Poseidon gritted his teeth and threw his trusty weapon at Tanak’Vor.
The Spectre smiled, and the glowing Trident stopped an inch from his face.
“Very well. Apparently, your rage is blinding you, just like it blinded Arakan when you took him out. And, if it hadn’t been for me and my essence, he would have stayed dead. But, you know what, if you’re in a hurry to rejoin him in the depths of hell, that’s one wish I’m happy to grant.”
With a single thought, Tanak’Vor forced the Trident to turn and sent it flying back toward Poseidon’s chest ten times faster than it had originally traveled. The Olympian couldn’t move, paralyzed by a powerful kinetic force.
Chris flew forward and caught the Trident just before it impaled Poseidon.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” screamed Chris. “We had agreed none of us would go at him alone.”
Tanak’Vor growled. “Who told you to intervene, boy?”
Before Chris could answer, Tanak’Vor appeared in front of him and smashed him out of the way with a powerful kick. This triggered Argos’ anger. He lit up and engulfed his right forearm in crimson energy and instinctively launched himself at Tanak’Vor.
Tanak’Vor ignored him completely, and instead, slashed through Poseidon’s chest. By the time Argos was upon him, Tanak’Vor was already ripping out the soul of the God of the Seas. With a single thought, the Spectre unleashed a powerful shockwave that repelled Argos and sent all the other fighters to the ground.
Tanak’Vor looked at the bluish translucent soul in his hand with a satisfied grin. He closed his eyes and Poseidon’s soul splintered and was siphoned inside Tanak’Vor’s body through his nostrils and ears. When Tanak’Vor reopened his eyes, they briefly flashed a greenish-blue hue before returning back to black.
29
Argos helped Chris get back on his feet as they all watched in horror.
Poseidon’s face lost all its color, and his lifeless body fell to the cold, hard floor of the palace ship.
Thor screamed. “Nooooooooo!”
His green aura exploded around him as lightning bolts jumped back and forth between his watery eyes. His shoulder-length, blond hair danced atop his head. He raised his fist and Mjölnir materialized in his hand.
“Thor!” warned Argos. “Stay in line! Us going at him one by one is exactly what he wants.”
Thor hesitated and shot Argos a deadly look.
“Don’t do it, Thor, don’t go at it alone.”
As the Asgardian God of Thunder roared, his entire body sizzled with mighty thunderbolts. He threw Mjölnir at Tanak’Vor with such incredible velocity that a small shockwave blew everyone’s hair backward.
Tanak’Vor blocked the hammer with one hand.
“Such a feeble weapon, unworthy of the Asgardian might of old,” said Tanak’Vor.
A layer of ice covered Mjölnir, and when Tanak’Vor swiftly closed his fist, Mjölnir exploded, and tiny particles of ice rained down around them.
“I’m afraid,” said the Spectre, “that you could have come with fifty warriors of the same strength, and you’d still not be able to defeat me. What’s really sad is that I was hoping for a bigger challenge. Granted, you destroyed most of the Furies, so I guess I can shed this filthy meat suit now.”
Tanak’Vor assumed a power stance, and a line of light separated his body vertically. The flesh of Arakan began melting, revealing something darker, scarier, and not at all human or Fury. Tanak’Vor’s true form was horrifying. It still had two legs, two arms, and a head, but that’s where the similarities with humanoid life forms ended.
Its skin was black, both scaly and oily, and the smoke-like aura that once emanated from Arakan’s form was now flying around him. Multiple murky trails morphed into various monstrous shapes as they gravitated around his muscular body. He had horns on his head, like a dragon, and bone-colored spikes were coming out of his skin on his forearms and thighs.
His hands contained six fingers, while his feet had only three toes. When he breathed, orange light bled through the scales of his torso, as if his lungs were generating lava.
He cracked his neck several times.
“It’s been so long since I’ve allowed myself to be in this form,” he said with a smirk. A long purple tongue licked the Spectre’s upper lip. “Now that the restrictions of Arakan’s putrid flesh won’t limit my abilities anymore, I look forward to devouring each of your souls.”
Before anyone could say or do anything, he pointed a finger at Thor, and a thin laser pierced the Asgardian’s heart and sent him crashing to the ground. Thor’s heartbeat slowed with each passing second.
The Victory shook under the multitude of attacks. Its shields were approaching the dreaded fifty percent safe-zone as more Fury super-destroyers had decided to make it their primary target. Using the fleet torpedoes to blast the spider ship to prevent it from firing its main guns had had a very detrimental side effect on most of the fleet, as the Fury destroyers’ shields were allowed to recharge to their full strength.
Daniel looked at the battle unfolding and tried to think of a way out of their current predicament but couldn’t see it. Up until the spider ship made its appearance, both fleets were pretty evenly matched, with a slight advantage for the Earth Alliance. Now that the Earth Alliance couldn’t deploy all of its weapons to keep the main threat at bay, the Furies were gaining the upper hand, and unless something was done, the Earth Alliance would be destined to lose this battle.
