Domination

by Jon S. Lewis

  “A little . . . help,” Colt said as he struggled to breathe.

  “That’s enough,” Captain Starling said, but Pierce didn’t let go. “Cadet Bowen!”

  With a flick of his wrist, Pierce tossed Colt to the side. “This is the hero who’s supposed to save us from the Thule? Give me a break.”

  : :

  CHAPTER 10 : :

  Captain Starling ambushed Colt after practice.

  “Not bad up there today,” he said. “Not bad at all. Of course, practice went a bit long, so you won’t have time for makeup, but that shouldn’t—”

  “Makeup?” Colt asked.

  “Trust me, I know. You’re going to look washed out, but there isn’t much we can do about that now. We’re already running late.” Captain Starling took him by the elbow and led him into a room that wasn’t much bigger than a closet.

  Colt recognized the reporter from one of the twenty-four-hour news stations, but he couldn’t remember if it was CNN, FOX, or MSNBC. The man was tall and slender, and his skin was an unnatural orange that could no doubt be blamed on the makeup that Captain Starling had been fretting over. He wore a dark suit with a red tie and copious amounts of cologne.

  “That’s him?” The cameraman asked the question loudly enough that Colt could hear.

  Not that Colt blamed him. He would have expected more too. Superheroes were supposed to be tall and have a commanding personality that oozed confidence.

  “What’s going on?” Colt was suddenly aware of the fact that he hadn’t taken a shower, and he was fairly sure that he had forgotten deodorant.

  “The first of many interviews,” Captain Starling said, slapping him on the back as though it were good news. “You’ve become a bit of a sensation, but we’re going to make you into a global icon. You’ll be bigger than Elvis, the Beatles, and Michael Jackson combined. Justin Bieber will want your autograph, and Lady Gaga is going to have Phantom Flyer posters hanging in her bedroom.”

  After the interview Colt had enough time to gulp down a protein shake before he caught up with the rest of Phantom Squad for a training session in one of the simulator rooms. The advanced hologram tech allowed the staff to run cadets through actual battle scenarios without the threat of death, thanks to a fail-safe mechanism, but in the advanced levels, injuries weren’t only possible, they were common.

  He wasn’t surprised to find Glyph and Grey already there, telling everyone about their first day as Agents of CHAOS.

  “You realize that you’re not actually superheroes, right?” Pierce said.

  “I’m afraid you’ve been given bad information, Cadet Pierce Bowen,” Glyph replied. “The United States government has officially designated each of us as an active-duty superhero. We were even given identification cards.”

  “Congratulations.” Pierce’s sarcasm was lost on Glyph, who bowed his head in recognition of what he thought was an actual compliment.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.” Agent Daniel O’Keefe, who was better known to the cadets as the Gamemaster, stepped onto the platform just outside the control room. He was short and stout with unusually broad shoulders, a paunch, and stubble that ran over his cheeks despite the fact that all personnel at the Intergalactic Defense Academy were supposed to be clean-shaven. “The good Lord has seen fit to bless us with another day. Good morning,” he said with his Irish brogue, “and I’ll be darned if I’m going to waste it. In fact, I have a special treat for you.”

  “We get to take a nap?” Ethan said, earning laughter from the rest of the squad.

  “I’m afraid not,” O’Keefe said. “As you know, we’re sending the sorry lot of you to the jungles of Gathmara in less than three weeks as part of Project Betrayal, and we fully expect you to complete the mission despite your abysmal performance in the simulation chambers so far.”

  “Nice pep talk,” Pierce said under his breath.

  “What was that, Cadet Bowen?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Agent O’Keefe glared at Pierce for a long moment before he turned back to the rest of the squad. “What you might not know is that we have an advance team on the ground just outside of Dresh right now, working with the Soldiers of the Grail. Now who can tell me why that’s important?”

  Glyph raised his hand.

  “Yes, Cadet Gundar?”

  “Five warlords representing five separate armies rose to power after the fall of the Thule government, and each warlord declared himself to be the rightful leader of their people. The Soldiers of the Grail are one of those five armies, and they are the only remaining army to stand in opposition to Aldrich Koenig and his Defense Corps.”

  “At least one of you has been paying attention in class,” Agent O’Keefe said.

  “Thank you,” Glyph said.

  “So we have the Soldiers of the Grail and the Defense Corps, and their hatred for one another runs deep,” Agent O’Keefe said. “Can anyone other than Cadet Gundar name the other armies?”

