by J Hawk
A power drive.
And Ion was aware that getting one right now might prove to be a problem: he was literally in the middle of nowhere, with the Naxim on his tail.
While full scale ships were designed for interplanetary space transport, hover bikes and hover ships were not designed such. In the case of hover bikes, cars, and other simple transport vehicles, the power required for space transport did not come inbuilt in their machine system. An external source was used for these vehicles, to grant them this immense power required for space transport. Known as the power drive. Without this, hover bikes, cars and boards were grounded to a single planet, to be used only for short distance transport and nothing more.
Power drive or not, Ion knew that the first thing he needed was to put as much distance between himself and the Naxim’s forces in that village, before they called in reinforcements.
First, I need to get out of here alive while I still can.
Mounting the sleek bike, he launched off again, streaking across the barren land, away from the village.
__________
“How can I help you?” asked Palor.
He forgot to smile this time, as a slight ripple of disturbance passed him.
With untamed red hair and fiery orange eyes, the boy stood tall and thin, with what looked like a long black instrument slung around his back. He seemed to have oil smeared by the side of his face, haphazardly wiped off the front. His orange eyes were hardened with focus. Something about his appearance left a note of slight disconcertedness in Palor, who, in all his days as a provision store owner in the semi urban town of Faoris, had never come across someone quite so…
Strange.
“I need a power drive.” said the boy, sounding slightly hasty. “And fast.”
Palor took a step backwards from the counter, feeling his disconcertedness rise.
“Err, of course, sir.” He threw a quick glance below the counter. Where lay the stack of small, cylindrical glass bottles that glowed with a greenish liquid within. Power drives.
Bending down below the counter, Palor picked one of them up and slid them over to the table above.
He then rose back above the counter. “That would be -”
… But he stopped abruptly, as he realised that the boy was gone. And so was the power drive he had placed on the counter.
It was as though the boy had just snatched the power drive and disappeared.
For a long moment, Palor gaped into empty space, wondering what had just passed.
__________
Ion stared at the small cylindrical object, seeming to be filled with a glowing green liquid.
He had traveled at least a hundred or so miles on the bike before finding a decent town, where he could get his hands on this. He felt a slight pang of guilt for the provision store owner he had just had to steal from. But he wasn’t going to let himself be captured by the Naxim, tortured and killed just to adhere to a code of righteousness that served little avail in such a twisted world.
He rammed the small cylinder into the empty slot at the front of the bike, fitting the power drive into the vehicle. As the engine revved to life, Ion pressed a button and a bubble like encasing materialised to wrap the bike and its rider. It was transparent, seeming to be made of the thinnest layer of glass.
Known as the Plasmon shield, this was required in all modes of open, unshielded space travel such as this one. The Plasmon shield protected the traveller on the bike from all ghastly effects of outer space travel. It rendered the air within the shield breathable by manufacturing oxygen within for the traveller.
All set, then.
Ion drew out his z-com, producing a holographic screen over it. The z-com displayed a list of planets and moons that were nearest to him. He placed his aim on a moon of Sacrogon, known as Hadri. Although it came under the republic of Sacrogon, it was almost uninhabited, making it far looser in the grip of Naxim and the Sacrogon authorities. It would be the perfect place to hide in for now. Ion knew that he could find shelter somewhere in the planet for time being, before making further plans…
As the hover bike floated just over the ground, encased in the Plasmon shield and ready to soar, Ion punched in the co ordinates on the vehicle. A moment of steady vibration gripped the vehicle, and then, with a loud, sonorous crack, the bike blasted off into the starry chasm stretching across the sky overhead.
__________
Millions of miles away, in a dark cave, a man in a deep black cloak sat cross legged on the ground. Zardin’s eyelids shielded the ghastly lack of eyeballs beneath them as they lay half closed.
The large, dark cave that he was now in formed a deeply peaceful place for people like him. People who were moulded in darkness.
He slowly slid a hand into his robe pocket, and pulled out the pen shaped device they had acquired. He felt the familiar joy of a long awaited victory, but instantly quelled it. He knew there was much work to be done … This was just the beginning. There was a more important task at hand now, on this road towards their goal.
Slowly rising to his feet, Zardin pocketed the mineral detector, turned and strode back deeper down the cave, where the others awaited.
It was time to move to their next task.
Time to raise the madness to a whole new level.
6
Ion dismounted the hover bike and gazed about the scenery before him. Sprawling before him was a mountainous terrain. There were faint markings of people living here, and he thought he saw huts erected at the top of a few of the mountains and by the slopes. He knew that these people, the mountain dwellers, would be of a primitive, tribal type. Nothing to worry of. It was the advanced, city dwelling type that needed worrying, for they were the ones that were more likely to spot a mystic and turn him into the Naxim.
Like the blasted village headman. He cursed under his breath.
