“Ozzy,” came a robotic voice. Ozzy stopped. It wasn’t Wildly. The voice came from inside the tunnel, but Ozzy couldn’t see who it was through the shadows. “I let Mort Wildly know that you were lying to him. The deal is off.”
The robotic voice sounded familiar. Ozzy’s eyes narrowed. “Lying about what?” Perhaps this was a trick Wildly was playing on him.
“I told him you were going to steal auric credits and a craft from him, and that there is no ancient technology that you will be looking for.” The man walked forward, his boots clanking across the concrete. “Please, Ozzy. Honesty always wins and in all ways.”
How could anyone know what he was attempting to do? Was he tapped? If so, how and when?
A shudder went through Ozzy, and he stiffened. Something was up, and he didn’t like it.
The guard pointed his rifle at Ozzy’s chest then touched something in his ear. It looked like he was receiving a command through an ear mic. “Got it, Boss.” He lurched forward. The rifle was now a few inches from Ozzy’s face. “Don’t move. You pissed off Wildly. Rule number one, don’t piss him off. Rule number two, you piss him off, you likely will die.”
“Put the gun down,” said the same robotic voice.
Gragas stepped out of the shadows with six other robot-masked figures around him, their capes moving in the soft breeze. They all held rifle’s of their own, aiming them at the guard.
The guard put one hand up. “What gives?”
Gragas approached, and his entourage followed.
Gragas shifted his aim, pointing his weapon at Ozzy. “Get into my ship. We’re going for a ride.”
Ozzy took a long, deep breath. “Why did you do this?”
“You aren’t getting a ship or money from him.” Gragas tipped his head to the side, motioning for Ozzy to walk to the ship parked in the driveway. “Get in my craft, Ozzy. You have a higher calling, and that’s more important than any money or a ship. Do you understand?”
“You pull that trigger and you’re going to be chock-full of pain, sir,” said Jozi, pointing her gun at Gragas from out of the car’s open window. “We have a cure to find, and you just slowed us down.”
Footsteps came from around the corner, and Martian boxwood bushes shook back and forth. Several of Wildly’s guards jumped onto the driveway, holding rifles as well.
“Don’t move,” said one of Wildly’s guards.
Gragas’s comrades turned, facing the new threat.
Ozzy rolled his eyes. “Great.”
Wildly strolled from around the corner. He had a pipe in his mouth and took a puff. Smoke trailed through his teeth when he spoke. “You tried to fool me, Ozzy. Is that true?”
Ozzy laughed. “Have I ever pulled a fast one on you before, Wildly?”
“No.”
“Then why do you think I’d start now?”
“Gragas played me a recording that happened inside that piece of trash car of yours.” He gave the hovercar a distasteful glance. “And it was your voice, Ozzy. Your voice. You were going to trick me. You were playing me for a fool.” He tossed his pipe on the ground and pulled a gun from his back pocket. “I don’t like to be played, Ozzy.”
Gragas put his arm up. “Do you want him dead, Mr. Wildly?”
Wildly snorted. “Do I want him dead? No, I want him worse than dead. I want him chopped up into a million pieces while he is alive, and then he can be dead.”
Gragas turned, fixing his target on Wildly. “You attempt to harm this man, then the Galactic Knights will harm you.”
Was this guy for real?
Wildly spit on the ground. “The Galactic who?” He shook his head, dismissing his own question. “I don’t have time to figure out the names of all the underground crime syndicates these days. Just know, Gragas, that my syndicate is bigger than yours, okay?”
Ozzy stood next to the driver’s side door. He inched closer, quietly opening it.
“Don’t think about it, Ozzy,” said Wildly.
He shut the door. “I just needed a ship. I was going to return it.”
More men came around the other side of the mansion.
Wildly walked forward. “If you were smart, you could have just asked. You’ve done me no wrong for years now, Ozzy. But you tried to screw me over, and because of this, you’ll be blackballed, I’ll make sure of it. And, if I decide to let you live today.”
