One second, Dan was staring at the distant star. In the next, he saw a murky landscape. Alarms began firing all over the ship.
‘Dan,’ Ferdy said. ‘We are dangerously close—’
Dan didn’t hear anything after that. He was too focused on pulling back on the control column. Covering the short distance with the FTL drive to put them on Lydor’s night side had been a risky plan, but it had brought them to within firing distance of the star. Now he just had to avoid crashing into the planet.
A mountain loomed before him, and Dan swerved the ship wildly. He avoided the mountain, but their momentum kept them headed towards the murky landscape of the barren world.
‘Up,’ Dan grunted. ‘Up!’
He pulled back harder as the landscape loomed beneath.
‘Proximity to the surface is five hundred feet,’ Ferdy said. ‘Four hundred. Three hundred.’
‘Transfer auxiliary power to the engines!’
‘Power transferred. Two hundred.’
‘Transfer life support! Everything!’
The bridge went dark except for the control systems. The only sound was the whine of the engines.
‘Come on!’ Dan snapped.
‘One hundred. Prepare for collision.’
Dan leveled out the ship. A scraping sound came from beneath the vessel, and he heard an explosion from below. Then he saw the inky blackness of space.
‘Ferdy?’ he whispered.
‘Liber8tor is now safely on the dark side of the planet. Distance to surface is one mile and rising.’
Dan cut the engines and whooped. Ferdy resumed standard power as Dan spent the next few moments dancing about the bridge’s interior.
‘Yes!’ he said. ‘I am the greatest! I am the greatest!’
‘Dan,’ Ferdy said. ‘That expression was made famous by boxer Muhammad Ali, but Ferdy is sure it also applies to Dan.’
‘All right!’ Dan said, giving the air a final punch. ‘Let’s do this.’ He took the bag of tenetron downstairs and eased it into the waste disposal chute. He gingerly opened the case, exposing the red rocks to the air. Running back to the bridge, he sat down at the pilot’s chair and restarted the engines.
Within seconds, he had Liber8tor positioned so it was a few hundred feet away from the terminator—the twilight line dividing night and day on the planet.
‘Ferdy,’ Dan said. ‘Fire the waste towards the sunlight.’
An instant later, he saw the tenetron rocks and the bag soaring across the landscape. The outside temperature was three hundred degrees below zero. Once the rocks reached the sunlight, the temperature would rise to over eight hundred degrees, more than enough to make them explode.
Dan fed more calculations into the computer and within minutes had flown the ship to a safe distance outside the solar system.
‘Ferdy,’ he said, peering at the star-ridden sky. ‘Are we facing the Magarath star?’
‘We are, friend Dan.’
‘How long until the explosion happens?’
‘Ferdy estimates it will be some time in the next sixty seconds.’
Dan kept his eyes focused on the viewscreen. He was beginning to think their plan had failed when one of the stars flashed. An instant later, it disappeared completely.
‘And that,’ Dan murmured, ‘is how you put out the light.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘How long till we reach Branada?’ Mister Okada asked.
They had been on the move again for more than an hour. Both Quinn and Ebony had slowly recovered from their experience on the space station. It had given them some time to think about their next move.
Garan didn’t reply. Chad saw he was hunched over his console reading one of the displays.
‘Garan?’ Mister Okada said.
‘Sorry,’ the alien said, turning from the display. ‘Only another hour, but first I need to divert to a planet called Paliston.’
‘Why?’
‘I missed a rendezvous to deliver a parcel to a buyer. At Paliston, I can make some much-needed cash.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘I have bills to pay.’
Chad was keen to keep going but could understand Garan’s position. Besides, there was little he could do about it.
Soon after, Garan disengaged the FTL drive, and Chad found himself looking out a window at a small gray planet. Orbited by a single moon, both it and the planet appeared to be densely populated. Chad couldn’t spot any greenery at all.
‘Paliston is a traders world,’ Mister Okada said, drawing near to Chad. ‘The whole planet is dedicated to making money.’