If he hadn’t managed to get hold of the bike, along with the stolen power drive, Ion might have taken an entire day to reach this planet from Sacrogon. The bike and the stolen power drive made his job of getting to this planet far easier. And far quicker: the space jump from Sacrogon to here took a mere twenty seconds.
Space travel took place at such high speeds that it literally was a jump across millions of miles, and hence the term. The voyage between two planets in the same cluster took mere minutes and, in shorter cases such as these, mere seconds. But the distance between two star clusters was so tremendous that the voyage was took upto hours. The space gates, the portals connecting the star clusters, took care of that problem. As a combined result, travelling anywhere within the inner spectrum took mere minutes. But the outer spectrum, however, which was too far away, was a completely different story.
A faint haze capped the top of some of the tallest of the mountains, which seemed to rise to more than a mile above the ground. The terrain was rugged, interspersed with feeble greenery in the form of grass and bushes.
Parking the hover bike by the side of a tree, Ion sank to a squatted position beneath the tree, letting his breath calm down. It took a while before he realised how weary he had been made by the past few days.
He had had little sleep in the past two days. And, he remembered with a squirming in his stomach, the feeble sleep he had scraped in the cruiser had been disturbed by a regular visitor … the regular, unwelcome visitor to his dreams, whom he had been carrying for years now.
The man with the glowing red eyes…
“You can’t outrun me, Ion … I am a part of you.”
A shiver raced through him as he remembered that creature from his dreams. That creature who resided in the darkest depths of his memory … the darkest depths of his past. His was a past which he wished he could score off. As much as he knew he couldn’t. That lunatic whom he saw in his dreams was a part of him, a blot on his memory that he knew he would never erase.
Ion slid his back over the back of the tree trunk and thrust his hand into the other po
cket of his robe. His fingers brushed over a hard parchment surface. He grabbed the sheet of parchment that lay stuffed inside his pocket, drew it out, and slowly unrolled it.
And there, staring out of the poster with his glowing red eyes was the man. His face was printed over most of the sheet. But beneath the face, in small letters, lay the words:
Most wanted criminal
Charge 54
Wanted for a series of murders, assassinations, and unprovoked armed assaults on various individuals.
IF SPOTTED CALL 323 – 938 – 748 – 320 IMMEDIATELY.
THE CULPRIT IS A DANGEROUS CRIMINAL, AND MUST BE KEPT AWAY
FROM IF SPOTTED ANYWHERE, AT ANY COSTS.
Issued by the interstate crime department, 42972
Series of murders…
The lunatic stared out of the poster with his horrible red eyes. The crease of an evil smile lay tilted over his face. His black hair was wild and unkempt. The twisted look of his face suddenly seemed to breathe life to his features…
Ion felt a visceral surge of fury and hatred like nothing else his entire life.
He bore enmities from his past. Grando. Vonayz. Plenty others … But none of them matched the rage he felt at the sight of that face in the poster. That face which he had dreaded and hated for so long. Which had haunted him for so long … and which always would.
As the heavy feeling passed, he felt his mind drift to a far more peaceful region of memories … memories of his master, Jedius.
The past is dead, only if you let it be. Jedius’s words echoed at the back of his head, seeming to carry across a wide chasm. Do not dwell on it and keep it alive, Ion. Give yourself the opportunity to move to a better present, and to craft it into a better future.
With one final glance at the dreadful poster, Ion crumpled it and stuffed it back into his pocket. He let his back slide over the thick tree trunk behind him, and gazed up at the stars above. The night’s blissful aura subdued the grief and regret that had just re awakened within him. He lay slumped against the tree, staring at the beauty of the scenery around him, able to lose himself at last.
Two years ago
Ion was falling. A giant, fifty meter fall. He felt himself twist about in mid air to catch view of the cliff above him, shrinking in his vision as he plummeted. The cliff he had fallen from…
He spun about in mid air, whizzing like an arrow towards the ground. His fall rapidly gained speed and momentum. His heart seemed to have jammed in his chest, and the sensation of wildly accelerating freefall hollowed his insides out.
He saw the rough brown ground zoom upwards, waiting to engulf him.
And then … a sickening, loud crash that echoed across the place.
The impact of the fall, that left a web of cracks over the ground, would have killed anyone else on the spot. But Ion withstood it without dying for the fact that he was a mystic … unfortunately.
He would have screamed, if not for the fact that all breath had been scoured from his lungs, and he gasped in helpless, slight hisses to re gather it. The fall had definitely broken a fraction of the non vital bones in his body.
It was pain beyond pain. Excruciating. It seemed to split him from head to toe.
He would lie here, helpless, in the middle of a deserted, uninhabited region and watch himself die slowly and painfully … He could feel the life slipping from his veins. But he knew that he would endure an hour or so before he would finally die … and every second that passed seemed to last for a century.
Ion was facing hell itself.