“Look, Wildly,” said Ozzy. “I know this all doesn’t bode well on my end. I probably come out looking like a bad guy.” He was standing on the other side of the car from Wildly. He slowly slipped his gun out of his holster. Unless Wildly could see through a car, the gun was hidden from Wildly’s and everyone else’s view. “So, what will it take? A few free digs? I can pay you money. Just tell me.”
Wildly halted and looked around. “You better stop talking, Ozzy.”
“Okay, before you shoot me, I have something else for you. It might change your mind.”
Wildly scoffed and put his hands on his hips. “You don’t listen so well.”
Ozzy raised his photon pistol quickly and pulled the trigger, sending a blue phaser blast hurtling toward Wildly.
Wildly dropped to the ground, and the shot sailed over him and slammed into a guard’s chest. Blood splattered outward. The guard’s eyes went wide, and his rifle twirled to the ground. The guard flung his arms back and was dead before he flipped into the boxwood and onto his side.
Jozi leaped out of the car, somersaulting away and going to a knee, aiming her gun at the oncoming men.
Wapooh! Wapooh!
Ozzy ducked, jumping to the ground, his car bouncing up and down from the guards’ photon slugs riddling it with holes.
Glass shattered, and several sharp shards littered Ozzy’s head and back. He rolled away, popping several shots off at the oncoming men.
One was hit and then another. They were falling like flies. And it wasn’t because of him or Jozi.
He glanced at Gragas and his Knights. They were firing at Wildly’s crew, hitting them with ease.
“Fall back to my ship,” yelled Gragas.
Ozzy jumped into the car. He pulled out the duffle bag and briefcase.
The car jumped and moved from photon fire again. Ozzy’s head slammed against the roof of the car.
“Crap.” He covered his head as glass and debris fell on top of him. He wiped it off and grabbed the briefcase, shoving it into the duffle bag.
“There it is,” a guard yelled.
Ozzy pushed off the car’s seat and gazed through the broken window. Two guards were rushing his way.
A photon blast came from his left. The lead guard yelped and grabbed his neck. His eyes rolled back in his head. He went limp and fell to the cement.
Jozi came into view, jumping and twisting into the air, and wrapping her legs around the second guard’s neck. She arched back and threw him to the ground.
A loud crack and the guy’s skull met the asphalt. He closed his eyes, knocked out cold. Blood oozed from his head.
Jozi dashed to the car and went to one knee, rapidly firing at the ducking and diving guards. “Get out of there, Ozzy.” She opened the driver’s side door.
Ozzy crawled backward and out of the car. He crept around the corner, seeing a man hiding behind a tree near the side of the mansion, lining up his scope, readying to end Jozi.
Wapooh!
The man toppled to the side, dead.
Ozzy looked over at Gragas. The masked man had pulled the trigger. He gave Ozzy a thumbs-up and went back to shooting Wildly’s men while backing up closer and closer to his craft’s open ramp.
Ozzy ducked behind a tree. Jozi was next to him.
“What’s that?” Jozi eyed a canopy of branches across the large driveway. She rushed across the yard and toward another tree.
Ozzy backed up. “Jozi, get ba—”
“Get her,” screamed a guard.
Ozzy turned, his pistol at the ready. Jozi dove in time just as a photon slug singed a portion of the tree
.
Ozzy pulled the trigger, missing the guard. The man raced to a nearby statue for cover and hid.
Someone grabbed Ozzy’s arm.
Ozzy jerked back in a start, dropping his weapon. He curled his fingers into a fist and flung a punch.
It was Gragas.
He caught Ozzy’s punch and twisted Ozzy’s arm behind his back. He brought his other forearm around Ozzy’s chest, holding him tightly against his body.
“You do something stupid and I break your arm,” said Gragas. He cranked Ozzy’s arm higher up his back. “Got it?”
Ozzy winced and nodded. “Got it.”
He eyed the driveway. Dead people littered the ground, and the rest had fled.
He heard a struggle at the edge of the drive. He glanced over only to see that Jozi had somehow knocked a guard to the ground. Her legs were on either side of the man, and her rifle was pointed at his chest. “You move, you die.”
The man shook his head, his eyes wild. “Don’t shoot.”
“Tell her to get into my ship, and we’ll be on our way,” ordered Gragas.