‘And they haven’t been taken over by the Tagaar?’ Chad said.
‘They probably pay bribes to the Tagaar to remain safe.’
‘And that works?’
‘It has till now.’
They entered the atmosphere, and Chad found himself staring in fascination at the landscape. Every square inch of the world appeared to have been taken over by development—and none of it was low-lying. The people of Paliston had reached higher and higher until their buildings now stretched miles into the atmosphere.
This is amazing, Chad thought. But the sooner we leave all this behind, the better.
Garan swept down through canyons of high towers. Space ships and flying cars zipped between the buildings like giant flies. It amazed Chad that he didn’t hit anything on the way. Finally, they turned down another canyon and aimed for a gleaming blue and yellow building.
‘Is that where we’re headed?’ Chad asked.
‘They’re a technology company,’ Garan said. ‘This shouldn’t take too long.’
The vessel pulled into the dock of a building, and a door slid shut behind them. Garan headed for the exit.
‘I suggest you get something to eat,’ he said. ‘There’s a restaurant on this floor. They make a good bowl of gook-lesh.’
‘Sounds yummy,’ Ebony said.
‘It’s made from the flesh of a...oh, never mind. I’ll be back in about an hour.’
Garan hurried off, leaving the others to stare at each other in silence.
‘I suppose we may as well get something to eat,’ Mister Okada said. ‘There would seem to be little else to do.’
They left the landing bay and followed a corridor to an eatery with large windows overlooking the other buildings. The room was filled with tables and chairs, but there were no other customers. On one wall was a bank of food dispensers.
‘It looks like the food is free,’ Ebony said.
‘This is unusual,’ Mister Okada said. ‘Normally Palistonians charge for everything.’
‘Maybe Garan’s client is quite wealthy,’ Quinn suggested.
‘That’s possible.’
Chad had no idea what to order, so he randomly pressed a few buttons. A bowl of something that looked like vegetable soup appeared. He inhaled deeply.
‘Smells like fish,’ he said. ‘But not bad.’
Taking seats near the window, they started to eat. Then Chad looked up.
‘You’re not eating?’ he said to Mister Okada.
The older man shook his head. ‘I am troubled by this,’ he said.
‘What? The food? It doesn’t taste—’
‘Not the food,’ Mister Okada said, glancing about. ‘There’s something wrong about this.’
Before Chad could reply, a distant roar came from beyond the room. They leaped to their feet and crossed to the door. Where it had automatically slid open a few minutes before, now it remained closed.
The roar came again.
‘There is something wrong here,’ Mister Okada said. ‘We’d better return to the ship.’
Ebony touched the door, and it evaporated. Beyond stood an eight-foot beast with four arms. Covered in blue hair, its face was a cavernous mouth. The creature batted Ebony out of the way, and she hit the ground. Mister Okada started towards it but was likewise smacked to one side. Chad created a fiery ball and flung it into the creature’s face. It fell back, opening its mouth wider.
No sound came from it, but Chad was thrown backward by an invisible force. Simultaneously, his head felt like it was about to explode. He rolled about the floor in agony as the creature barrelled into the room towards him. He threw out an arm and fired an ice blade. It hit the monster in the shoulder and spun it around.
The agonizing pain in his head passed.
What was that? Some kind of sonic boom?
He staggered to his feet as the monster turned again. Opening its mouth, another wave of silence hit Chad. This time it was even worse.
Got to keep moving, he thought. Got to stop it!
His legs collapsed under him as the creature charged.
Then he saw something leap onto it. Quinn! Grabbing it around the neck, she distracted the creature as Chad created another icy spear. He threw this at the monster, piercing one of its legs. Screaming in rage, it collapsed to the ground. Chad fired a final ball of ice at its head, and it lay still.
Quinn jumped free.
‘Didn’t we tell you that jumping onto the back of creatures was a bad idea?’ Chad said.
‘You did,’ Quinn replied. ‘Aren’t you glad I ignored you?’
‘No argument here.’
