Kelerin was frozen in shock for several moments. When he recovered, he pushed himself to his feet and rushed through the gaping hole in the Armory wall to find Harris pinned under a large chunk of reinforced stone, blown free in the crash. Directly across, the raider pilot, dead and leaning against his harness, the straps being the only thing keeping him from rolling out of his sliced opened ship and onto the floor.
Harris was alive and didn’t seem to be in too much pain. Kelerin knew this wasn’t necessarily a good thing. It meant Harris’ body was in shock. He must’ve sustained major injuries underneath all that rubble. Kneeling down next to him, Kelerin tried to reassure the Professor. “I’m gonna get you out of here.”
“OK,” croaked Harris, lacking the strength to argue this time around.
Before Kelerin had a chance to make good on his word, though, a clanging sound from something metallic hitting the floor had both himself and Harris turning to discover a heavy Pulse mine that had fallen from the raider’s lap. It rolled for several short meters and stopped after hitting a pile of Wave Whips knocked free of their holders. Kelerin looked at the mine, at the pile of Whips, and then at the walls lined with Whips, each one housing its own subatomic energy core.
Analel saw it all, too. “Kelerin…” she pleaded, unable to bring her voice above an urgent whisper, “Run!”
Professor Harris, still pinned beneath the wreckage, added his own voice in urging Kelerin to do what he already knew he had to do but refused to accept. “Get out,” Harris said, calmly. Kelerin gritted his teeth in anger. There was no time. He turned, and ran for his life.
Analel watched Kelerin head straight for the blown out windows, activate his Rippler and position it out in front of himself, diving through, breaking away several large shards of glass that had somehow survived the ship’s initial crash entry. She continued to watch in horror as he plummeted, the ten lower stories of Userus Hall flashing by in a blur of speed, followed by the brown rocky cliff face of the Island itself. The only thing not blurry, that was in fact incredibly clear and becoming clearer by the second, was the frothy blue/green ocean rising up to meet him at an alarming rate.
Analel watched Kelerin unsheathe his Whip mid-fall, swing it with calculated desperation and slice a deep fissure into the water beneath him. She watched him fall straight into the fissure, the water closing in around just as a massive explosion rocked the very air and a brilliant white light from above seared the world and all Wave patterns inside her mind’s eye. She was ejected from Kelerin’s consciousness, awakening with painful screams, her eyes burning from the intense light and her head throbbing from the concussive force.
“KELERIN!” she cried out, but no one was around to hear her. Standing from her bed, she ran to the panel door, pounded on it, screaming at the top of her lungs, “HELP!... SOMEBODY, PLEASE HELP!... ANSWER ME! WHY AREN’T YOU ANSWERING ME?” She pushed away from the panel in anger and went back to her bed, her eyes still burning. It was hard to breath. She held her chest. It hurt. She tried calming herself. “OK, OK - it’s going to be OK,” she said over and over again, “We can reconnect.” Closing her eyes, she tried to find the Waves, tried to float away. Nothing. “THIS ISN’T WORKING!” She ran back to the door. “THE ACADEMY IS UNDER ATTACK, DO YOU HEAR ME?” She pounded in rhythmic accompaniment to each and every one of her words, “YOU-HAVE-TO-LET-ME-OUT!”
Still, no response.
Helpless, she spun around, resting her back on the door, slinking down to the floor, crying.
“Somebody…,” she pleaded, softer now, sobbing, her energy spent.
“… please?”
Part 3: Avenge
Chapter 26: Burning
Academy Island, Osmos
Waves frothed and churned all around him like a bubbling cauldron, only it was the bite of freezing cold darkness Kelerin did feel, not the blistering heat of boiling waters. Equilibrium all askew in the turmoil, he had to fight hard to maintain his hold on up from down.
That is, until the debris hit the water.
It sank at surprising speeds on all sides, hunks of twisted metal, wire meshes holding together wood, stone and molten glass. He held his breath, keeping his eyes focused on the debris field as it approached, picking out safe routes to maneuver through it. He swam in spurts, strategically avoiding the plunging wreckage threatening to drag him down to the watery depths.
