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

by Kyle Larson

  There was a strange kindness in the Colonel’s voice, but he was stern and Juda was used to him as a teacher and leader. She chose to drop it, as there was little she could do to stop him. There was no lying to herself, Juda knew it could happen again. Once she became a true Gravity Warrior, she’d be able to protect others. Her focus now was trying to anticipate what the Colonel might do next and keep people safe from any other terrible surprises he might have in store.

  The two of them said nothing as the elevator sped toward the hangar where they’d meet the rest of his students. All of them were preparing for departure, once the Monarch was in the atmosphere. They would head to the same Archive Teve, Kelvin, and Amelia had trained at using thruster suits to get there. It’s where the Colonel –– when he was called Justeph –– trained with Karna Dubak to become a Gravity Warrior. The Colonel knew that canyon well, and with thruster suits, he’d lead all of his students to the Sanctuary Springs.

  As soon as they entered the orbit of Venus, the Colonel began to feel his body awaken from the gravity of his home planet. His appearance became less gaunt and he slowly started to look younger. At the rate the Colonel’s body was adapting to the gravity, he wouldn’t need a thruster pack. His staff felt much lighter as the Monarch got closer to the atmosphere and to the Venusian planetary core. The Colonel was amazed that after all the years, his bond to the gravity from the Sanctuary Spring was still strong.

  The elevator stopped and the door parted. In the hangar, hundreds of soldiers waited for them. They all stood at attention and were fully suited up for what they’d been trained to do. Like Juda, they’d been waiting most of their lives for this day. They were eager to become Gravity Warriors and feel the power of Venusian gravity. They would all be heroes of the Wanderers and go down in history. Plus, seemingly eternal life didn’t sound bad either.

  “Once we’re in the atmosphere my body will be fully adapted and I’ll be able to handle the guards at the Royal Palace. We’ll dock the ship there and then head into the canyon,” the Colonel said.

  “There could be hundreds of guards there,” Juda said.

  “Hundreds of guards I trained myself. I was a master. They won’t last five minutes against me.”

  Juda hoped he was right. It would be very soon now. All she had to do was suit up and wait for the hangar doors to open. She grabbed a helmet and suit, quickly put them on, and fell into formation with the rest of the soldiers.

  They waited for the moment that would change them all. Then the lights started to flicker and quickly went dark. No one moved. They only waited.

  Holloway took a deep breath and hesitated to punch the last set of keystrokes. Once she did it, there was no going back. The Monarch would lose all power except the emergency guidance systems that would allow them to land, although it would be a crash landing. It was still very dangerous and likely cause a lot of damage to the ship. There was no choice though. Holloway didn’t have the time to gain access to the ship’s systems. All she could do was pull the plug.

  “What are you waiting for, Holloway?” Captain Ali said as she strapped into the safety harness of her chair. “They could do a lot of damage and it looks like we are headed straight for the Royal Palace. Do it.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Holloway said, under her breath.

  Quickly, Holloway’s fingers punched into the keyboard a sequence of commands and then everything went dark. The workstations, the monitors and the lights of the already dim room they were in. Captain Ali pulled out a small flashlight and turned it on.

  Captain Ali and Holloway secured the safety harnesses of their chairs. That was the only protection they would have and all they could do was hope the Monarch wouldn’t turn into an inferno or collection of shards when it hit the surface.

  “Now we wait. You did good, Holloway.”

  “Thank you, captain. I had a lot of help.”

  They smiled at each other and then looked out the porthole. They could still see the stars, but soon enough the blue skies came into view. Judging from the horizon, it looked like dawn was breaking over the Royal Palace. The Monarch was stuck in Venus’ gravity well and was in free fall. They could only hope the emergency thrusters and guidance system would be strong enough to slow them down a little bit. It didn’t take long for the sensation of falling to kick in for them. Both of their stomachs dropped. They could see clouds and then the ground in rapid succession –– the Monarch was in a barrel roll, tumbling uncontrollably toward the surface.

