Treasure of the Galactic Lights (Jason King: Agent to the Stars--Episode 2)
Page 14
“Give it up, Porlok. It’s over.” I said.
“Give what…up?”
“Give up your plan to rupture the Lights,” I clarified. “All your guards are dead. You’re the only one left.”
As we cautiously approached the alien, I saw his eyes darting back and forth. We were approaching the point along the table where the exposed Light rested in its cradle at the end of the railgun. The tank with the other four Lights was located another six feet along the table.
“Easy, Porlok,” Angela said. “Just give us the Lights and you can go. You can even keep the Union credits you were going to give Lefty—to the Human. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”
“I do not…do this for credits. The Suf-D Confederation…must rule the galaxy. We have been…promised.”
“Promised?” I asked. “By who? Who has the right to promise you the galaxy?”
“Powers greater than…all of us.”
The alien stepped to his side, revealing a control station behind him. There was an illuminated display with a series of glowing numbers. The numbers meant nothing to me—not until Porlok twisted a knob and they all changed to zeros.
I reached over to the table and picked up the metal tongs the alien had used to lift the Light from its tank. I reared back and let loose with the two-foot long tool, sending it twirling in the air at incredible speed, the result of my superior Human strength.
Call me lucky…but the damn thing impaled itself into the brown-skinned alien at mid-chest; a perfect throw, as if I’d been doing it my whole life.
But this didn’t stop Porlok, at least not immediately; the bastard’s heart was probably located in his ass. He fell to his knees but still managed to place a trembling hand on a button on the control panel. He died a split second later.
“Jason!”
I didn’t need Angela to tell me what just happened. A loud electronic cycling hum filled the room, just as the thick iron bullet at the end of the rail began its journey. It accelerated—perhaps not as fast as I had suspected it would—but fast enough.
I dove for the cradle holding the Light; Angela did the same. In the light gravity of Annoc-Conn we both went airborne before landing on the smooth metal surface of the table. I slid closer to the Light, my arms extended in front of me, fingertips grasping for the tiny globe.
I was too late.
The speeding bullet struck the Light, shattering it.
I closed my eyes, praying that if there was an afterlife I wouldn’t have to recall for all eternity what the insides of a supernova looked it.
Then water splashed my face.
It took my mind a long moment to come to grips with this odd reality. Angela and I should be dead, along with everyone on the planet Annoc-Conn.
Instead, I was alive…and wet.
I turned my head toward Angela. She was also drenched in the colorful liquid, which danced over her skin in a rapidly dimming light show.
“What the hell just happened?” she asked.
I pushed myself off the table just as some of the water entered my mouth.
Saltwater.
I followed the path of the speeding iron slug, seeing how it shot off the rail and flew through the air before imbedding its mass into the masonry wall near Porlok’s control panel. It missed the tank holding the other Lights by an inch.
Back at the remains of the fifth Light, there was a scattering of small, curved shards. I took one in my fingers to get a closer look. This was the shell of the Light, and that was what it looked like to me: a shell.
It was thin and opaque, and when I squeezed my fingers, the material crumbled.
All the energy drained from me at that point as a new reality dawned on me.
Angela reached into the pool of water below the cradle and sifted through the remaining fragments. She removed something and held it up for my observation.
It was charcoal gray and about the size of a small marble.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a goddamn a pearl.”
Chapter 23
With Lefty and Bennett incapacitated, and all the aliens in the complex dead, Angela and I sat on the floor of the prep room, staring out with blank expressions. There was no urgency any long. No one was going to attack us and no worlds were going to be destroyed, at least not by a set of alien oysters.
Angela jumped when I laughed out loud, breaking the tomb-like silence.
“Damn you Jason! You sacred me.”
“Sorry,” I said with a wry smile. “I can’t believe I lost my big toe…for nothing. Hell, less than nothing.”
“Just be glad the Lights aren’t what everyone believed they were. We wouldn’t be sitting here if that were the case.”
