Spiros heard footsteps in the distance and thought he would have a heart attack, but they continued to wherever they were going, without entering engineering. That was a lucky break, but Spiros knew it wouldn’t last.
It took ten minutes to set up the changes inside the main computer. By then the station wasn’t firing on the ships outside. That particular battle had ended, and the Zarlacks were now focusing their efforts inside the station.
Once the blueprints and sensors were dealt with, all that was left to do was find some equipment to set up a mini-lab and then reroute power inside the hidden room. He would mirror station-wide sensor data to his hiding place to know what was happening all over the station, like locating enemy life signs. He would need this information to go on errands, in order to avoid being caught. However long it took him to formulate an escape plan or to be rescued by the Star Alliance, he would have to leave the hiding place from time to time, if only to gather food and supplies.
Spiros returned to the main engineering control room and took several holo-pads, portable processing units and engineering tools back to the hidden room, which was about a hundred square feet in area. It was cramped, but it would allow him to set up a mini-lab, and eventually a bed.
Time for the power connections to be installed. Spiros rerouted all the power he could with his implant, turned on a temporary force field and added a trigger command shortcut inside his brain implant to easily turn it on and off. Once the final power patch was done, he would redistribute the power accordingly.
The tricky part now was to hide the power extension he was setting up from the core to behind the bulkheads where his hideout was.
Spiros entered a few holo-commands, and a square of the false flooring lifted and slid to the side. Spiros stepped under the false flooring and crawled the fifty yards to where he connected one side of the power extension cable into the power node under his hidden room. Now all he needed to do was to connect the extension to the node near the power core. He crawled back and grabbed the extension, but before he could plug it in, a hand grabbed him and lifted him through the hole in the false flooring.
A Zarlack held him by the clothes and growled before throwing him against the nearest wall. Something snapped inside Spiros’s chest, followed by a sharp pain.
Spiros’s heart started to beat faster than it ever had. He was so close to finishing setting up his hiding place, but now a monstrous beast stood in front of him, intent on killing him. His mind raced. He grabbed the square of false flooring near him just before the Zarlack struck him once more. He threw the square, metallic plate with all the force he could muster. It impacted right in the middle of the Zarlack’s throat.
The Zarlack stumbled backward, holding its throat, wheezing heavily and desperately gasping to get some air into its lungs. It was now or never. Spiros jumped and skidded on the floor next to a power panel near the station’s power core. He opened it and ripped a cable at random off its socket. It sparked, and the lights in engineering flickered briefly.
This power fluctuation could get him detected if the enemy was already within the system. But Spiros had more pressing problems. He approached the Zarlack from behind with the cable.
Before he could hit the beast with its lethal current, the beast slashed its tail and hit Spiros’ hand. Spiros dropped the cable to the floor, where it spewed large sparks. The Zarlack turned around and roared.
Spiros’ blood pumped heavily against his temples. He glanced at the power cable. He wouldn’t reach it before the Zarlack reacted. Zarlacks were fast. He had seen their speed and agility firsthand when they had taken out his security detail.
Spiros extended his arms in front of him in a non-threatening way and took a step back. The Zarlack, still holding its throat with one hand, snarled and took a step forward. From its other hand, three sharp, metallic claws extended between its finger bones. Its clawed hand was right above the power cable.
It’s all or nothing.
Spiros over-clocked his brain implant by fifty percent to accelerate his next command. He accessed the shortcut he had created earlier, activated the force field and extended its size in real time.
The Zarlack had its back turned against the incoming force-field bubble and never saw it coming. Spiros was forced to take another step back. Before the Zarlack could attack, the force field touched the power cable, which triggered a large arc of electricity that shot from the cable to the metallic claws of the Zarlack, sending lethal current throughout its body.
Lightning bolts of electricity sizzled around its body, and it fell on its back. The ever-expanding force field passed through the Zarlack’s head, and it exploded. Spiros dialed down the force field to its original position, but not before taking several steps back to make sure he wasn’t struck by another spark when the force field passed over the power cable again.
The room smelled of charred meat, and Spiros forced himself not to vomit at the sight of what was left of the beast’s head.
Once the force field had been retracted fully, he quickly finished his power connections. He dropped the Zarlack’s body inside the false flooring before closing it, but the square was slightly dented. He cleaned up the purple blood from the floor and made a mental note to replace that flooring square later, once he was fully set up. Doing it now would be too risky. Trying to properly dispose of the body would be risky, too. He used his brain implant to crank the ventilation and have it run at two hundred percent, and soon the charred-meat odor dissipated.
More footsteps came his way, so he entered the bulkhead through the ventilation shaft, crawled through to the hidden room and started working on a holo-projection field at the end of the shaft. It would project to the exact position where the force field was to mask the entry to his hiding place, both physically and visually. Hopefully, nobody would try to go this way. No systems of importance were located behind the bulkhead. Spiros had altered the blueprints anyway to make sure nobody would ever be interested in this stretch of bulkhead and ventilation shaft.