“So, those fruit bars weren’t really fruit bars, were they?” Ozzy asked.
“No, they were one-way radio devices. I knew where you were at all times and heard whatever you said at all times. I hope you didn’t eat one.”
Ozzy cringed in pain when Gragas pulled higher on his arm. “I did. It tasted like shit.”
Gragas let out an exasperated breath. “Humans. You’re a strange breed. You’ll eat anything.” He pulled on his arm again. “Tell her.”
Jozi backed up and turned around. She froze when she saw Ozzy. She took several steps forward, grasping at her pendant. She let go and narrowed her eyes and aimed at Gragas. “I’m a crack shot. Let him go.”
“He wants us to come with him,” said Ozzy.
“Over my dead body,” Jozi said.
“I’m pretty sure it will be over mine,” responded Ozzy, wincing in pain.
Gragas walked backward, pulling Ozzy along. “Please, my lady, come to my ship. We are here to help you with the cure. If you can rid your people of the Martian Plague, it puts more of a resistance against the evils that my people have wrought upon this Galaxy.”
“How are you going to help us with the cure?” asked Jozi, cautiously moving toward him.
“We will get you to Dawes. Your friend here isn’t so willing, but he is one of the best when it comes to deciphering glyphic codes.” He tipped his head to the duffle bag. “Take your belongings, and we’ll grab Ozzy’s weapon.”
A twig snapped, and Jozi spun around. She pulled her rifle’s trigger several times, lighting up an entire bush with photon bolts.
A bird flew toward the graviton shields surrounding the city, squawking in fright.
She backed up, heading toward the duffle bag. “Where is Wildly?”
“We allowed him to slip away,” said Gragas, moving closer to his ship. “He and his crew will come in handy in the near future. They will help us fight the Dunrakee when they come.”
A few of the Galactic Knights hurried up the craft’s ramp and into the belly of the ship.
Ozzy glanced around, seeing that no one wearing a cape was dead. All of Gragas’s friends had somehow lived.
A gun clicked from somewhere, echoing across the driveway and reverberating off the mansion. A red dot lit up Ozzy’s chest.
“Ozzy,” yelled Jozi, her feet padding on the concrete as fast as they could take her.
Wapooh!
A flash of blue light erupted. It was a photon bolt.
Jozi leaped, flinging her body in front of Ozzy. She screamed in pain, the charge slamming into her stomach, pressing her into Ozzy’s chest. She bounced off of him and landed face down on the asphalt.
Gragas threw Ozzy out of the way and went to one knee, taking several shots at the culprit. A guard yelled in agony and tumbled down the mansion’s roof and fell over the edge, disappearing behind several tall trees.
“Jozi?” yelled Ozzy, rushing to her side.
She was wheezing and holding her stomach. Her hands were covered in blood.
“Get her into the ship, now,” yelled Gragas. “I’ll stay out and cover.”
Ozzy picked her up. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted with blood oozing out of her mouth and down her cheek. She had saved his life. And for what?
For him to find the cure.
He raced to the ramp.
Wapooh!
A sharp pain dug into his back, scalding hot and numbing his arms and legs. He cried out in pain and went limp. He dropped to the ground, and Jozi rolled out of his arms.
A wetness consumed his back and made its way down his spine. Just like Jozi, he was bleeding.
“Gragas,” he said in a cracked whisper. He reached his hand out, hoping it wasn’t Gragas who had just pulled the trigger on him.
“Help,” he mumbled. “Get…us…”
His mind drifted off, and his eyes shut. A gurgling sound came from his lungs, then total blackness overcame him.
25
Unknown, Mars
It was warm and wet. And it was dark and uncomfortable.
Ozzy’s lungs were on fire, his back tingling, and his mind racing. He could barely assess the situation he was in, except that he was floating in space.
No. It wasn’t space.
Liquid.
Why liquid?
It was thick and chunky. He attempted to move but couldn’t. His kinesthetic sensations were there, but his motor functions weren’t responding.
He went to talk, but something was in his mouth. It was thick and bulbous. A tube?
A sharp, stabbing pain went through his chest. He lurched back uncontrollably. He took in a quick breath, hearing a suctioning sound.
