The Gravity Warriors of Venus: Book Two of The Kelvin Voyages

by Kyle Larson

  Kelvin nodded. He was nervous and strangely excited with what she might tell him.

  “The Colonel’s name is Justeph Leray. Our intelligence agents were able to discover his identity from a facial recognition scan. Justeph Leray is the most wanted criminal on Venus. He was once a Gravity Warrior, but joined my son and tried to take control of the government. His ideas and rhetoric were identical to what the Wanderers preach. Justeph was one of my greatest students, his only rivals were myself and Teve. He betrayed the Gravity Warriors and our code and used his powers to attack those who opposed him. He has the blood of many Venusians on his hand, and now twenty-seven of your people.”

  Kelvin’s eyes moved from hers, as he tried to hide how much those deaths affected him. The pain was still very much there, but Tendai’s story served as a distraction until that came up.

  “I’m very sorry, Lord Sellwood. I assure you, the Wanderers will answer for their death. If not on Venus, soon.”

  “So the Colonel has the same training as us?”

  “Oh, much more. If he gets into the atmosphere of Venus, he will be very dangerous.”

  “Why can’t Teve know about this?”

  “I need Teve focused. If he finds out Justeph is the Colonel, it will be a distraction. I need Teve to help lead an army that covers all of Venus. We don’t have a fleet, but we can defend against any ships or any sort of bombardment. I trust Teve is about to give you your final lesson.”

  Kelvin didn’t know what it was, so he didn’t try to answer Tendai. Tendai extended her staff toward a wall across the room. It parted to reveal a brilliant, orange orb. It looked like a representation of the sun. It was a perfect sphere that glowed a soft orange. It was bright, but not painful to look at. It was the size of a basketball and almost looked like one from its color. Tendai walked toward it and motioned for Kelvin to follow.

  “This is a part of the Venusian planetary core. A piece of the very center of Venus. This is what powers the gravity shield. Just one piece, this big, is all we’ve ever mined from the core. It’s never diminished and always stayed strong when we’ve needed it. It also powers our entire planet,” Tendai said. “Very few people have ever seen this, Kelvin Sellwood. As the future king of Earth, I thought you should understand how important it is we remain on Venus, at all times. The Gravity Warriors must keep this protected, as it could be turned into a very deadly weapon.”

  “I understand,” Kelvin said.

  “Your secret’s safe with me too, your majesty,” Mara said from Kelvin’s mobile.

  Tendai rolled her eyes at Mara’s quip. “I want you to understand that I will do whatever it takes to protect Venus, and now you know the stakes if the Wanderers were able to get their hands on such power. Justeph knows this exists and I guarantee you he’s going to come after it. If your sister leads an attack on this planet, I won’t hold back. I need to know you’re prepared to do the same.”

  Kelvin knew what this meant. If Aren brought deadly force, which it sounded like she was prepared to do, Tendai would have to kill her. It wasn’t just that, it was that she’d expect Kelvin to be willing to do the same.

  “I’ll do whatever I can to protect this planet, though I’ve never killed anyone and I don’t know what I would do. I’m sorry, m’lady, I’m just being honest.”

  “You are only capable of what’s inside you, and I wouldn’t ask you to take your own sister’s life. Just don’t get in my way of doing what may be necessary. I promise you death will be the last resort.”

  The thought of Aren dying was a very real possibility to Kelvin. After briefly speaking with her, he knew his sister would do whatever she thought was necessary, too. But, Kelvin didn’t like that Tendai asked him to keep something from Teve.

  “You understand the stakes now, Kelvin Sellwood. I hope you’ll remember them when this begins. I hope you’ll be a friend and an ally to Teve, just as your father has always been to me. You should be proud of your father, Kelvin. He may not look it now, but long ago he was a hero.”

  Kelvin didn’t want to hear that now. He resented his father for how absent he’d been. If his father had been able to keep it together, maybe he could have rescued Aren. Maybe they wouldn’t be in this situation and the Wanderers wouldn’t be a threat to the Nine Kingdoms. It wasn’t likely, as what Queen Tendai told him suggested this was all out of their control, as the Colonel was destined for this. Kelvin was just confused and a little bit angry about the situation. He wished his father was here to help him now.