They raced over to Mister Okada and Ebony, who were back on their feet.
‘I didn’t expect that,’ Mister Okada said.
‘Me neither,’ Ebony said. She hustled them into the hallway and created a steel barrier behind them.
Chad turned to Quinn. ‘Thanks for helping out,’ he said. ‘That was dangerous.’
‘Everything here is dangerous,’ Quinn said, turning to her father. ‘What do you think is going on here, Dad?’
‘I don’t know for sure,’ Mister Okada said. ‘But I suspect that Garan has betrayed us. We need to escape as soon as possible.’
They hurried down the corridor to the spaceport where their ship was docked. Here, they stopped in shock.
Garan lay on the ground outside the ship—dead—a puncture wound in his chest.
‘I think we’re in big trouble,’ Ebony said.
‘We need to—’ Chad began. ‘Wait a minute. What—’
There was an odd smell in the room. Everything began to spin, but before Chad could utter another word, the floor rushed towards him.
Everything went dark.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Creating an air platform, I lifted us towards the ceiling. We remained silent as the Tagaar came closer to us. At the same time, we saw another two approach from the other end. The groups met below us and exchanged a few words.
I caught Brodie’s eye. If any of them glanced upwards, it was game over.
They spoke again for another moment. It sounded like there was a problem in one of the kitchens. The ovens had stopped working, and they needed to be operational in time for the evening meals. Speaking for another moment, the group left, moving away from the direction of the golden light. Brodie and I didn’t dare say a word.
Finally, I wiped a trail of sweat from my brow. ‘That was close,’ I whispered.
‘Maybe we should fly from here on,’ Brodie said.
I nodded. Slowly floating down the darkened corridor, our heads almost scraping the rooftop, we reached a vast circular chamber. More than a hundred feet across, a stained-glass dome covered it. Illustrated on it were scenes of conflict; Tagaar warriors hacking their way across bloody battlefields, hand to hand combat, marching over the dead bodies of the victims.
I shivered.
If this is a temple, it’s the strangest I’ve ever seen.
Several robed devotees were prostrate on the ground, their foreheads touching the stones. Before them on a raised plinth was Shogarth’s casket—it couldn’t be anything else. The rectangular, stone sarcophagus was covered in carved stone words. Most of the words were too far away to read—and my reading of Tagaar was rudimentary at best—but one word stood out from the others.
Shogarth.
A low chanting came from a distant corridor. Hovering motionless in a darkened corner, we watched as a procession of a dozen monks entered the chamber and surrounded the casket. Kneeling down, they joined their brothers by placing their foreheads against the ground.
This was the perfect moment to bring the ancient prophecy to life, but there was just one problem: the casket was enclosed within a glass sphere.
The plan lingering in the back of my mind had been simple up till now: levitate the coffin upwards, and out of the building, without the Tagaar seeing me. Now it looked like I would need to lift the glass sphere as well.
That was easy. I had lifted objects a thousand times that weight. Except now that I looked more closely, it appeared the sphere was anchored into the stone.
I caught Brodie’s eye. She was peering skeptically at it too. I considered waiting until nightfall. The last light of day was streaming through the stained glass. If I waited another hour, the whole chamber might be in complete darkness.
Then another round of chanting began to echo down the other corridors. It grew louder with every passing second. Now I could make out long lines of robed monks making their way along each of the adjoining corridors. Within minutes, the chamber would be filled with hundreds of them.
While I had felt confident that we would remain unseen in the hidden corners of a mostly unoccupied chamber, I was less sure about a full room. All it would take was one upward glance, and it would be over.
It was now or never.
I focused on the floor beneath the sarcophagus. The stonework had been in place for centuries, but there were still microscopic gaps between the bricks. I concentrated on expanding these.
Craaaack!
A number of the devotees looked up at the globe. The floor began to shake as I lifted the structure beneath it. Almost half a ton of stonework beneath the sarcophagus rose up out of the ground. Tagaar monks screamed and fell back. Dozens of them ran away. Water pipes under the ancient stonework shattered, sending water spraying into the air.