When Daniel thought things couldn’t get any worse, five weapons platforms decloaked.
“What the hell are those?”
Before anyone could answer, plasma beams interconnected the different platforms to the one in the middle. The plasma transfer made it glow for a second before it fired a massive energy beam toward a nearby Olympian destroyer. The beam pierced the target’s shields as if they weren’t there and split the ship in half before multiple explosions vaporized them and filled the Victory’s bridge momentarily with a bright flash of light.
Now we’re really in trouble.
“Report!” shouted Daniel.
“Weapon signature is of unknown design. There is no match from the Alliance database,” said the tactical officer.
“I don’t care where it comes from,” barked Daniel. “Give me something I can use. Anything!”
“Its power signature is larger than both the Fury super-destroyers and the Victory. Our sensors show that after firing, its power reserves drain and then has to recharge.”
“How long until it can fire again?”
“This particular platform will need five minutes to recharge, but it’s entirely possible that the other ones will be able to fire before that time. Their power levels were not impacted as much as the one that fired the shot.”
The heavily damaged Obsidian destroyer near the platform that had fired pushed its sub-light engines to ramming speed.
It looks like that ship’s captain wants to remove one of the platforms as much as I do.
When the ship was less than a mile to its target, large metallic spikes deployed from the weapon’s platform and impaled the Obsidian destroyer, preventing it from crashing into the platform itself. Half a second later, red lightning traveled through the metallic spikes and cut the Obsidian destroyer to pieces. Before it exploded, the weapon’s platform emitted a powerful shockwave that sent the flying debris toward the fleet. One massive chunk of the destroyer rammed into the Victory’s shields before exploding. It brought the shields down to fifty percent.
“Helmsman! Get us out of here. Micro-jump the Victory until our shields are back to one hundred percent.”
Daniel got up from his chair and looked at his tactical officer. “Commander, transfer command of the fleet to Emperor Altair, and until I return, you have the con. I’ll be in the ready room.”
Daniel could tell that the commander had a hard time processing his words. But, eventually, he moved away from his console and walked to the captain’s chair.
Chase looked at the remaining time in his regen tank cycle. Another ten hours to go. But he could sense something powerful being unleashed. Even though he didn’t think he could from within the time chamber, he also sensed his family’s feelings, and he felt that they were scared.
He tried reaching out to get a better picture and realized he couldn’t sense Poseidon’s aura. Had he been vanquished? So early in the fight? And, if so, should Chase even bother staying in the regen tank while Tanak’Vor killed his family one by one?
Clearly, something had happened in the short time he’d been in there. His level of frustration regarding how slowly the time passed in the chamber didn’t help either. He tried establishing a telepathic link to Argos in the hopes to learn more about what was going on, but he couldn’t make a connection.
Then it dawned on him. Currently, he was utterly alone. Disconnected from the outer world, unable to help those he loved the most.
With each passing minute, he could feel his body regenerate, and he had the impression that his powers were growing. He remembered something Sarah had told him. She said she had noticed that every time his energy had been at its lowest, and he recovered, his powers seemed to grow. Hopefully, this time things wouldn’t be any different, and he would grow even more powerful than he already was.
He still wondered if he should get out of the regen tank now or wait until he was fully recharged. The longer he waited, the more chances his family and friends could get killed. But, at the same time, he trusted Argos to buy him the extra minute or two he needed in the time chamber.
Things were not going well for Gaia. Even with her powerful avatar, Achanes was finding ways to counter her. His latest twist had been to split into multiple copies of himself, all seemingly as powerful as the original.
Fighting one of Achanes’ avatars had been difficult enough, but fighting five of them simultaneously was getting near impossible to keep up with.
To her surprise, all five copies merged back into one, and Achanes’ avatar stood in front of her, his arms crossed over his chest.
“I told you there’s no way you can win in here. This is my world, and I can rewrite the rules any time I so please, so why do you insist on continuing this pointless fight when you know you can’t win?”
“I can’t give up. I need to help my friends.”
“If you’re talking of the fleet currently engaged outside this ship, I fear it’s already too late for them.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Let me show you.”
The virtual reality changed and now Gaia was levitating in space, in the middle of hundreds of ships waging a deadly space battle. A weapons platform just shot a powerful plasma beam and demolished one of the Alliance destroyers. Meanwhile, the Fury destroyers appeared in better shape than those of the Alliance, and they had the offensive edge on the battle.
Gaia pointed toward the ships.
“That’s why I fight,” she said, her eyes moist. “I can’t abandon them. Look at that. The Furies are winning, and if they do, they’ll wipe out all living beings.”
“That would be unfortunate. But understand that I’ve been programmed with only one directive, and as much as I feel why you’d want to avoid this fate for your friends, that doesn’t change anything. I can’t give you the blink drive.”
“Then give us something to at least take them out, anything, just the edge we need to turn the tide of this battle.”
“I wish I could.”
