Guardians (Æthyrium Rising - Guardians Book 1)

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  Tyr gave me a nod and pushed the button, making us descend and sending some incredibly irritating muzak throughout the small space.

  Mouse was quick to bring her gun up to the speakers, barely five seconds had passed, but I caught it before she could fire and pulled it out of her hands, shaking my head sternly in the process.

  I’m sure no one was quite sure why, but we’d all apparently agreed that silence for the ride would be for the best, and that it would be even better if no one shot the speakers.

  …

  …

  I shot the speakers.

  It was a moment of weakness, I feel guilty about it.

  No I don’t.

  That was a lie.

  Anyway, as the elevator finally reached near the bottom floor I gave Mouse back her gun and we got into position for a firefight. The lift stopped and I dropped to a knee, my pistol aimed right at the line in between the two doors.

  Nothing happened for a moment, then bam! The doors slid open at hyper speed and I only just managed to stop myself from pulling the trigger.

  The lights were off down there as well, but the room that we were slowly stepping into was nothing like the one upstairs, what with its six lines of server blocks separated down the middle, and I didn’t need the voice that came crackling through the speakers all around us to tell me what it was, but he did anyway.

  “Welcome to the control room Omega, my name is Gio,” the AI said clumsily, “sorry about shutting off the lights. But when I heard that Commonwealth ships had landed again I assumed that you were with the landing party. My mistake.”

  I had about a million and one questions, but the first one I asked was “Were you jamming our equipment?”

  There was a long pause, and the Gio let out a sigh, “Yes. I thought that if you thought the facility had people inside it, you would leave, perhaps give me enough time to resecure it.”

  “What is this place?” Mouse asked right before I could.

  “I’m glad you asked!” Gio said in genuine excitement, “This is a top-secret base that I am forbidden to tell you anything about!”

  “Well…” Tyr said under his breath as we walked over toward a console that was attached to what appeared to be a viewing platform, “that’s helpful.”

  I nodded, removing my helmet in the process, “Gio, there are Commonwealth soldiers all over this world, is there anything here that we could use to stop them?”

  “Why yes, you could use the planet. Specifically what is at the core of the planet.”

  “And that is?”

  “Classified.”

  “Oh my Go…” I took a few seconds to breathe then started the interaction again, “How?”

  “By setting it off, of course, I’d be more than willing to lead you through the process.”

  “Setting it off?” Tyr asked me more than Gio, “Why do I not like the sound of that?”

  That’s when Mouse decided to chime in, “Because we’re all going to die if we do it.” she said, reading something off the screen in front of her.

  “Young lady,” Gio said as angrily as he could without being seen as aggressive, “I would prefer it if you did not go rummaging around in those files.”

  I went to tell her to keep going, but she slammed her fists down on the console, “He’s deleted all of it, and most of what I could find I didn’t understand. All I know for a fact is-”

  “We do it and we blow up the planet, yeah?”

  She waited for a few seconds before giving me a solemn nod.

  Now I know we’d been talking about how we probably weren’t going to make it off, but the fact that it was our choice and not the Commonwealth’s or the robo-monkeys’ made us feel responsible for it.

  Choosing to die is very different from being flippant with it, though at the same time I felt that I spoke for everyone when I felt that it wasn’t actually a choice.

  “Run us through it.” I said coldly, getting affirmative nods from both Mouse and Tyr.

  “Gladly. Now, the first thing you’ll want to do is-”

  Explosive Realisation

  “-and that about does it! Well done!” Gio had been praising us the entire time, but to be perfectly honest I’d stopped listening a while beforehand and simply started doing, the instructions going in one ear and coming out through my hands.

  “I’m just sayin-”

  “No Tyr, we can’t outrun a nuke or whatever this is. We push that button, we die. End of story. If you want we can talk about trying something else, but if we want to make sure the Commonwealth doesn’t get the research here we have to…” I was trying my hardest to keep up with the authoritative attitude and inspiring words, but it just wasn’t happening.

  Tyr, seeing my internal struggle, clapped me on the back and gave me a knowing nod, “I know. You ready?” he asked Mouse.

  She shrugged, “As I’ll ever be. You?”

  “Valhalla awaits.” he laughed before giving me a significant look.

  “Valhalla awaits.” I said with a little smile, “Gio? Let ‘er ri-”

  Blinding light and searing heat silenced me as whatever we’d done happened.

  And then it was gone.

  I opened one eye and looked around without moving. I was sitting down, the console and the viewing platform nowhere to be seen, a large white room replacing the control area I’d been in.

  “Um…”

  “Morning Omega!” said a charming young man dressed in tight fitting clothes that included a light grey button up shirt that was rolled at the sleeves revealing he had at least a dozen tattoos on his forearms.

  He came through an empty space in the wall ahead of me that promptly shut behind him, “How’re we feeling?”

  “Confused.” I said without missing a beat, “Confused and used.”

  “Ah yes, a common side effect of coming out of the simulation for the first time.” he said as he drew nearer, which slowly proved that though he had the build of a slender man of at least six foot he stood at a mere five, “How about the rest of you?”