One slab of building proving too large to avoid collided with his back before he could fully clear out from underneath, forcing him downward at an alarming rate. He rolled along its bottom, clearing the last few meters and scaling up its side as it sunk past. He watched it disappear into the black abyss, a shiver coursing through him, not from the chill of the water but from the realization that a meter or two more and he could still be riding that piece of the Academy down to a grave unknown.
He looked upward, his lungs burning for air. The early morning sun was not piercing the water’s surface with its usual rays of soft yellow light. Instead, it appeared as if the giant’s fiery wrath had been kindled anew, scorching the seas as in the early days of creation. Moments were all Kelerin had before losing consciousness. He swam with desperate, broad strokes, willing himself to reach the air above, burning patches of ocean not concerning him. Breaking through to the surface in a large splash, he sucked in deeply, painfully inflating his spent lungs. It took him several more breaths before the spots disappeared from his vision and he was able to see clearly again.
Activating his Rippler, he sat with his wrist underneath him, the concentric flowing circles of deflector Waves keeping him buoyant. The sky flickered crimson beneath an ever expanding black cloud fed from billowing columns of smoke belching forth from the furnace that was now Academy Island. The lower docks were pulverized and the Wave Cutter with the evacuating students was nowhere in sight.
“VALIX, YOU COWARD!” Kelerin shouted angrily, using his free hand as a paddle to twist himself around in place, searching for signs of the Wave Cutter. He couldn’t believe Dunner allowed Valix to get away with leaving him behind. For a moment he considered scaling the cliff back up to the island. A quick scan of the area where Userus Hall should have been, though, revealed nothing but flames, smoke and ash. Academy Island was burning.
“AAAAHHHH!” his vented frustration mingling with the sounds of the surf, diluted and dispersed, breaking like waves along the rocks of the cliff base, its individuality lost in the wake of the countless waves that came before and the countless others that will come after. Then a different kind of sound, one that would not mix, mingle or dilute, not rising and falling as the roar of the ocean did but maintaining a steady rumble. From the ash cloud above, a small mining vessel emerged, its searchlight sweeping across the waves, to and fro.
Kelerin waved frantically with his free arm. “HEY! HEY! OVER HERE!” The searchlight darted from one place to another with no apparent pattern. It was the kind of obligatory, cursory search performed when one doesn’t actually expect to find anything but has to satisfy some code or procedure. The light passed directly over Kelerin’s head and continued on to several more spots before the ship began turning, presumably to check more areas or to abandon the search altogether.
“Oh no, you are NOT leaving me!” He drew his Wave Whip, set it to Deflection, swung a wide arc, the broadside of the lash’s crest catching the ship on its stern. The ship’s tail reared above the bow, the engines whining to compensate, steadying herself out. She swung about, posturing aggressively, deploying a small but respectable, six muzzle Pulser cannon from the bottom of her hull.
Oh boy!
Rolling backward into the water, his Rippler still underneath him breaking the surface just as the Pulser cannon let loose a stream of Pulse burst spraying the entire vicinity, peppering his Rippler and tearing through the surrounding water several meters deep. When the burst ceased he rolled back to a sitting position, spitting out salty mouthfuls and sucking in fresh air.
“I’M AN ACADEMIC, YOU ROCK HAULING MISC
REANTS!” he yelled out, waving to hail the ship again and hoping he looked as nonthreatening as he intended. The ship hovered for several seconds, the cannon tracking his movements all the while as he bobbed in the waves like the driftwood all around him and waited for whoever it was calling the shots up there to make up their mind about him. These people weren’t Island Guard. They were simple miners, probably from Castious or New Stellus, and way out of their element under the circumstances. He could only hope they didn’t get cold feet and abandon him on account of that.
For a moment it looked as though his hopes would be dashed, the ship turning again, but instead of leaving it descended, hovering a few feet above the choppy waves.
Gutsy, that pilot, he thought.
