found Ed running full speed toward him. Feeling totally indestructible, Axion held his arms out, as if waiting for a hug. Then he let his left arm drop to his side. He moved his right arm, made a fist, and fired right at the target. Ed hit the ground in a forward somersault. The bolt of energy missed him and harmlessly flew over his head. Coming out of the roll, Ed brandished the device he had somehow managed to remove from his pocket.