  Both Holloway and Ali tried not to look out the window. They closed their eyes and tried to focus on their breathing. All Earth Navy officers had been trained in crash landings and the key thing they tell you is to try and remain calm. A simulation was nothing compared to the terror both of them felt. Holloway really hoped they weren’t anywhere near a city or town. The Monarch could do a lot of damage.

  It didn’t take long for them to feel the impact. It wasn’t as violent as they expected, but right away Captain Ali could tell the emergency thrusters hadn’t been very effective. The ship didn’t come to an immediate stop. She imagined it must have continued to move for a few kilometers on the ground. An object that big didn’t just come to a halt.

  Once it was still, the two of them unbuckled their harnesses and took out their mobiles. The GPS told them they were at the base of the Royal Palace. Holloway pried open the door of the computer lab and they walked back into the observatory. The sunlight lit up the room beautifully, even if it was wrecked from being knocked around by the crash. Both of them ran to the observatory and pushed the doors open.

  The Royal Palace dominated the view. It floated above them, an ivory gleam to each of its towers that leaned in on one another from surrounding mountain peaks. The towers formed an array that touched the top of the tallest tower of the floating palace. It looked unreal and the two of them couldn’t believe it floated in mid-air. Ali and Holloway walked to the glass of the observatory and took in the view of the valley.

  Out of the corner of Holloway’s eye, she saw a few people in thruster suits fly by. After a few seconds, several more, and then suddenly, a swarm of soldiers in thruster suits flew by them. There were hundreds of them and they headed straight for the Royal Palace.

  “Oh no,” Holloway said.

  “We have to help them. Let’s go!”

  The two of them ran out of the observatory, determined to find a way to help the Gravity Warriors and stop the Wanderers.

  Kelvin was able to stab his staff into what was left of the Empress’ hull. It acted like a hook that kept him tethered to the charred remains. He held onto his staff tight, as it’s questionable lock to the hull was the only thing keeping him from disappearing into the infinity of space. He couldn’t fly, but Kelvin still felt he had the strength and speed from the traces of Venusian gravity. Kelvin figured it must be the stone of the staff and his armor that gave him those things. That would at least allow him to defend himself fairly well. After a few seconds, Kelvin found his footing.

  “Kelvin, I’m activating your magnetic boots,” Mara said. “And I’d like to state again for the record how stupid that was and how lucky we are to be alive.”

  “I’ll agree with that. Thanks for sticking with me, Mara,” Kelvin said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Mara said. “Let’s get on with this. The nearest airlock is about twenty meters in front of us if you just walk straight. Hope you still have some of that gravity strength, because the manual override to open that airlock on a ship this old is not going to be easy.”

  “I think I can handle it,” Kelvin said.

  He moved quickly to the airlock and flipped open the door to the manual override. It was a large wheel that Kelvin had to turn. As Kelvin turned the wheel, he knew he wouldn’t have been able to do it without the residual strength from Venusian gravity he got from the armor Queen Tendai had given him. The airlock slowly opened and Kelvin made his way in, shutting the hatch behind him.

  “Decompression sequence started,
” an automated voice said over the loudspeaker. After a few seconds, a green light came on. Kelvin started to take his helmet off, but Mara stopped him.

  “I’d leave that on if I were you, Kelvin. Your magnetic boots, too. Most of this ship is probably exposed to the vacuum. That’s why I’m not sure what you think you’re going to find. Just because you saw lights on in the portholes doesn’t mean the people in those rooms weren’t sucked out into space. We could be walking into a graveyard.”

  “That’s enough, Mara,” Kelvin said. He was already shaky enough and Amelia not being there with him left Kelvin rattled. He didn’t blame her for staying behind, but he really wished she was with him. “I’m having a hard enough time. Just try to get a schematic of this ship so I know where we’re going.”

  “I already mapped it out while we were helplessly hurtling through space on our way over here. Amazing if that had been my last task before being lost in the abyss for eternity.”