  There was a long pause before Jonas sheepishly raised his hand.

  “Cadet Hickman?”

  “The Dagon Alliance, the Vril, and the Black Sun Militia.”

  “Excellent.” Agent O’Keefe pulled what looked like a remote control from a pouch on his belt and entered a series of commands that resulted in a hologram of a flag appearing in the middle of the room. “Each of the five armies has its own bloody symbol, and if you have half a brain you’ll memorize which is which.”

  “What’s the difference?” Pierce said. “They all want to kill us.”

  “Are you sure about that?” O’Keefe said.

  Pierce narrowed his eyes as though trying to distinguish if that was an actual question. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Has anyone heard the expression that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’?” The instructor scowled as he waited for a response. “Anyone?” He shook his head when Colt and Danielle were the only two cadets who raised a hand. “It means that we have something in common with the Soldiers of the Grail—we both want to take out Aldrich Koenig and his Defense Corps.”

  “Are you saying we made an alliance with the Thule?” Pierce asked, his defiance not lost on the other cadets.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Agent O’Keefe said. “Which leads me to my little surprise. I’d like to introduce you to Agent Rhane, a DAA field operative who has spent most of the last decade on the ground on Gathmara.”

  “Does my father know about this?” Pierce said.

  “Yes, he does. As does the president,” Agent O’Keefe said. He walked over and rapped on the window with his knuckles, waving for a man to join him on the platform.

  Agent Rhane was around six feet tall, and despite the fact that he looked like he was pushing sixty years old, he was built like a gymnast. His black hair was flecked with gray, especially around the temples, and he wore a patch over his left eye.

  “Tell me this is a joke,” he said with a slight southern twang, though it was hard to pinpoint which state the accent was from.

  “This is it,” O’Keefe said in a way that made it sound like he was just as disappointed.

  “Were we ever that young?” Rhane asked.

  “Afraid so.”

  Pierce raised his hand, but he didn’t wait for anyone to call on him. “You’re one of them, aren’t you.” It was an accusation, not a question.

  “What makes you say that, Cadet . . . ?”

  “Bowen,” Pierce said.

  “So he’s the one?” Rhane asked as he glanced over at Agent O’Keefe.

  “That’s him, all right.”

  “Go on,” Rhane said, turning his attention back to Pierce.

  “If you really did come from Gathmara,” Pierce said, “how do we know that you didn’t kill the real Agent Rhane, shape-shift to look just like him, and infiltrate our campus?”

  “You don’t, so I suggest you sleep lightly tonight,” Agent Rhane said with a smile that made the hair on the back of
Colt’s neck stand on end. “And for the record, I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to teach you how to survive on Gathmara so you have a snowball’s chance of accomplishing your mission.”

  : :

  CHAPTER 11 : :

  What do you say we start with Goliath?” Agent Rhane said.

  O’Keefe nodded and entered a series of commands in his handheld device. The air shimmered, and moments later a thirty-foot robot appeared in the middle of the floor, its head nearly touching the top of the domed ceiling. Covered in thick iron plating that looked like scraps from old tanks, it had gun turrets on its shoulders, cannons welded to its forearms, and rocket boosters embedded in its heels.

  “Now Goliath here is a Tracker, which for all intents and purposes is a walking tank with limited artificial intelligence,” Rhane said. “Any idea how you take one down?”

  “Nukes,” Ethan said.

  “Fair enough, but what about civilians within the blast radius?”

  “Hit the knee joints with rocket-propelled grenades,” Colt said.

  “Now we’re talking,” Rhane said. “You the squad leader, then?”

  “Yes, sir,” Colt said.

  Rhane stared at him with narrowed eyes, and again Colt felt the telltale hair on the back of his neck stand on end once more. “Then you’re the one . . . the Betrayer?”

  Colt tried to hold Rhane’s gaze, but it was so intense that he had to look away.

  “That ‘aw shucks’ humility won’t get you far, cadet. Not on the other side of the portal. Once you enter the jungles of Gathmara, you can bet that just about everything that moves will be looking to kill you—and I’m not just talking about the Thule. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then what do you say we visit Dresh and see if we can’t survive long enough to reach the facility where they’re storing the engine that will open the gateway?”

  O’Keefe activated the hologram chamber, and the sterile room became a lush jungle where vines covered in bright red and yellow blooms coiled around trees that rose high overhead. Pools of stagnant water dotted the ground, and even though it was an artificial environment, the air was suddenly hot and humid.