All sensations had ceased, except for the mindless, throbbing pain all over. Ion couldn’t move. Couldn’t twitch a nerve. He couldn’t blink without leaving his eyes streaming…
He was all alone in this lifeless region, with no one to even cling his hopes to … He had never imagined that this would be his way of exiting…
He felt himself drift … floating between consciousness and unconsciousness. It sharpened the pain cracking open his body ten fold. And Ion yearned for it to stop. The world seemed to flicker on and off, and lights popped up over the back of his closed eyelids.
And suddenly, the swishing of cloaks shrouded what remained of his vision. He thought he was surrounded by someone … or some people. And before he knew it, as his consciousness slipped, he was being hoisted upwards painfully. And he was then gliding … flying … or was he dreaming? The sensation of leaving the ground and gathering speed…
And before he knew it, he was on a soft, mattress like surface. And the world seemed had fallen to a blissful tranquility. And it almost felt like the pain had uncoiled from his limbs … the agony had melted away, sparing him. Silence, peaceful and serene, enveloped all. And he felt as though all dreams had come true in the silence. But where was he? Was he even alive?
And a voice slit the silence from above him.
“Son, can you hear me?”
Ion’s eyelids fluttered open. But he immediately closed them to shield from a blast of light from in front. But in that split second he had opened them, he had seen a figure, a man in a black cloak, standing in front of him.
His eyes still closed, he groaned, “Where am I?”
“It doesn’t matter where you are.” came the voice of the man in front. “What matters is that you’re alive. And your body is intact again.”
A jolt passed Ion as he heard it. As if on cue, the sensation of his bodily control returned full and new to him. He realised that his limbs were moving perfectly. Completely tended. He opened his eyes again: this time the bright sunlight streaming in through the window opposite to him was bearable.
He was lying on a straw cot, in the middle of a small hut. He sat straight and looked at the man in front of him. He was a tall, thin man dressed in a black cloak. His sharp Elfling eyes were of a rich green colour, and his long black hair fell over his shoulder behind him.
“My name is Jedius,” the man said. “You’re lucky to be healed from that nasty fall you’ve had.”
__________
The planet they were in was Vanodar, located somewhere at the beginning of the outer spectrum. It was a rich rainforest planet, covered in brimming greenery. The hut Jedius lived in was built somewhere in the middle of the dense forest.
Awe welled within Ion as he looked at the figure opposite to his cot, sitting deep in meditation. They had met almost two days back, but Ion still couldn’t get over the sheer wonder he felt when he gazed at the man who had saved his life. Jedius was a mystic, and Ion knew he was a very, very powerful one at that: he had healed almost all the broken bones in Ion’s body, bringing it back to a functional state. But even his advanced healing powers couldn’t bring Ion to a full recovery. He needed a few days’ rest to be nursed back to health. And Jedius insisted that he stayed with him until he was.
After viewing the man’s simple, hermit like lifestyle for two days, Ion was both stunned and deeply impressed. His sheathed sword lay by the side of where he sat opposite on the hut. Like all mystic swords, it was long, thin. But it had a fine curved blade that was longer than Ion’s, with a slightly larger hilt.
Ion was sitting idly on the cot. And next to him, taken from his pocket … was a poster.
Ion had never thought that something could invoke such fury in him his entire life. The lunatic killer stared out of the poster with his glowing red eyes and his horrible features. A rage of emotions churned within Ion as his eyes fell on the poster. Anger. Grief. Guilt…
Warding it all off, Ion turned and looked at the man sitting with his legs folded opposite to him, as still as stone in meditation. After coming around two days ago, Ion had told Jedius everything. The man had saved his life, and he had a right to know. Ion told him how the criminal in the poster was responsible for what had happened to him. How he was the reason Ion was now sitting in this hut with a load of half healed bones. He told him everything about that killer, and how Ion’s life had changed because of him.
Jedius had shown Ion no
thing but sympathy, and had given him courage to face the demons of his past, and to destroy them.
Stuffing the poster back into his pocket, Ion sat back against the wall behind him, looking out the window. Streaks of boiling red coloured the morning sky. The dawn exacted a glowing radiance to the forest outside, and the effect filled the inside of the hut as well. An aura of deep calm had settled around Jedius, as he sat meditating for almost an hour now.
Feeling slightly bored, Ion hopped off the bed and walked towards the door by the right.
“The first thing you need to learn when controlling your mystic powers…”
Ion whipped around: Jedius had awoken from his meditation out of the sudden, and was now looking at him with a serene smile.
“… is patience.”
Ion cocked an eyebrow. “Patience?”
“Indeed, patience.” Jedius strode upto Ion’s side, his eyes surveying the forest outside the hut. “Because you need to understand and accept that all things will not fall in place the way you want them to in life. And with that acceptance, you will find peace.” He turned and fixed his powerful eyes on Ion. “The courage to face pain is, in the end, the source of all power.”