Once he was in the room, he double-checked that the minimum safety features had been correctly set up, and then he let himself fall on the floor and rest a moment.
He had escaped death on many occasions today, but the same could not be said of other people around the station. From time to time, he would still hear the cries from someone getting caught and brutally killed by the Zarlack. The delayed sounds echoed inside the ventilation shafts.
Even after all that had happened today, he knew the real struggle was only beginning.
Epilogue
It had been three days since Damocles-3 had fallen at the hands of the Zarlacks. An Obsidian starship had just left after a one-day visit, confirming to Spiros that they were allies with the Zarlacks, which explained how the Obsidian Empire had managed to overthrow the Star Alliance and wipe them out so rapidly.
Spiros had recovered his data, though it had been tricky. It had required him to leave his hiding place and recover some additional hardware, all the while staying undetected. At the same time, he acquired a small mattress and whatever food he could fit inside a backpack. He had also properly disposed of the dead Zarlack’s body and replaced the square of dented false flooring that could have given away his location.
He imagined he could stay there for at least two weeks, even though the lack of facilities would surely make the smell in the place unbearable. To avoid that, he started working on jury-rigging a toilet system of some kind.
His sensor scan had confirmed that not a single member of Star Alliance personnel had survived. Some had been tortured for information, and Spiros wished he could have helped them, but there was nothing he could have done. He had watched them being tortured and eventually when it became clear they didn’t hold any relevant information, they had been executed in gruesome ways.
It had been turning Spiros’ stomach for the last twenty-four hours. Perhaps today he would be hungry again. But it mattered not. He needed to work on a plan to get out of h
ere and, until that day came, to gather as much intelligence on the Zarlacks as he could. Having lost the data Tassos had gathered, he had set up his own secure array of sensors by installing hidden partitions and concurrent software atop the station’s sensor array. The data from the new sensor array wasn’t using the station’s internal network but the dedicated one Spiros had cleverly put in place.
They would only work and give him data when the array wasn’t fully in use, so as to not arouse suspicion of his presence should the sensor report an overload of system resources. If that happened, it would probably result in a manhunt, ultimately resulting in his execution.
Spiros wondered if by stopping the self-destruct he hadn’t given the Zarlacks time to reverse-engineer his weapons. To honor Leonidis’ last wish, Spiros swore he would find a way to poison-pill the technology with random bugs, thus making it too much trouble to reverse-engineer.
But the data he had saved would allow him not only to continue his research but also to identify weaknesses in the superior Zarlack tech that could prove vital one day to defeat this formidable new enemy.
Spiros let himself drop onto his mattress and tried to sleep. Up till now, sleep had eluded him. He was too scared of getting captured, and the only times he had managed to close his eyes for just a little while, he had had terrible nightmares.
Life as he knew it had been turned upside down. Four days ago everything was still normal. He was laughing and joking with his friends and co-workers. Then everything had turned to chaos.
In mere hours his entire perception of reality and normalcy had reversed upon itself, and he had lost nearly everything but his own life. He wondered if it would have been better to perish alongside the others. It would certainly have been easier. The one thing that was quickly getting to him though, what devoured him from within, was how terribly alone he now felt.
THE END
Fury to the Stars
By Christian Kallias
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Christian Kallias
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First Printing, 2016 / Version 1.2
Dramatis Personæ
Earth Alliance
Lieutenant Commander Chase Athanatos – Earth Alliance Fury hybrid (formerly Star Alliance Lieutenant Commander)
Commander Sarah Kepler – Earth Human (formerly US Navy Commander)
Commander Daniel Tharraleos – Earth Alliance Human (formerly Star Alliance)
Captain Adonis Saroudis – Earth Alliance Human (formerly Star Alliance Captain)
Chief Engineer Yanis Tixichos – Earth Alliance Human (formerly Star Alliance)
Ryonna Isch’ys – Droxian Warrior (a fugitive Droxian smuggler)
Tar’Lock – Gorgar (Insectoid)
Admiral Ally Thassos – Earth Alliance Human (formerly Star Alliance Admiral)
Commander Fillio Steriopoulou – Earth Alliance Human (formerly Star Alliance)
R&D Engineer Spiros Malayianis – Earth Alliance Human (formerly Star Alliance)
Olympians
Aphroditis – known to humans as the goddess of love
Ares – know to humans as the god of war
Obsidian / Zarlacks
Argos Thanatos – Head of the Zarlacks
Emperor Altair – Emperor of the Obsidian Empire
Other Characters
Cedric – Earth Human scientist
Ronan – Ryonna’s son
The Story So Far
Warning: If you haven’t read all the previous books in the series, you’re exposing yourself to SERIOUS spoilers by reading this part.
This section was created for readers of this series to refresh their memories (should they need to) before reading this new book. It can, of course, be used by new readers but I’d recommend you start reading the series at Book 1: Earth – Last Sanctuary (it’s free).