  “Believe it or not, this halogram used to be a suburb not far from the capital,” Rhane said. “Koenig found out that someone had been harboring the son of a rival warlord, so he destroyed the entire town—women, children, and all.”

  Colt started to notice the broken remains of buildings that were buried under the vines. Trees grew from the windows, and crumbled streets were overrun by vegetation that sprouted from the cracks. There were rusted vehicles, including what looked like a military transport with eight wheels and something that looked like a car with wings, which Rhane explained was a hovercraft.

  He led them through the jungle, pointing out a variety of plant life. Some were edible. Some poisonous. All were stunningly beautiful. “Whatever you do, don’t drink any water that you haven’t put through your purifier,” he explained. “The parasites will eat through the wall of your stomach and you’ll bleed to death.”

  “Lovely,” Danielle said as she sidestepped a puddle.

  Eventually they came to the outskirts of a massive city that rose before them like a forest of concrete and glass. “Welcome to Dresh, the city of wonder,” Rhane said with a healthy dose of sarcasm. “In case you weren’t yet convinced that Koenig is a monster, he wiped out half the population with a strain of virus that was created inside the halls of Trident Biotech.”

  “Why?” Pierce asked.

  “To scare the other warlords,” Rhane said. “After all, if he was willing to kill his own people, what would he do to those who opposed him?”

  Agent O’Keefe called up a transport vehicle that materialized on the street not far from where they were standing. They all piled in, and Rhane drove them through abandoned city streets lined with propaganda posters that were weathered and torn, each showing Koenig in his human form.

  “That’s it,” he said, pointing to a massive domed structure on the horizon. “The reactor core that will power the gateway is inside those walls. Now all you have to do is find a way to get inside and blow it up. But let’s save that adventure for another day. I’m thinking we should start with something easy . . . Agent O’Keefe?”

  “Yes, Agent Rhane?” O’Keefe’s voice replied through a loudspeaker.

  “You still have Goliath cued up?”

  “That I do.”

  “What would you say to activating him? I wonder if our young cadets could survive for at least ten minutes.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” O’Keefe said, and suddenly Goliath loomed before them in the street.

  It was all over quickly. Phantom Squad didn’t last to the five-minute mark, and Agent O’Keefe gave them all a failing grade.

  “Like it matters,” Pierce grumbled.

  “What do you mean by that, Cadet Pierce Bowen?” Glyph asked.

  “We can’t beat the Thule no matter what we do.”

  The words haunted Colt for the rest of the day.

  Pierce wasn’t the first person to think that things were hopeless, and he wasn’t going to be the last. People were flocking to remote locations by the tens of thousands. It was impossible for grocery stores to keep canned goods and bottled water on the shelves. Churches, synagogues, and mosques were filled to capacity around the clock. A few days earlier Colt and the other squad leaders had even been briefed about a group that was starting to worship the Thule in hopes that they would be shown mercy once Earth was conquered.

  But this was different. Pierce was brash. Arrogant. Overbearing. He had never—not once—shown any kind of weakness or vulnerability. So why now? Had his dad told him that the next attack was going to happen any day? Did he find out the president was actually a shape-shifting Thule? Or was he just mentally and emotionally exhausted, like everyone else?

  Colt looked up at the clock tower. It wasn’t quite three in the afternoon, which meant he had an hour before he was to report to the training facility for more hand-to-hand combat lessons with Lieutenant Lohr, the Tharik from a wooded planet called Nemus who looked like Bigfoot fused with a robot. Instead of going back to his dorm, he found an empty study room in the library that had a warm fire blazing in the hearth.

  The tension left his body as he sat in an overstuffed leather chair and kicked his boots up onto the coffee table. Between the warm air and soft throw pillows, it didn’t take long for his eyes to grow heavy. He blinked once and then twice, fighting to stay awake, but his head fell against his shoulder and he could feel the drool sliding down the corner of his mouth.

  “Colt?”

  Startled, he sat up, and for a moment he wasn’t sure where he was. He shook his head and turned around, and saw Miranda Patel standing beside the fireplace.

  “I thought that was you,” she said. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be training for your new job?”

  Colt swiped the drool from his chin and forced a smile. “Oh . . . um, yeah,” he said, trying to kick-start his brain so he could form a clear thought. “I, ah . . . well, we had practice this morning.” He tried to stand up but slipped on his backpack and fell back into his chair. “You’re talking about the Phantom Flyer thing, right?”