  “You should get back, Lord Sellwood,” Queen Tendai said.

  Tendai lead Kelvin back to the edge of the balcony and the wall closed behind them. It was much darker now, nearly complete night. The canyon was very dark below. Kelvin could see the first stars start to appear in the sky. The night looked much different on Venus. The stars gave off an almost silver light.

  “Do you know your way back? It’s deep and will be dark when you get there. There should be a single beacon, at the lowest point,” Tendai said.

  Kelvin strapped the two neatly folded suits of armor to his back.

  “So Teve’s not going to think I stole this armor?” Kelvin said.

  “Absolutely not, he knows who guards it.”

  “Who guards it?”

  “Me,” Tendai said. With that, she took off and vanished into the sky.

  “Wow, she’s odd,” Mara said. “Her motivational speech to you: Hope you don’t mind, but I’m gonna kill your sister if she makes me. Kind of a weird position she put you in.”

  “She’s just being honest, Mara. They want honesty more than anything.”

  “Honesty?” Mara scoffed. “That’s funny. Didn’t she ask you NOT to tell Teve that the Colonel is someone he knows? I don’t know about her, Kelvin. She keeps that kind of information from her own son. Doesn’t seem right to me.”

  “I know what you mean, but I don’t really know what to do. I don’t want to interfere in their business, and I have to think she has her reasons for not telling Teve.”

  “Whatever,” Mara said. “Let’s get back. It’s getting late and your teacher said you should get some rest. I could use it, too. I’m behind on all of my diagnostics.”

  Kelvin put his staff in front of him and dove into the darkness. As the canyon walls got darker and he could only guess what was in front of him, Kelvin thought this sensation was appropriate.

  The Colonel settled into the command station of the Monarch. His soldiers and top officers all filed in behind him and took up the appropriate workstations. The power was still dead, but in a few moments, his team of hackers had all of the systems back online.

  Juda Rison watched him slide comfortably into the captain’s workstation. Her teacher couldn’t hide the fact that he was very pleased with himself. Of course, adapting to Earth Navy technology would all fall onto her shoulders. Juda knew that her place as the Colonel’s second-in-command was a privilege many others in the Wanderers would gladly accept, but it had been a long day and there was no end in sight. Fortunately, their group of hackers had been able to bring the primary systems of the Monarch online rather quickly. They informed her it would be the computer core and connection to the Earth Navy network that would take time.

  “Sir, all systems are fully functional and you have access to the ship,” Juda Rison said from the workstation just adjacent to the Colonel.

  “Very good, Major Rison. First thing’s first, though, I want everything in the databanks of this ship transmitted to the Zephyr. I want access to the core and Earth Navy network as soon as possible,” the Colonel said. His typical fashion of barking orders kept the crew on their toes, but they trusted him more than they feared him. The Colonel knew how to keep them in line, but he didn’t torment them the way Aren was known to.

  The Colonel knew that fear was one method of keeping loyalty among the ranks, but the Colonel believed in keeping fear by demonstration. Every time he demonstrated how capable he was as a commander, it reminded the crew they were n
ot capable of outsmarting him. The Colonel knew that everyday Aren and Riz plotted against him, but he had spies that followed their every move. He knew exactly what each of them were planning, so he made his own plans for them.

  “Yes, sir, my squads have checked in and they’ve no sign of the crew,” Rison answered. She never delayed giving the Colonel bad news, something that made other officers timid. Rison was very no-nonsense and learned quickly that’s what the Colonel appreciated in an officer. She was still young, just barely fifteen, and believed very much in what the Wanderers were doing.

