Scientist: An Earth 340K Standalone Novel (Soldier X Book 1)

by D. P. Oberon

  The bombing and fighting continued outside unabated. Dang trod away from the huge display and out of the range of the camera. There against the wall sat a gyrator-bomb in an orange and black pattern with several locking authentication mechanisms. He tapped on the holopad and growled as his thick claws made him retype in the sequence. He set the bomb to one minute.

  He moved to Nuan and undid the bindings across her wrists and left the ones on her ankles—Sanatani couldn’t see her feet—and brought her forward. He couldn’t help his cock’s stiffening at the smell of his wife’s fear. He carried his daughter like a sack on his shoulder. Then he stood in front of the display again.

  “We are ready,” he said. Hurry up, you idiot, he thought.

  “Yes, the security random generator is working. It takes more time when there’s more than one person. Sorry.”

  Boom. Boom. The door behind them rattled. Its ironridge surface was concave on one side, bending so that it showed the outside world.

  “Can you hurry it up?” Dang asked. The grind of the razor-claw tanks thread filtered through the hole.

  “Done,” said Sanatani.

  The portal shimmered in front of him slowly. He stepped into it and his vision edged with glowing shards of light.

  The heavy door behind him ripped free and the People’s Favor charged through with a horde of triants. A shot fired through the door straight at him. He smiled, already feeling the tingling sensation of the portal. Soon he would be thousands of miles away.

  Dang had pretended to bring his wife and child closer to the portal. Now he relinquished hold of them as the portal engulfed him.

  The bomb ticked down.

  Chapter 27 - Revenge

  Nuan knew she had to do something, otherwise her husband would kill her daughter.

  The gyrator-bomb’s counter ran down to thirty seconds. Still the Greatest Scientist who stared at them from across the huge display hadn’t activated the portal.

  “Can you hurry it up?” Dang asked. His head swiveled to stare at the countdown timer and then back to Sanatani.

  Think! She told herself. The plasti-cuffs still wrapped themselves around her ankles.

  Lizhang slumped across Dang’s shoulder with a livid bruise across her face. Her nose dripped blood. When Dang had slapped Lizhang for screaming, Nuan had shouted at him. He’d hit her with those claws and it only took one hit until she stopped shouting. She could barely see through her swollen eyes and her ears rang constantly. Her body felt pain all over. It pained just to stand there.

  Get Lizhang out of here, she told herself. Dang can kill me, she thought, just not my daughter. She had helped Hazou and Wenqi, now she just had to save her daughter. One last person to help and then she could leave this miserable existence.

  The underground command center of the Chrysanthemum Striped Tigers had been undergoing renovations. The four traitors and Dang had smiled and surrounded the lone carpenter as he stared at them in confusion. He’d told them that his work was in progress and to be careful around the holo-display panel. He had been lovingly cutting eloquent tiger stripes into the titancrete panels.

  Robots weren’t permitted into the command center. The Chrysanthemum Striped Tigers didn’t trust robots as they could be hacked in a thousand ways.

  The man had been from the village above, a native of Xinjiang. He probably had a family and friends, Nuan thought.

  The Xinjiang carpenter’s body lay against the floor, half his brain torn open oozing blood. Dang had swatted at the man as if he was a fly. The tools of his trade scattered on the floor.

  Sweat dripped from Nuan’s forehead and stung her brow. Twenty seconds. She inched her way to the man’s fallen body. Just at that moment, Dang turned and met her eyes.

  What she saw there was a complete stranger. This person who once she thought had been a special person because of his job status. She ignored her parents’ advice to pursue Wenqi and in her stupid youthful naivety, she’d chosen Dang. The dream had started rightly enough as he’d flown her to High Beijing, leaving the small city of Urumqi behind. Then the nightmares had begun each time he came home. He enjoyed beating her, especially when they were having sex. She closed her eyes, not because she couldn’t meet his gaze, but because she was filled with an ironclad resolve.

  If she made a mistake, she would end up slicing her wrists. The laborers vibro-saw sat upright and an industrial staple-slicer lay askew next to it. The carpenter had used the staple-slicer to meld the carved titancrete panels against the wall so it blended seamlessly.