  Kelvin had to chuckle at that, but he was glad her snarky humor could calm him down. He’d started to feel very tired from the lack of sleep and the amount of training he’d done earlier. He took a few seconds to gather himself and then moved on, out of the airlock and into the corridors of the Empress.

  The corridor Kelvin walked into was heavily damaged, but it was still pressurized. Thick smoke clouded everything and the yellow, blinking emergency lights actually made it more difficult to see. Each time they lit up, the smoke took on their blinding color. Kelvin adjusted the tint on the glass shield of his helmet, which helped a little bit, but only made the dark smoke darker. He would have to rely on Mara to be his guide. It would be a dangerous walk, as wires hung from the ceiling and sizzled with electric currents that could fry a human from the touch.

  “Can you pick up any movement that might look human?” Kelvin said.

  “Are you kidding me, Kelvin? There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris floating around that range from the size of a human to a pebble. My sensors aren’t going to be able to tell the difference, not to mention the different ores of metals keep bouncing most of my scans back at me.”

  “Can you do anything to help me?”

  “I’ll make sure you don’t walk into a fire or one of those live wires. Chances are that if someone is nearby I’ll be able to pick them up on my scanner, so I’ll keep my eyes open. Tell me where you want to go in this ship and I’ll do my best to get you there,” Mara said. She sounded exasperated and Kelvin couldn’t blame her. He wanted to lie to himself that he was here to find Teve, but both he and Mara knew he hoped to find Aren.

  “Get me close to the bridge. That’s probably where Teve or any Gravity Warriors that were before it blew.”

  “Okay. Keep walking,” Mara said.

  Kelvin walked for a long time, avoiding all the obstacles that could kill him. The recycled air had a tendency to feed fires, so even the small fires had the potential to become dangerous. Chances were that in a few minutes they would be infernos, which made his blind transit all the more stressful. Mara did her best to guide him, but the smoke and intense electrical charges added to the impairment of her sensors. Kelvin came to an elevator door.

  “You’re gonna have to break that open with your staff. There’s no power on this deck,” Mara said.

  The door was a good way for Kelvin to test his strength. He smashed through the elevator door like it was a soda can, but he could tell that both his speed and strength were not what they had been on Venus. There was no elevator, just a dark shaft which Kelvin could only see parts of from the headlamp on his helmet Mara activated. The elevator shaft looked a lot like his anti-gravity simulator tunnel back on the Monarch. Gravity had been his ally for so long, Kelvin instinctively wanted to leap off the ledge and fly to where he needed to go next, but that wasn’t going to work. He didn’t have fuel for his thrusters or the Venusian gravity to defy. Just a clunky pair of magnetic boots.

  “Now what?” Kelvin said. His impatience was very apparent.

  “Exactly three-hundred meters above us is the room I presume to be the bridge. Looks like we’re walking,” Mara said.

  Kelvin sighed out of frustration and then dipped his foot over the ledge and made it parallel with the wall. As soon as he felt the boot connect to the metal wall, he took another step and went completely into the shaft. He sheathed his staff and got his bearings. Since there was a sense of gravity, it was jarring and difficult for him to stand the way he was, as seconds ago this position had been horizontal. The gravity, even though artificial, wanted to pull Kelvin down, so he had to crouch to keep his back and neck from craning back. Once he didn’t feel the pull so hard, Kelvin started to move slowly up the shaft toward the bridge.

  “This is going to take forever,” Kelvin said after a few minutes of shuffling across the surface.

  “Well, who’s the one who decided to burn out their thrusters getting here?” Mara said.

  Kelvin ignored her and pressed on. After the first hundred meters, he felt his body get lighter and realized they must be at a section of the ship where artificial-gravity generators failed. This let him move a little faster, but in the final stretch, Kelvin felt the strain on his body again. He crouched down and struggled to close the last bit of distance.

  When he came to the final door, Kelvin stopped.

  “Okay, Kelvin, it looks like you have a welcoming party here for you. Twelve people, right outside the door. I can’t tell if they have electro-guns and there’s probably more of them around the bridge. You might wanna get that staff of yours handy.”