  Rison’s family had been nomadic and traveled in a tribe called Raven before they joined the Wanderers. They were among hundreds of tribes and millions of people that wandered the solar system, not interested in calling a planet home, but exploring the unknown parts of the Nine Kingdoms, where planets and moons were rumored to be hidden. They requested to live on each planet of the Nine Kingdoms, but all kingdoms required they declare loyalty to at least a kingdom. The kingdoms didn’t want millions of people wandering the solar system that were not loyal to a kingdom, which meant they were bound by universal laws of the Nine Kingdoms. So the kingdoms denied them a home and the Raven tribe was eventually pushed to the edge of the Nine Kingdoms.

  It was when kingdoms closed their borders to them that Raven and other tribes were forced to settle in the Antioch Belt. They never understood why the Nine Kingdoms rejected their ways and they found acceptance by the Wanderers. Now, they would fight for their freedom to explore all planets of the Nine Kingdoms.

  “Unacceptable, major. We can’t have the Earth Navy crew roaming this ship like they’re a lost Raven tribe tunneling through a comet,” the Colonel joked. He liked to belittle her heritage as a means of declaring his own superiority. “Bring over whatever additional personnel you need. Also, inform the Zephy and the rest of the ships to keep firing at us. It needs to look like the Monarch is still being chased. We can’t have Earth Navy and the Gravity Warriors think we’ve boarded the ship. We can’t communicate with them, but we need to make it look like nothing’s changed, only now we plot a course for Venus.”

  “Yes, sir,” a young officer at the piloting controls answered. The Colonel only spoke in orders and it was up to the crew to decipher them. It was very rare he actually gave specific orders, except in the case of the highest officers.

  “We’ll pull three more squads and dispatch recon-bots in all the ducts. There are a thousand different places they could be hiding in the guts of this ship,” Rison said.

  “That’s not my problem, it’s yours. Three squads, five squads…I don’t care. Just get them confined. If any of them get a signal off the ship then they’ll all know we’re coming for them. As soon as we’re out of range of Earth Navy, I want our ships to break off and head back to the Antioch Belt. That way the Monarch will look like it’s on its own,” the Colonel said.

  “Yes, sir,” Rison said, and she rushed off the bridge.

  “Corporal Garcia, I need a good estimate of when you’re gonna get me access to the central core and Earth Network,” the Colonel said. Emiliano Garcia had never been directly addressed by the Colonel. He was both honored and terrified. Garcia was in charge of their hackers.

  “Hours, sir, at least. The encryption is enormous. We can do it, it’s just gonna take time,” Garcia said, careful not to trip on his words.

  “You’ll need to do this fast. We need all the information we can get on Captain Eerika Ali, specifically her appearance and speech pattern, in case we need to render a fake transmission. That’s your priority unless it’s already here on the ship.”

  “No, sir. All personnel files are in the Earth Network drive. The only way to access that is through the central core. We’ll work on it.”

  “Very good,” the Colonel said. “Rison, I want to make sure the burst drive is installed and ready as soon as possible.”

  Juda was surprised the Colonel talked openly about one of his closest secrets. Over the past year, the Colonel somehow got a piece of Venusian core, no bigger than a pebble. That pebble held strange gravitational properties and the Wanderers engineers had been able to analyze it. What they found is that if it was properly broken down inside the core of an engine it would make the system much more powerful than it had been. They experimented on star divers with tiny fragments of the pebble, not much bigger than a speck of dust. The ships they enhanced with the Venusian core went ten-times faster than they’d been able to before.

  The Wanderers built an engine in secret and the Colonel called it the burst drive. They’d built it aboard the Zephyr so no one else other than the Colonel, Juda, and a few engineers new about the technology. The tiny piece of Venusian core showed Juda the awesome power that awaited them on Venus and confirmed everything she’d heard about the Gravity Warriors from the Colonel. The burst drive was designed to work with the engines of the Monarch and give them the speed to make a long trip in a matter of hours, since the Colonel was confident they’d be taking the ship. The engineers said they wouldn’t know exactly how fast the engine would propel the Monarch, but they estimated the time to get there would be greatly reduced. It was being installed as the team of hackers continued to restore full power to the Monarch.