‘I think it’s working,’ Brodie murmured
I exploded the air outwards. The remaining monks either ran or were thrown from the chamber. Seizing the opportunity, I flew Brodie and me into a hollow beneath the hovering stonework. No one had seen us. Creating a tornado beneath us, we continued upwards as pieces of stonework, torn tapestries, and water hid us from view.
‘Let’s go!’ I yelled.
Now I forced the structure upwards and increased our speed.
Crash!
The globe containing the sarcophagus and the section of floor smashed through the stained glass window. I increased the strength of the tornado. It was now so powerful that sections of the mighty temple were falling inwards. Towers collapsed, and I saw Tagaar warriors racing away from the disaster zone.
Good, I thought. We call that payback where I come from!
We flew higher and higher. A Tagaar vessel flew towards us, but I threw an air cannonball at it, knocking out its propulsion system.
‘How much higher?’ Brodie asked.
Good question. We needed to be out of view of Tagaar ships. They had to believe that a supernatural force was bringing their prophecy to life. Otherwise, this would be a wasted exercise.
I aimed for a massive bank of clouds. Sheet lightning exploded within it. At the same time, I spotted a dozen Tagaar ships heading straight towards us. Increasing speed, more stones began to fall away from the plinth.
A wall of wind hit us as we entered the cloudbank, and Brodie gripped my arm.
‘Is this safe?’ she yelled.
‘Not really!’ I yelled. ‘I need to make this fast!’
Now for the finale. I flew us out from under the plinth. Hovering a hundred feet away, I focused on the globe holding the sarcophagus.
What had Mister Okada said?
The body of Shogarth will rise to the great beyond.
‘Time to rise!’ I yelled.
I shattered the globe into a million pieces. Then I concentrated on the sarcophagus. As it explo
ded outwards, the dusty remains of Shogarth were caught by the four winds and disappeared in seconds. Finally, I pulverized the remaining stones with the wind and flung them to the storm.
Holding Brodie close to me, I used the storm as cover to fly us away from the devastation. An hour later, I found a quiet section of the capitol. It looked like it was in the process of being torn down and rebuilt. At this time of night, the construction vehicles were silent, and all was in darkness.
We landed in the empty shell of an old warehouse that had a missing ceiling. A hundred windows, the glass long gone, looked out at a field of rubble and overgrown weeds.
The storm had set in, and the rain began to fall hard. I created an air bubble around us as we sheltered in the ruins.
‘We did it,’ I said.
‘We did,’ Brodie agreed.
Holding each other tightly, I knew she was thinking the same as me. We had achieved our goal. Shogarth had risen to the great beyond. The prophecy had been fulfilled. But where did that leave us? We were a million light-years from Earth, stranded on an alien world with no way to escape. How long would it take us to find a way off Tagaar? And how would we ever find our way back to Earth?
Lightning flashed. The sky returned to darkness, and then a speck of light broke through the clouds. A ship arrowed downwards and slowed as it reached the walls of the factory. Landing a few feet away from us, Brodie and I watched in amazement as a ramp dropped from below, and a figure appeared.
‘Will we go now?’ Dan asked. ‘Or did you want to go sightseeing first?’
Chapter Thirty
‘Chad?’ Someone was shaking his shoulder. ‘Wake up!’
Chad blearily opened his eyes to peer into Ebony’s concerned face. Groaning, he sat up and looked about. They were locked in a square room encased in metal. Light radiated from above, but there was no sign of any light fixtures. What was evident were the collars around their necks. He tried to make his powers work. Nothing happened.
‘So we don’t have our powers,’ Chad groaned.
‘These things have inbuilt zeno emitters,’ Ebony said.
He looked about. The others were already awake. Mister Okada might not have any powers, but they’d fitted him with one of these collars anyway. He explained that the collars were both zeno emitters and punishment rings: as well as nullifying their powers, the rings could also cause terrible pain.
Teen Superheroes Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 91