  “Tired mostly.” I heard Tyr say from beside me.

  I turned to face him and, as uncomfortable as it makes me to tell you as I would like to keep the illusion that I am completely without fear, I screamed.

  I screamed my hole out, and when Tyr turned to face me he screamed too.

  We were white, like body in the morgue white, right up to our hair, while our eye colour had changed from blue to almost jet-black. It was like something you’d expect to see in a horror film, but not according to Mouse who I heard happily giggling from my other side.

  I turned to face her and discovered she was exactly like Tyr and I, “What’s so funny?”

  “Not funny,” she said with a huge smile, “I’m just happy. We all look the same now, like proper siblings.”

  I was confused by her statement, to me we’d always looked similar, but then I realised what it must have been like for her with her brown hair and eyes. After that I kind of calmed down, not by much, but enough to be able to smile at my still beaming sister.

  “Where is my arm?” Tyr asked with the calmness of someone who’d just watched a person get shot. He was clearly in shock but still knew how to handle it.

  It was at that point that I started to remember a few more bits and pieces about Urbetes, which I’d almost completely forgotten. I remembered how I’d gotten injured and taken to a medical frigate, and I remembered my dream that wasn’t.

  “Don’t worry Tyr,” the young man said with a comforting smile, “we’re having a prosthetic made as we speak.”

  “Where. Is. My. Arm.” Tyr repeated colder than before as he stared down at the stump that was wrapped at the base with some kind of high-tech socket.

  “Amarok,” the man said, his smile fading away, “that’s what the bio-analysts are calling it anyway. Large wolf-like creature that has striking similarities with a bear. We actually have the one that took your arm in holding, it was the only one injured enough for
us to capture, thank you for that by the way.”

  Before Tyr could start demanding to know where it was I jumped in with a question I’d been dying to ask, “And who is ‘us’?” I asked accusatorily, “Because I know for a fact that we’re not on the Eir anymore.”

  “Well, my name is Aillo and I work for the XEC, as do all of you. Currently you’re sitting in one of two simulation chambers on board one of the best stealth ships in the known universe, an XEC Phantom Cruiser.”

  “Two chambers?” Mouse asked, “Why are there two chambers?”

  Aillo smile returned, “The other team of course. You are just one of two squads, Alpha and Omega, you being Omega One,” he said, pointing at me, “you Omega Two,” he pointed at Tyr, “and finally Omega Three.” he said before finally pointing at Mouse, who was the only one reflecting his smile.

  “But we’re meant to be training as specialists,” I said, getting back Aillo’s attention, “we’re supposed to be on the Valkyrie.”

  “And you will be, as soon as your training’s finished.”

  “Training?” Tyr asked, finally looking away from his arm, “What training?”

  Aillo looked between the three of us, a sly smile painted across his face as he thought of the best way to tell us, “Omega Team, welcome to the Guardians.”

  Guardian Training

  According to Aillo, Guardians were the latest advantage for the Federation. There were two teams, Alpha and Omega. Alpha was a bit more surgical, having ended up staying in the simulation a good day longer after they found the few survivors from the ship that we woke up on, as well as maintaining a constant element of stealth with everything they did. However they did eventually come to the conclusion that we had and blown the planet.

  Us though? Omega team? We were described as the mighty hammers.

  At first I was a bit hurt by that, but Aillo had gone on to say that Alpha being the scalpel and us being the hammer didn’t make us any worse or better. In his words ‘You wouldn’t use a scalpel to demolish a house, and you wouldn’t use a sledgehammer to open a chest cavity.’

  I’d countered by saying that if he’d given me a scalpel I could probably break down a house, to which he laughed and said that was exactly his point.

  Physically we’d changed, a lot, and by that I mean like we’d been forced through our teens with a rocket, and then some. For example, my initial estimation of Aillo’s height had been off when I thought he was five foot, and it turned out that he was 6’1 with some change, while I stood at 6’8, Tyr at 7’2, and Mouse at 6’5.

  My breasts had grown to an appropriate size for my height as well, which may not sound like an important aspect at all, but they were damn fun to hold and play with.

  Tyr’s shoulders had also broadened further than I’d ever expected them too, though with the way the rest of him had grown he simply looked like a man’s man rather than a cork.

  Then there was Mouse who… let’s just say she’d grown a lot more confident in herself and her body. I swear those days she was in her Raethir armour twenty percent of the time, t-shirt and track pants ten percent, and her underwear the rest of time. And yes, I mean only her briefs.

  It’d actually changed all of us I think. We still had similar brain chemistry compared to the day before we’d been picked up and put through the procedure that made us into what we were, so we spent a lot of time looking at ourselves in reflective surfaces.

  The procedure or, as I like to call it, ‘Super Hero Fun Time… procedure’, was something that had apparently happened with the consent of both Tyr and Mouse after I passed out. I was supposedly on the verge of complete brain death when the XEC showed up and offered a solution. Neither Tyr nor Mouse have any memories of that encounter, but none of us particularly cared, we were teenagers that could rip cars apart with our bare hands.