  The burst drive was just one of the many technological enhancements from Venusian stone the Colonel intended. He had many more in mind, but first he needed to get more stone from Venus. That was a big part of his plan.

  The Colonel turned away and looked to a large monitor. Electro-blasts flew at them in rapid succession. It looked like the battle had resumed, only now the Colonel played both sides. He looked forward to his return to Venus. This would be a crucial victory for him, over a queen that defeated him and a forgotten princess that intended to overthrow him. Both of them would regret the day they ever decided to betray the Colonel.

  Major Rison piloted the moth across the common living area in the Monarch. There were so many trees it was hard to get a good look and fly low toward the walkways. A security team of ten officers rested on the handrail of the moth, their stun blasters aimed downward, waiting for anything to move. It had been hours of driving in circles while others moved through the area.

  There was no one to be found.

  Rison started to consider that the crew had somehow abandoned ship. She was one of the few people who knew exactly what the Colonel had planned, and if the crew escaped it would be devastating to his plans. They weren’t sure exactly how many people had been on the Monarch, but they should have found someone by then. The recon-bots that combed the corridors and service tubes found nothing as well.

  “This is useless,” Rison said. “I’m putting us down. Prepare to spread out.”

  The moth touched down on an empty walking strip, just big enough for the wide craft. As soon as it touched down, the security team leaped over the handrail and disappeared.

  “Check in every two minutes,” Rison said into her headset. The team confirmed her order.

  Rison looked at the massive home in front of her she hadn’t noticed until she stepped off the moth. It had always loomed over them since they started their search, but Juda didn’t realize how close she was to it until she’d landed. It was easily the largest in the living area, so she assumed it must be for royalty. She raised her electro pistol and walked toward it. She had no trouble getting through the door and as soon as she walked into the large mansion, all the lights came on.

  She’d never seen anything so elegant in her life. The dark tones of wood that made up all the walls and a large staircase were carved in intricate details. The massive chandelier was simple but dazzling in its dominance of the room. Juda had grown up in rusted out ships and tunneled out asteroids. The only time she got close to modern living conditions were on stolen ships of the Wanderers. Rison knew someday that would change and hoped if she did well, the Colonel would give her a ship like the Monarch.

  The Royal Cabin was a place Rison could call home. She walked around it, admiring the book
cases and sparse furniture. The staircase drew her attention and she started to climb it. Each step was soft, absent of the clank of her boots on metal or rickety rails she was used to. Juda felt safe here. For the first time in a while, she felt comfortable.

  Her officers checked in on time and reported they’d found no one. Juda checked her mobile and the recon-bots were still empty-handed. At the top of the stairs, a large family crest hung above the largest doorway she’d seen in the Royal Cabin. It read Sellwood.

  Juda shook her head at the vanity. She could never imagine herself hoisting a gaudy sign like that to display her name. It seemed ridiculous. She wondered how much in cryptocoin the sign cost. When there were people on planets like Pluto and Uranus that could barely afford the basic cost of living, it seemed obscene to her that one family would spend that much to make a tribute to themselves. Rison couldn’t wait for the day things like that changed.

  The doorway underneath the sign opened as soon as she walked toward it and it lead into the observatory. Rison had never seen the stars that way, under a dome with glass so translucent it appeared as if she were standing in the middle of space. She could see the rest of the ships, launching electro-blasts at them in a farce. When she’d done spacewalks, it was to conduct a repair or lead a raid on a ship and there wasn’t much time to stare and look around at the stars like she could in the observatory. Juda was in awe.

  Juda took a deep breath and stood in silence. It was the first time she felt how vast the universe was.

  Juda Rison thought of her parents and the people of the Raven tribe. She hadn't seen her parents, or friends from her tribe in years. When the Colonel promoted her she dedicated herself solely to serving him and the Wanderers. The cause was worth it, but there wasn't a second she didn't miss her family. The Colonel liked to remind her that if she messed up, all of them would pay for her mistakes as well. The motivation was harsh, but Juda recognized it had worked. It had been a long time since the Colonel threatened her with it, but she didn't doubt him.