She was getting frustrated, and while she had managed to keep her emotions in check up until now, she felt she was slowly approaching the point of losing control. Then she thought of Earth. Her home, the planet she felt she was speaking for and protecting. With Achanes’ words echoing in her head, she had a vision of her dear planet Earth being destroyed by a Fury fleet. Something in her broke.
Gaia’s anger quickly turned into hatred, and before she knew it, her hair had turned red, her eyes glowed, and she felt the power inside her avatar body increase tenfold. She unleashed an inhuman roar that shook the virtual world. The projected image of the space battle shattered like pieces of a broken mirror, lines of code bleeding through the cracks.
With just a single thought, she leaped forward and smashed through Achanes with such force that his avatar exploded into millions of lines of scrambled code.
Daniel crashed into the chair behind the main desk in the ready room and sighed heavily. He needed some time alone. He knew leaving the bridge at a time like this was wrong, unacceptable even, but right now he couldn’t think straight. They couldn’t even use the Victory’s main weapon because that would destabilize the time chamber. Hopefully, Chase would soon exit it, and then Daniel could use the full force of the ship.
Would it be enough, though? He had no idea. At this point in the fight, they were lagging in every department; in their shields, as well as in their weapons. They were simply reacting instead of going on the offensive. And that had to change.
He opened a channel to Engineering.
“Please tell me you have something. We can’t keep up like this much longer.”
Kvasir was the one to answer his call, his tattoos blinked at a higher frequency than usual.
“We may have found a way to pass through the Fury shields.”
Daniel straightened in his chair. Finally, some good news.
“I’m listening.”
“I’m currently adapting our laser turrets with a new firing sequence. I believe I can embed them with the same Asgardian technology that allows us to beam through most enemy shields.”
“Is that even possible?”
“Spiros proposed it, and like you, I thought there was no way, but he’s suggested a patch that could actually work.”
“Why do I sense a but coming?”
“But, there is some risk involved.”
“Which is?”
“The power requirements for this are enormous. To make this work, we would have to not only let the time chamber run, but boost its dilation factor beyond safe limits.”
“In English, Kvasir, please.”
“Okay, right now the time chamber is providing a lot of extra power to the ship. In fact, without it, we wouldn’t be able to power the containment field, which is preventing the white hole from expanding and destroying not only the ship but everything around it. We need that power, and we need more of it. Once Chase is out of the chamber, we believe we can boost it exponentially, which in turn will give us the necessary power to use the modified weaponry. But, we’ll most likely sacrifice the Victory in the process. Once we do this, there’s no turning back; the ship will continue to build up more and more energy until it reaches a point where the amount it produces is too big for its power nodes to deal with. We can delay it by boosting our shields, and while we use the weapons, they’ll also grow in power. But eventually…”
“The ship would blow up.”
“Exactly. If we do this, we could doom the ship and ourselves in the process.”
“Can we get beamed away before the ship blows up?”
“By an Asgardian ship, yes, but they’re quickly being picked off one by one. If none of them are left by the time this battle is over, we’ll perish with the ship.”
“What about escape pods?”
“They won’t do us any good. Understand Captain, if the Victory blows anywhere near a system, it will destroy every planet and every life form around it. In fact, we have no way of knowing what the full extent of the damage would be. We could very well open a rift in space and time itself.”
Daniel buried his head in his hands.
“And if we don’t do this?”
“Then by our estimate, the fleet will fall within the hour.”
“You’re not exactly giving me an easy choice here.”
“I know, Captain. I’m sorry, but that’s all we’ve got.”
“By your estimation, how long until Chase gets out of the time
chamber?”
“He should be getting out any minute now.”
“Very well. The moment he’s out, do what you have to do, but we need to destroy that fleet. Will the modified weapon be efficient against the spider ship as well?”
“I don’t think so. Its reflective properties are way superior to those of the Fury destroyers. We could very well blow ourselves up if we fired on it.”
“I guess we won’t be doing that then. Thank you, Kvasir, you know what to do.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
That was not the news Daniel was hoping for, but at this point, he would take any advantage he could, even if that meant they perished in the process. As long as they made sure that the Furies were no more, he could live with losing his life. Hopefully, they’d manage to get the upper hand soon and still have Asgardian ships in the area to beam out the crew when needed.
30
Gaia needed to act fast. She could already sense that Achanes was reconstructing his avatar. But the way she had blasted him gave her free time in the virtual world. She located and acquired as much technology as she could in the target folder she had identified.
Even though his avatar was still in shambles, his voice resonated around her.
“Well played, but you can’t access that data. The only way these folders will unlock is if I’m dead. Another safeguard I’ve put in place. So, you may think you’re one step closer to your goal, but I’m afraid this is pointless.”
Gaia refused to believe that, and while she couldn’t access the data yet, she’d find a way. At least she had been able to store the information within her avatar’s matrix. Now she needed a way to contact the outside world so that when the time was right, she could give the Alliance the tech.
Into the Fire Part II: To End All Wars (Universe in Flames Book 10) Page 28