  For weeks after we woke up we underwent constant check-ups and top ups of the serum XL1357, I just called it go-go juice but whatever, as well as a great deal of training, most of which was just making us a bit more spatially aware and stopping us from walking into doorframes seeing as a great deal of the training had been added in when we were in the simulation.

  That’s what all those memories had been, the way I knew what the suit was and how to navigate a frigate, it was all information that had been linked into my brain as a way to make sure we at least knew enough to not land in the simulation and spend the whole time floundering and confused.

  We never saw Alpha team while we were on the ship, apparently they thought we were lesser and would somehow impede on their ability to be the best of the best.

  I thought they were a pack of self-important a-holes, but what do I know?

  Oh, and that Amarok that Aillo told us about? Yeah, when they were done looking it over they’d let Tyr into the room and, instead of ripping it limb from limb with his new and improved cybernetic arm, he cried.

  For hours.

  I’d never seen anything like it from him, and after a little while the Amarok went over, plopped down next to him, and let him hug her. Keep in mind that she was exactly as Aillo had said in that it looked like some kind of giant wolf-bear hybrid, like giant in the sense that Tyr could ride it into battle giant. Her head was the most obvious of the combination, while her tail was definitely on the wolfier side and her black furred body on the bearier.

  It was actually really kind of sweet how they got along so well, spending most of his free time with her play-wrestling or sitting quietly while reading a book with her. He ended up naming her Fenris, pronounced Fen-ree, after Fenrir, which started as nothing but a joke that stuck.

  After a few weeks of having fun and training though we were told the good news, “You’re going back to the Valkyrie.” Aillo said to us as we got in a quick workout at the ship’s gym.

  “Really?” Tyr asked excitedly as he and his cybernetic arm held 300 kilos above his chest like he was bench-pressing a dumbbell.

  “Yes, really.” Aillo said with his characteristically charming smile.

  “Will Alpha be joining us?” Mouse asked hopefully from her treadmill without any of her words so much as faltering.

  “No, they’ve been assigned to us for the time being.”

  I stopped doing my chin-ups and dropped to the floor before releasing the 230 kilo weight that had been dangling between my legs with a thunderous crashing sound, “I’d say we dodged a bullet there.”

  I’d gotten used to the fact that they would get the more interesting missions a while beforehand, and had started attributing it to them being a pack of ugly workaholics that would definitely lose their minds and kill themselves after the war.

  Yes, I was very jealous, moving on.

  “Yeah, aha, I suppose you would.” he said hunched over with a pained look on his face.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked with a little laugh.

  “I’m unsure, I came in here and all of a sudden my back started hurting.”

  That’s when I realised what was going on, “Oh! Sorry, gravity reset to one point oh.”

  As soon as the words left my lips I felt like I was about to float away, whereas Aillo simply looked relieved, then annoyed, “How many times have I said you can’t be messing with that? Who knows what it could do to your joints.”

  “Quit worryin’ so much Aillo,” Tyr said as he got off his bench, “we know our limits.”

  “Yes, and you’re constantly going passed them.” he responded disappointedly, something which none of us really showed any care for but felt deeply ashamed of, “Anyway, yes, you’re going back to the Valkyrie in about two hours. So get yourselves cleaned up, I doubt you’ll want to go back smelling like you just dived into a pile of sweaty socks.”

  To be honest, I didn’t care, I was just excited to be going back home, one that hadn’t been eaten by a freakin’ forest. We hit the showers anyway as a courtesy though, and got nice and dressed up in pretty uniforms while techs and engineers loaded up heavy crates with our Raethir armour
and other gear that included special pistols and, to my great surprise, proper T-Packs that were both shinier than the prototypes we’d used, and apparently a whole lot more effective.

  One of the many perks of being a Guardian, we got all the coolest toys.

  The whole ship docked with the Valkyrie instead of sending us out in a shuttle, so when the doors opened to one of the rooms that Tyr had beaten Makthar to death in I was a little surprised.

  It was clean though, which was good, and if I didn’t know that it was traditionally used for disposal I’d not have known it from any other dock, but, as we stepped between the gap of the two ships that felt a million times worse than going between two train cars and about as safe, I still felt inclined to ask Aillo “Why are we going through here?”

  “Because of security protocol, as far as everyone’s concerned we’re a standard transport ship. Can’t have prying eyes knowing what goes on in here.” he said with a wink before turning and walking away, “I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”

  The doors to the ship closed and we were left waiting in the airlock for a tense few seconds before the hard-glass doors to the Valkyrie finally opened.

  Home

  Tyr was the first one through the door, and as a result was the first one to drop his crate and shout “Captain Vyard! It’s been so long!” the proper code of conduct being lost on us after weeks of being treated like precious Gods among mortals.

  Mouse and I stepped out together and set our metal crates down a bit slower as we watched Tyr almost viciously shaking Vyard’s hand. He didn’t seem to mind though, “It’s Commodore now, actually. Being responsible for the training of the first set of Guardians certainly did me favours.” he said with a big smile as he turned his attention to me, “Ha, you’ve grown.”

  “And turned white,” I laughed, “Commodore, huh? I thought you had to have a few more ships under your belt before that.”