There was a whining sound and the cargo bay’s gangplank lowered from the ship’s bow. Two men standing precariously at its edge rolled out a cargo net, dropping it into the waves several meters from where Kelerin floated. He swam to it, climbed up and got a better look at his rescuers upon reaching the top.
The two crewmen were clearly cut from the same laborer’s cloth; thick forearms, powerful shoulders and broad backs from long days of digging and hauling Ipsidian - pronounced, rounded guts from long nights of drinking thereafter. One of the two seemed to have been cut with a lot more cloth than the other. The big man was a full head and shoulders taller than any man Kelerin had ever seen and still his height did nothing to stretch out his hulking mass. The smaller of the two was shorter than Kelerin’s average height, leaning forward with stuck out chin, as if daring anyone to reference his diminutive stature.
The larger man reached down and offered Kelerin a hand to get up over the lip of the gangplank. He didn’t need to take it but he did so in good faith, the mountainous man hoisting him up easily but not pulling in, instead, holding Kelerin out at his massive arm’s length, dangling him over the water, his other hand outstretched, palm up, as if expecting some sort of payment.
“I don’t got any Coin on me, if that’s what you’re after,” said Kelerin, a little less grateful for the rescue upon seeing the gesture.
The smaller crewman spoke up. “Your weapon.”
Kelerin shifted his attention to the short, stocky one, standing a bit back with his arms folded over his chest. “Not happening,” said Kelerin.
“It’s the weapon or back in the drink, kid. Your call.”
Kelerin looked down at the debris filled water, some of it still burning from the explosion, the frothing crests of the waves dirtied black with soot. None of that bothered him enough to give up his Wave Whip. What did bother him was the fact that every second of delay was a second longer he’d have to wait to get payback from whoever was responsible for destroying his life.
“We ain’t got all day here, kid. My friend’s arm’s get’n tired.”
Kelerin doubted that very much. The big man looked like he would have no problem holding Kelerin out there all day if he felt like it. But again, every second of delay...
Reaching back over his shoulder he pulled out his Whip from its sheath, slapping it down into the palm of the big man, hoping to at least sting the brute a little. It didn’t look like it had much affect. The big man pulled Kelerin in and set him on his feet.
“The Captain wants a word,” said the smaller man brusquely and turned to walk up the gangplank.
“Makes two of us.”
*****
Kelerin followed the crewman, briefly looking back at a whirring sound that turned out to be the gangplank closing, beyond, the diminishing sight of flaming sea, blackening sky and the sheer destruction of Academy Island, shutting the door to his nightmare with the push of a button - if only it were that easy.
They walked the length of what was clearly the main operations area. A hold, large, housing heavy equipment typical of a mining outfit: Thick chains attached to a reinforced pulley system suspended from the ceiling, two industrial strength hanging drills stashed in corners on either side of the hold meant to be attached to the chains, extra drill-bit heads lying haphazardly in pried open crates fastened to various sections of wall, two load bearing dollies on tracks riding up the gangplank and crisscrossing all along the floor of the hold. In the middle of everything, the 6 muzzle Pulser cannon on a swivel turret. Kelerin spied the outline of the flip-panel plate the cannon was bolted down to allowing for its deployment outside the hull.
The hold was empty and the smaller of the two crewmen led the way through it with the quick and short steps of a man at odds with the world. The large mute brought up the rear, trailing close enough behind Kelerin for his looming presence to serve as a constant reminder not to try anything stupid.
At the end of the hold they came to a pressurized panel door. The little man pulled down on a lever and pounded on a depressor. The panel slid open, grating painfully against its metal sleeve, so much so, Kelerin wondered how much time its pressure seals had left before giving out, hopefully not mid-flight and hopefully not while he was on board. On the other side, a hallway fitted out with a hatch for hull capture at its midpoint in the event of an in-space boarding, at its far end, another pressurized panel door. The two ends plus the hatch had the hallway serving as the de facto airlock of the ship.
They passed through the second door into what was obviously the crew’s communal space: A large oval room housing the galley on one side, a Tower Ball table on the other and a dining area in the middle. Six additional doors lined the walls, three to a side. Kelerin figured these to be entrances to the crew’s personal quarters.