  Nuan shifted herself to the side, gently.

  Sanatani stared out of the holo-display and met Nuan’s eyes. Her head nodded at her in encouragement. Was she really talking to me, she wondered?

  Dang and Sanatani talked about something called a seed-ship and he appeared agitated. Ten seconds left on the countdown and the portal still hadn’t activated.

  Nuan reached for the staple-slicer and it fitted her palm nicely. The staple-slicer’s concave head was the size of her entire forearm. The head would heat and eject a super-hot staple that would meld the panels together without leaving a trace.

  Nuan bent awkwardly and held the staple-slicer right under her husband’s balls. Since transforming into a xu-tiger, he walked around naked, fully trusting his new body to protect him. She squeaked and pressed. The staple-slicer hummed, fizzled, and then sparkled to an end.

  Dang turned around slowly but then Sanatani shouted at him to get his attention and he turned back. The portal began to activate right before Nuan’s eyes.

  Ten seconds left on the countdown.

  Nuan held the trigger down and squeezed with both hands. The staple-slicer vibrated made an increasingly loud humming noise and then fired. The jarring recoil sent her crashing into the ground. Her vision filled with a searing flash of bright light.

  “Fucking bitch!” Dang screamed, his huge paws covered his groin as he twisted around. Blood dripped from his groin where his balls had just been. The fur singed from the heat of the staple-slicer. All that stared back was a blackened shriveled maggot.

  Dang bellowed and swiped at her. All she could do was stare.

  To Wenqi, it was all craziness. He nervously held the LR4 rifle pointing at the door hoping for it to open. Unfortunately, the corner where the door had torn open filled itself with the debris of a Mist-Reaver’s torn hand. The hand that nearly killed him if hadn’t Diaochan intervened.

  It almost felt as if this was a surreality imposed on him because his brain exploded from all the stress of the past few months. He had become a denizen of Hell. Burning through a fiery darkness.

  “Nuan’s in there?” His own voice spoke and snatched him back to reality.

  “Yes, and he is too,” said Diaochan.

  Wenqi didn’t want to be Dang when Diaochan caught hold of him.

  A group of hybrids that resembled bipedal panthers engaged the remaining triants in a hail of fiery flechettes that zinged in the air. Super-hot sparks scalded Wenqi and he shifted aside. The triants appeared to have met their match. Hazou had been carried away with the group of triants and somehow he now manned a temporary turret set up by one of the triants.

  If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it. But these hybrids that looked like bipedal tigers had super strength.

  The razor tank sat askew on its side with smoke trailing from its cabin. As soon as the tanks fortified themselves, a group of Mist-Reaver mechs disemboweled them. The wreckage from the mechs lay across the destroyed tanks.

  “Wait here,” said Diaochan. She sprinted back toward the razor-tank. She gripped at the threads that lay way over her head and pulled down. The tank wobbled and then slammed down. Only Diaochan didn’t let it fall; she held it aloft.

  Wenqi thought he’d seen everything he could’ve possibly seen. A razor-tank weighed two hundred thousand kilos easily. An energy crackled from Diaochan, a scintillating thing the color of jade. She spun around and the tank spun with
her. She shouted and flung the tank.

  The razor-claw tank flew into the air and then careened head first into the vault’s door. The door didn’t open, but the force of the tank caused the walls surrounding the door to implode and then the door that hung onto those walls crumpled inward.

  Wenqi didn’t even wait for the dust and debris to clear.

  Nuan stood on her knees at the end of the room holding something that pointed at Dang. Dang’s huge claws blurred through the air.

  Wenqi fired his LR4 without thinking. The bullet missed Dang’s head completely but sprayed across his belly so instead of decapitating Nuan’s head, Dang’s claws tore gouges of flesh from her arms.

  Diaochan came hurtling through like a mad wind. She stood there and met Dang’s gaze. The huge Chrysanthemum Striped Tiger stepped toward her.