An image came to his mind. It was Lily. She was crying for him. Her face withered away, charred like coal. Her mother held her. She thrashed, pushing her mother away and reaching for Ozzy. “Daddy, Daddy.”
Lily turned into ash, falling like black powder onto the floor.
Ozzy flinched, and his heart beat faster. Did his daughter just pass away?
An image of Robert Baldwin came next. Robert was laughing. He held up a syringe and poked it into a child’s shoulder.
The scene zoomed out. The child was Lily. Robert pushed the contents of the syringe inside his daughter.
She cried and fell to the floor, screaming, “Daddy, Daddy. Please! Help me.” She turned into ash again and spread across the ground like soil.
A grave appeared. Venessa, Lily’s mother, was crouched down beside it, crying and cradling Lily’s favorite blanket in her arms. She buried her face in it, sobbing more.
Ozzy jerked away, and the image changed to blackness.
His heart pumped harder, and a knot formed in his throat. Raw memories of her swirled in his mind: when she took her first steps and smiled as if she had done the greatest feat in human history; when she said daddy for the first time; and when she held onto his leg after he and Venessa’s divorce, begging him to stay.
He wanted to kiss Lily’s cheek like he used to. He wanted to wrap his arms around her but couldn’t.
A pressure built inside his chest. He wanted it to explode just to end it all.
Lily was gone, and he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t want to. He wanted to die with her.
A gush of air entered his lungs, coming through the tube and energizing him like a vacuum plug in an ionic engine.
He unconsciously kicked and contorted in the liquid. He threw a punch, again not of his own accord. But if he could, he’d use that punch—and many more—on Robert.
Lily was dead by the hands of the High Judge.
Even if Ozzy found the cure, his daughter wouldn’t benefit.
She was ash now.
Anger pierced Ozzy’s insides, shooting out his veins and seething into his fingertips—the very fingertips that would soon strangle Robert to death. He would watch the evil man die.
Ozzy’s body sp
asmed.
A sting shocked his upper back and went down his spine, tingling at his sacrum.
He bobbed up and down in the liquid.
“Ozzy, we are healing you.”
It was Gragas.
Ozzy went to speak. Again, he couldn’t. His body wouldn’t cooperate.
“We have turned off all motor functions in your brain. We have control now. Don’t worry, you’ll get it back when you are fully healed.” There was a brief pause. “And that’s now.”
Something metal slipped under his armpits and lifted him. He raised out of the liquid. His gut wrenched, and his lungs burned.
He lifted higher. A bright light stung his eyes, and he squinted. A sharp, stabbing sensation erupted in his head, and he blinked several times. His motor functions were back.
He noticed he was dangling over black liquid by a metallic two-pronged fork. The liquid was inside a giant glass cylinder.
The goo sludged off his body and dripped back into the cylinder. A tube slipped out of his mouth.
“Lower,” said Gragas.
“What did you do?” muttered Ozzy, moving his hands over his groin. The bastards took off all his clothes. He was naked.
“We healed you.”
His feet touched the ground, and the metallic two-pronged fork slipped out from under his armpits. His legs gave way, and he fell to the floor. More black liquid dripped off and puddled around him.
“Where am I?” He glanced around, seeing he was inside the cabin of a ship.
Gragas stepped beside him. He had a rifle strapped to his back and had his full-armored, cape-wearing battlesuit on. As always, he covered his ugly ass Dunrakee mug with an armored helmet and mask. “You’re in my craft. A Martian Z-ionic Five Cell Puma. It’s fast and big.”
“Where is Jozi?” He imagined she was dead. She jumped in front of him to save his life so he could save the entire population.
Except for Lily. He knew she didn’t make it. High Judge Robert Baldwin’s look over the hovercar’s com channel told him everything, and so did his visions while he was floating in the liquid.
She was dead because of Robert. His beautiful, little daughter was no more.
He dropped his head and wiped the black tar-like substance off his forehead. He tossed a glob of it on the floor. He had to think of something else besides his only child. If he didn’t, the knot in his throat would grow bigger and choke him to death.
Martian Quadrilogy Box Set Page 15