The communal space was also empty and the procession passed straight through to a set of double doors at its far end. The short crewman hit a depressor at their side and the doors slid open, revealing the flight bridge. Four seats decked out the bridge, two central seats sharing the main console, to their far left and right and closer to the rear, a second set. The gutsy pilot was sitting in the center right seat with his back to them preventing Kelerin from getting a good look at him, but he seemed young. Another middle aged man was leaning over the back of the pilot’s chair peering intently through the view screen. He turned at the sound of their entering.
“Fresh catch for you, Cap,” the short crewman declared, entering the room and flopping down in a chair at the far right of the bridge. He swiveled his seat around, eyeing Kelerin with a cocksure look animating his face.
The Captain was a dark haired man fighting off a smattering of gray creeping into his sideburns. The gray of his thick beard, however, had already turned the tables of its own battle and would soon be overrunning the few remaining patches of resistance. He was stocky, with a middle age paunch of the gut and a face that lost its naivety long ago but made up for it with a keen sense of irony.
“So you’re the one who nearly capsized my ship.”
“Sorry about that, had to get your attention.”
The shorter crewman was not so easily placated. “Sorry? That’s all you gotta say for yourself, kid?”
Kelerin never liked people with chips on their shoulder bigger than they were. “Why? You bump your head on something, little man?”
The short crewman bolted out of his seat. The Captain, knowing each member of his crew as well as he knew himself, was already preempting the feisty man, shouting him down before things got ugly. “S’down, Gowdy!” he ordered.
Gowdy restrained himself mid stride, his body and facial features twitching at the effort. He leaned forward, jabbing a warning finger in Kelerin’s direction. “Ya’ dead, kid.”
“Sit - down!” the Captain repeated.
“Dead,” added Gowdy for good measure. He sat back down but never took his eyes off Kelerin.
The Captain pulled Kelerin’s attention back his way. “You got a lotta nerve, kid.”
“I have nerve?”
“First you pull that stunt outside; lucky my pulse cannon didn’t tear you to pieces. Then you return the favor of us rescuing you by coming onto my ship and insulting my crew, forcing me now to worry about keeping thes
e two from tearing you to pieces.” The Captain indicated Gowdy, and the big man still standing behind Kelerin, barely fitting in the doorframe. “So what is it with you? Death wish? Invincibility complex? Just so you know, there’s no right answer here. Either one isn’t welcome aboard my ship.”
Kelerin was in no mood to be pushed around, not after what he’d just been through. “Hate to break this to you, Captain, but you got your realities inverted.”
“You don’t say?”
“First off, I’m an Academic, so I wouldn’t worry myself about your little Pulser cannon or the wonder twins over here tearing me to pieces. I can take care of myself.” The big man arched an eyebrow in the Captain’s direction. The Captain caught it and made a face that said, ignore him, he’s just a kid. “Second - Oh, was that supposed to be a rescue? Because I couldn’t tell, what with you disarming me and marching me in here under prisoner escort like I’m the enemy. Why don’t you take a good look around you, Captain? The Academy’s destroyed. Everything I’ve ever known, my entire life is burning out there, as we speak. So what I’m going to need from you is to get me my Whip back from this thing,” he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the big man, “and to fly me over to the Prophecy as soon as you can get this hunk of metal underway.”
The Captain chuckled. “Need from me - that’s cute.” He sat down on the chair to the left of the pilot. “Here’s the thing, kid-”
“And I’m not a kid. I’m an Academic.”
“Oh, right, an educated man. I see.” He exchanged amused looks with the one called Gowdy. “Ok genius, see if you can follow this logic. We have a claim on an Ipsidian plot on Caras 3. We made a bid - I made a bid - but if I don’t make it there on time to stake my claim, I forfeit my down payment. Now I had reserved a spot on the next Slingshot to Caras 3 but all Slingshots to Caras 3 have been suspended. Far as I know, all Slingshots to anywhere have been suspended-”
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