“Yeah, but all this over a bunch of…oysters. How could this have happened?”
It was Angela’s turn to smile. “The scientists always said the Lights couldn’t be what the legend said they were. They were right. I can see it now.”
“See what?”
“How it all started.”
“Please enlighten me, Miss Special Investigator Lady-Person.”
“It’s really quite simple. About a thousand years ago, some wandering con-artist came upon some of your so-called alien oysters, but these contained a form of phosphorescent micro-organism that caused them to glow with shifting colors. To the primitives of the time, they naturally assumed this be fire inside the shells. The huckster—probably a Realtor of the time—finagled a meal and a place to rest for the night with stories of the Lights’ origin, that being from the center of a supernova explosion. The myth grew from there.”
“And no one ever tried to verify the information?”
“Would you want to tinker with something that could destroy a world, especially when you have no idea what it would take to rupture one of the things?”
“I guess not.”
“Over the years, the rumors grew more outrageous, and a cult developed who saw it as their sacred duty to preserve the Lights, while protecting the galaxy from their destructive power. And now we have the Guardians. Everyone wants to believe they’re part of some higher purpose. So there you have it.”
“People are going to be really embarrassed when the truth comes out. Hell, there’s a war being fought over these things and with the balance of power in the galaxy riding on the outcome. I can’t wait to see the look on Kinness’s face when he learns the Lights are nothing more than a bunch of crusty old oysters.”
“Screw them,” Angela said. “We didn’t start the rumor, but it looks like we’re going to end it.”
Wham! It hit me like a bolt of lightning.
I turned Angela and took hold of her shoulders, my heart pounding in my throat. “Why does he have to learn the truth? Why does anyone?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, blinking rapidly.
“You said it…screw them. There’s no reason to tell anyone the truth. Let them go on believing in the Lights. It would serve them right to continue to fear them, when only the two of us know the truth.”
“But we’d…we have to….”
“Do we?”
“But there’s only four of them left. What are we going to say happened the fifth Light?”
“We say we don’t know. Let them worry about it—The Mystery of the Missing Light. That’ll keep them awake at night. It might even provide us with some cover for all the shit that’s come down on us over the past week. You know: Don’t mess with the people who may have a Galactic Light stashed away somewhere.”
Angela leaned forward and kissed me. “I owed you that for making it across the bridge back on Ackonnon.” Then she kissed me again.
“What was that one for?”
“For being such a diabolical—yet lovable—rogue.”
Chapter 24
I resealed the remaining four Lights in the security container and then Angela and I departed Annoc-Conn for Union space. It wasn’t long before we encountered a Union fleet out looking for us. This one was larger and ev
en had a massive carrier as its flagship.
At first they didn’t let us get that close to them, not until a security crew came aboard and removed the Galactic Lights from our custody. Then the Enterprise was moved into a huge hangar bay for transport back to Sylox.
The powers that be wouldn’t leave us alone after that, even as the doctors doped me upon on some really good drugs to help with my missing toe. They grilled us over and over again about the missing Light, about the Resurgence and our involvement in the whole affair. We gave them the location of the desert complex on Annoc-Conn—having removed all evidence of the shattered Light beforehand. They found Lefty and Roger Bennett still a live yet in pretty bad shape. They also found the Union credits. Or at least most of them.
In one of our quieter moments, I showed Angela the stack of chips I’d stuffed in my pockets just before leaving the warehouse. I figured I needed something to help rebuild my house. I didn’t get away with the full cost, but it was a start.
And we were heroes. Everyone still believed the Lights to be these incredibly dangerous bombs, for a lack of a better word. And Angela and I had saved the galaxy from the evil-doers plan to use them…well, for evil. Yea for us.
Union President Kinness got on a link with the two of us and thanked us profusely, at least for the record. I found his presentation to be insincere and superficial. He still hated me; that was obvious. But I enjoyed the moment.