Volume I: Earth - Last Sanctuary
Following a devastating attack by the Obsidian Empire, helped by the mighty Zarlacks, a band of survivors led by Chase Athanatos from the Star Alliance blind jump away from their home world (Alpha Prime) and end up in an uncharted part of space, near a planet called Earth. Guided by the Olympian goddess of love Aphroditis, Chase and his friends rescue planet Earth from an alien attack and form a new alliance (Earth Alliance). But soon the Obsidian Empire tracks them down and decides to launch a full-scale attack on the blue planet. In the midst of the epic battle that ensues, the leader of the enemy forces captures Chase’s new love interest, Commander Sarah Kepler. He reveals to Sarah that he is Chase’s brother.
And now the continuation . . .
1
Chase was standing on the edge of the canyon. The air was warm, brushing his hair and face gently, enveloping him like a blanket. He felt at peace, relaxed. As light as a feather, floating on a soft wind. His mind had expanded beyond his body as he took in the magnificent view of the russet canyons and the burning night sky above. The three moons were almost perfectly aligned with the giant, ringed planet suspended in the distance.
As he gazed out at the abyss, he felt the steady rise and fall of his chest. His breath came slowly and purposefully. His mind was empty, filled with nothing but the flawless view and his own steady pulse. It was in this state of perfect balance, as the rest of the universe seemed to fall away, that he felt her coming back to him.
Sarah. His beloved.
His heart warmed with the very thought. She appeared just as he remembered. Her brilliant, crimson hair flowing in the wind, eyes shining with the light of the moons. She looked like magic. Like endless possibility. Like a future he desired above anything else.
Time seemed to suspend as he passed his fingers slowly through her rippling hair. At first, she’d been lost in the view, but at his touch, she turned to him with a radiant smile.
His heart began to hammer in his chest, growing stronger with each pulse as he gazed in loving admiration at her celestial body. Stronger and stronger it grew, swelling his chest with the weight of his emotions.
But then, all at once, it was too strong.
Chase clutched at his chest as the rhythmic beats sharpened to excruciating pain. His breath caught in his throat and he reached out automatically to Sarah for help.
But Sarah was no longer there.
Her body remained frozen painfully in place against the beautiful horizon, but it was not the Sarah that Chase knew and loved.
Her sallow skin was tinted deathly gray and her beautiful green eyes had filled with the darkest black. It was like looking into a void.
All that remained was a shadow, a mere echo of what used to be. Chase’s eyes grew wide with fright and dread as he began to feel that hopeful future fading away.
Then, all at once, the pain and pounding in his chest subsided. Had his heart just stopped?! He stared at Sarah in a blind panic, unable to understand what was going on.
“Sarah!” he cried. “What’s happening?!”
She turned her head with a strange, jerking motion that was not entirely human. The bone-cracking echo that followed made Chase’s blood run cold. He longed to stop her. To stop her before there was nothing left to save, but she continued turning towards him, shattering what sounded like every bone in her body. She opened her mouth, as if to scream, but instead, a bright red light shot out of it, blinding Chase and burning his face.
“Why, Chase?” she asked in a voice like Sarah’s, but deeper. “Why did you do this to me?”
Chase shook his head in horror. “What did I do?”
As if to answer, she drifted off the ledge and levitated in the air in front of him. He tried desperately to get to her, but she was just out of reach. Her body started shivering, each motion crushing another bone, each one sending cold shivers down Chase’s spine.
Something was about to end here. Som
ething was going very wrong.
Then, without warning, she threw back her head with the most earth-shattering, heart-wrenching screech Chase had ever heard. It sounded as if it was coming from the very depths of hell. Her body began bleeding the red light—it exploded out of the cracks in her ashen skin before Chase’s eyes—ripping her to pieces until suddenly…
All that was left of his beautiful Sarah was gone.
As he fell to his knees, Chase heard another scream, this one decidedly animal. It hardly seemed possible that the sound could have come from him, but his throat burned as if the noise had dug its claws in before it was ripped out into the air. Tears streamed down his face, smearing the lingering ashes that clung to his cheeks, and he curled his fingers into fists so hard they made his hands bleed.
There was no controlling this rage. No caging the fury that ran coursing through his veins. Teeth grinding and eyes closed, he screamed out for release, unleashing the full power of that unimaginable rage on the heavens above.
Canyons exploded, water rushed into the air. The ground started shaking and breaking apart beneath him. The three moons exploded in quick succession while the giant, ringed planet cracked in two before shattering to dust.
I need to control this, he thought desperately. I need to make it stop!
But he had lost all control over what was left of his mind. It was pure darkness now. Pure hate. He could feel his own personal hell overtake him.
Until suddenly, he thought of her again.
With every bit of energy he had left, he conjured an image of Sarah in his mind. A frozen picture from happier times back on Earth. Times when her eyes were green, not black, and the radiant sun caught in her hair.
Universe in Flames – Ultimate 10 Book Box Set: An Epic Space Opera Adventure Page 49