  Kelvin took a few seconds to recall his training. The staff felt just as lightweight in his hands as it had been on Venus and Kelvin tried to ignore the fatigue he felt. The people on the other side of the door might have been armed, but they were nothing compared to what he’d faced earlier that day and in his training.

  The staff smashed through the door and Kelvin leaped into the bridge. A surprised crowd of Wanderers turned and drew their pistols, with a mass of electro-blasts headed for him. Kelvin didn’t even think, he just swung his staff and swatted the blasts away like they were bubbles.

  “Kelvin, just so you know, if you hit them with your staff it will probably kill them. Wasn’t sure you’d want that on your head,” Mara said, with the full knowledge that Kelvin wasn’t a violent person.

  Kelvin heeded the advice but quickly tore into the crowd, using his staff to sweep the Wanderers who came at them off of their feet and onto the ground. Once they were down, he knocked the electro-guns from their hands and smashed the weapons into pieces. Others continued to fire, but it was useless. Kelvin was impossibly fast compared to whatever they threw at him. After less than a minute, all of the Wanderers stood with their hands in the air in surrender.

  “Please! We have a lot of wounded! Can you convince the Venusians to help us!” an officer said. He looked like he was the same age as Kelvin. It could have just as easily been Kelvin if his life had been different, just as Aren had been brainwashed by the Wanderers, this kid was too.

  Kelvin removed his helmet. “Where’s my sister?”

  All of the Wanderers were shocked that the Prince of Earth had disarmed and defeated them single-handedly. They’d heard tales from Aren about how he was a spoiled brat who just wanted to keep his life of luxury sustained by the hard work and sweat of the people on Earth. The young man that stood before them looked ten years older than the one they’d seen broadcast on the Tube or in briefings. He looked like a warrior to them.

  “Commander Aren! She’s in her office!” Another officer shouted and pointed at what looked like a secured room.

  All the windows of Aren’s office were covered in blast-proof shielding and the door was double-sealed. It would take a lot for Kelvin to get in there, but he wasn’t going to let it stop him. Kelvin charged for it and began to rip the door apart, piece-by-piece, with his staff. The crew marveled at his fury as he unwound on it. Part of it was the concern for his sister but mostly anger at hi
mself that he couldn’t resist the urge to help her. Kelvin knew he should be looking for Teve and not wasting time trying to rescue his sister. All the security of this room said to Kelvin was that she was probably fine.

  Finally, Kelvin tore the last scrap of metal off and the office was revealed. Teve, unconscious and spread out on a massive desk. Aren loomed over Teve with an electro-pistol pressed up against his skull. Teve already appeared to be badly burned and bruised, so an electro-blast at that range to his skull would kill him. Aren looked pretty beat-up herself, with a large cut in her forehead. The blood was smeared across half her face. She embodied menace.

  “Welcome aboard the Empress, brother. I don’t know what in the Nine Kingdoms they did to you down there, but I’m going to need you to drop that staff,” Aren said.

  Kelvin dropped it immediately and kicked it toward her. He put his hands up and knelt down.

  “I’m not here to hurt you. I just wanted to make sure you are okay.”

  “Not very smart of you, little brother,” Aren said. She turned the electro-pistol onto Kelvin and fired several shots. Kelvin dodged them all easily. He rolled and flipped away from each one, suddenly on his feet and he kicked the gun from Aren’s hand. Before she could think, Kelvin had his staff and it was inches from her head. She’d never seen a look on Kelvin’s face like he had, and for the first time, Aren was terrified.

  Kelvin was a Gravity Warrior.

  “All I’m going to do is get Teve out of here. I’m gonna take one of your star divers and get him back to Venus. Queen Tendai will be able to heal him. That’s all I care about. You can do what you want, but Teve is coming back with me. All I ask is that you stay out of my way and don’t make me hurt you. You’re dead to me now, Aren. You’re the worst of them –– worse than Riz, worse than the Colonel. You lost and I hope the Gravity Warriors make you and all your people pay for what happened here today. If I didn’t have to get Teve, I would arrest you myself.”