  If Wenqi hadn’t seen Diaochan throw the razor-tank into the vault’s door he would not have thought she stood any chance against the bipedal tiger that stood before her. Dang’s groin splattered in blood. His face still showed within the mask of the beast. He stood there and roared; the noise shook Wenqi as he skidded to halt over Nuan.

  Dang said, “Jingfei was so easy to kill. I thought you made triants to be strong. The bitch screamed like a little girl.”

  Diaochan’s eyes narrowed. “Each Chrysanthemum Striped Tiger will be flayed of their fur and I will hang it from the ceiling of the Jade Palace. Your pelt will be the first.”

  They both charged in at once. Their movements too quick for the eye to make out. Dang’s huge tail seemed like a cross between a cobra and a scorpion and spat, hissed, and bit at Diaochan. His superior strength clear by the way he hit her. His punches would’ve shattered even magmite and rent holes into razor-claw tanks. Wenqi felt the force of the punches from where he stood.

  But Wenqi had never seen the People’s Favor fight before.

  She didn’t move, but flitted between one reality to another. When Dang swiped, he hit a blur of Diaochan. She wove around him like a ghost and each time her hands connected—only they weren’t hands, but the same material that the triants’ hands were made from: slices of silverite. Dang screamed as Diaochan blinked and appeared behind him ramming her hands like katana blades through his chest. He pushed away. She flitted again. Her hands sliced through his thighs. Through his liver.

  Diaochan blurred before Wenqi’s eyes and at one moment, he saw six Diaochan’s each at a different point around Dang’s body. Her two hands formed silver blades that skewered Dang’s body. Every single part.

  Diaochan stepped back. Dang tottered, turned, and headed toward Nuan.

  But Nuan wasn’t there. She had taken something in her hands and run out of the room. A huge resounding explosion came from outside.

  Wenqi stepped in front of Dang. He grabbed at the industrial slicer and pressed. It clicked and a slicer slammed into Dang’s collarbone and sent his body crashing to the floor.

  “You did it,” Wenqi shouted at Diaochan. But as he moved forward, he slammed to his knees. A large triangular hole lay against the side of his chest. He looked up as Nuan rushed into the room and caught her eye as he fell. “I love you,” he said.

  Darkness took him.

  Chapter 28 - At Rest

  Wenqi woke in hospital. Immediately a terror filled him. He found himself patting down his arms.

  “Relax,” said Nuan, who slept right next to him. Her cool hands cupped his chin.

  “Is this afterlife? What happened?” he asked.

  “Everything is fine.” Her dark hair tickled his chest. She wore a white dress with a purple floral pattern that hugged her midsection. She looked beautiful and he told her so. She laughed.

  “It feels like the afterlife,” he said.

  She rested her head against his chest. Her fingers traced a picture across his sternum. She tilted her head up and her lips met his. It was a soft, gentle kiss and then she laid her head against his chest again, infusing his nostrils with the scent of her sweet hair.

  “So many things have happened. You’re to be presented an award today and receive the People’s Favor. You’re a big time hot shot now.”

  Wenqi laughed. “All those years ago, I just wanted to work with my best friend.” He started. “Is Hazou okay?”

  “He’s fine. You were the one that Dang shot using his triangular projectiles.” She looked up at him again, and her lips were so close to his he found it hard to pay attention to anything else.

  “Nuan, will you....”

  “Yes, yes I will,” she answered. “Better late than never right?”

  Wenqi went to sleep and for the first time since that fateful explosion three months ago, his dreams weren’t plagued by demons. They were sweet dreams of his past when a young boy and girl held hands and stole kisses under the eaves of the Water Spinach Inn.

  Hazou walked on the lush, green hillside covered with beautiful willows, chrysanthemums—though he couldn’t look at them for long—and a silver stream that gurgled by his side. He held Lizhang’s hand and she skipped beside him. It was the hillside on the shoulder of the Jade Mountain, left of the Jade Palace. Heaven Family’s garden sanctuary. Nobody came here except a handful of triants.

  But today his family was here: Nuan, Lizhang, Wenqi, and Lady Lee. All of them entered a clearing with two tombstones stretched across the green earth. Two coffins, each carried by two triants, entered the glade. Three more triants provided them an honor guard. The filigree against the coffins bore intricate representations of yin-yang symbols that caught the light.