He asked about the missing Light. I shrugged. “Not sure what happened to it, but I’m sure it will turn up…eventually.”
“That missing Light could destroy a planet. It cannot remain at large.”
“I don’t know what to say, Mon President.”
“And you have no idea where it could be?”
I shook my head, but I couldn’t resist smiling—full tooth and threatening.
Later that night, Angela and I stood on the observation deck of the huge fleet carrier, watching the streaks of colorful suns stream past. Angela held me tight and whispered in my ear. “You truly are a diabolical son-of-a-bitch.”
“I thought that’s why you love me.”
“Love may be a little too strong of a word…but you sure are interesting.”
Epilogue
Lefty Rodriquez was transferred to the carrier and given medical treatment. I was told he would live—but for how long, I had no idea. There was capital punishment in the Galactic Union.
A few days later, the ship’s captain and I ran into an entourage of security personnel moving my old Army buddy along a corridor, retuning him from the sickbay and back to his cell. He was shackled, with a thick bandage wrapping half his face and a sling on his left arm.
The captain let me have a couple of minutes alone with him. The guards stood nearby.
I limped up to my ex-friend.
“Hey, LT, how’s it hanging?” Despite his current predicament, the craggy-face ex-Ranger appeared to be in good spirits, or was it just his acceptance of the inevitable? This wasn’t going to end well for him.
“How’s the arm?” I asked. “Are you going to get a new one of those, too?”
“We’ll see. It’s pretty mangled up, as is my handsome face…thanks to you.” He snickered. “I would have thought that after all these years you would have lost a step or two. You surprised me, Jason.”
“I surprised myself. But something’s been bugging me: Why did you involve me in this thing in the first place? I’ve been out of the game for too long.”
“I didn’t involve you in nuthin. You did it all on your own.”
“Bullshit.”
“No really. When I came to your office that day all I was looking for was a place to crash. I figured that a big-shot real estate agent like you probably had some pretty fancy digs. And I was right. Everything beyond that was your own doing. Of course, I should have known. You always did have a habit of sticking your nose into things that didn’t concern you.”
“I lost my big toe because of you.”
Lefty laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about that. I’m sure the aliens also have artificial toes. You’ll be better than new in no time.”
“So I’ll be Jason King: the Man with the Bionic Toe? Hardly the makings of a new galactic superhero.”
“Hey, don’t knock it.” Lefty rapped his prosthetic left leg. “I wouldn’t leave home without mine.”
The guards moved in after that and perp-walked him down the corridor. Yet just before disappearing around a bend, Lefty turned back to me, and with a big grin, winked with his one good eye.
I found out a week later what the wink was all about.
It seems that Lefty’s artificial leg served a dual purpose. Besides allowing him to leap tall buildings in a single bound, it also contained an array of tools and weapons which he later used to escape from custody. He stole a small fighter from the flagship and fled into a massive nebula with the Enforcers on his tail.
The official report had his ship burning up in the corona of a nearby star, but I have my doubts. He apparently steered for the star at the last minute, and Xavier ‘Lefty’ Rodriquez never did anything without a reason.
And I’m sure it wasn’t to commit suicide.
He just wasn’t the type.
The End
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Novels by T.R. Harris
The Human Chronicles Saga
The Fringe Worlds
Alien Assassin
The War of Pawns
The Tactics of Revenge
The Legend of Earth
Cain’s Crusaders
The Apex Predator
A Galaxy to Conquer
The Masters of War
Prelude to War
The Unreachable Stars
When Earth Reigned Supreme
A Clash of Aliens
Battlelines
The Copernicus Deception
Scorched Earth
Alien Games (coming Dec. 20, 2016)
Jason King – Agent to the Stars Series
The Enclaves of Sylox
Treasure of the Galactic Lights
The Drone Wars Series
Day of the Drone
In collaboration with author George Wier…
The Liberation Series
Captains Malicious