  Diaochan wore the red and gold of the China People’s Empire. The jade dragon emblazoned on her chest.

  Two triants brought forward Jingfei’s coffin and lowered it into the tomb. The ground closed over Jingfei, sealing her into the tomb. A headstone revealed Jingfei’s name and displayed her face in a hologram that came to life.

  Lady Lee stepped forward. Two more triants laid Old Man Yok’s coffin into the tomb. All the triants then retreated and formed a ring around the grievers.

  Diaochan hugged the headstone. As she sobbed over the headstone, Hazou felt he witnessed something that wasn’t meant to be seen. She seemed so lonely staring there crying by herself. Her triants didn’t approach her. Who would ever have the courage to approach the People’s Favor?

  Hazou looked at his family and felt the wetness in his eyes at the love and loss he felt. He stepped toward the young woman who one hundred ninety billion souls revered like a God. He knelt next to her and put his arms around Diaochan—a gesture that could’ve cost him his life. Diaochan turned up and tried to smile at him but her lips quivered and she broke out in body-shaking sobs. Nuan came to her other side, then Wenqi put his hand over Diaochan’s shoulder. Finally, Lizhang wormed her way into Diaochan’s lap.

  She’s just a person, Hazou thought. Just like all of us, no matter how high we rise. We’re just people.

  It was Diaochan who broke away from them and stood slowly. She surprised them all by stepping to Lady Lee and putting her arms around the old woman.

  Diaochan said, “He led a good life. He gave food for many homeless people in Urumqi.”

  They had fashioned Old Man Yok’s headstone to be in the image of a wok with noodles—all precision cut.

  “Old Man Yok wouldn’t have wanted anything else,” said Lady Lee. “He loved his noodles.”

  They all laughed.

  Later, it was another first for all of them as they stood right in the middle of Heaven’s Court - just a hand’s length away from the famed Bashe Throne. The People’s Favor leaned her back against her throne while it floated behind her. Today she wore a skirt with floral patterns.

  “I would like to offer you the directorship of the Department of Botanical Weapontech. It can be a co-ruled role with two directors,” said Diaochan, gazing at Wenqi and Hazou speculatively.

  “I would love to go back to work,” Hazou said. “I accept.”

  Wenqi squirmed. “I guess I can do it....”

&
nbsp; Nuan stepped forward and grabbed Wenqi’s hand. “Diaochan, my new husband and I would like to go back to Urumqi. I want to start and have a real family.”

  Wenqi smiled. “Yes, yes, that’s what I want too.” He turned back to Diaochan. “But I can always help Hazou should he need it.”

  “Very well,” said Diaochan. “The Water Spinach Inn should already be refurbished.”

  Diaochan held out her arms. “The world is changing and I need people I can trust. I thank you all very much for being people I can trust.” She ruffled Lizhang’s hair.

  They made to bow but the People’s Favor stopped them and shooed them out. “You don’t need to bow to me anymore.”

  “Diaochan, can I sit on the throne?” Lizhang asked.

  For a moment, everyone stilled. Diaochan without missing a beat effortlessly lifted Lizhang and put her on the throne. She climbed in after her and showed Lizhang all the various interfaces she normally used on a day-to-day basis.

  “And this one here, that’s my gaming app. I use that when I’m really bored,” said Diaochan.

  “Do you have Angry Bats?” asked Lizhang.

  “I love Angry Bats,” replied Diaochan.

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  Dear reader thank you for reading. And if you have a moment, please review Scientist on Amazon. Help other science fiction readers and tell them why you enjoyed reading. And please help spread the word!

  Thank you again, dear reader, and I hope we meet again between the pages of another book.

  D.P. Oberon

  Table of Contents

  Part 1 – Traitors

  Chapter 1 - The Snake Throne

  Chapter 2 - Explosion

  Chapter 3 - The Batterer

  Chapter 4 - Invalid

  Chapter 5 - You're Fired

  Right in front of

  Chapter 6 - Nuan's Gamble