Destination Atlantis (Ascendant Chronicles Book 2)

by Brandon Ellis

  Jaxx did. He was tired. He was also getting pissed, fantasizing throwing Fox across the room, then beating the shit out of him. “Put me down, Fox.” He brought both hands to his head as a new sensation kicked in, dizziness. He swallowed, keeping the contents in his stomach at bay.

  “God, this is going to be easy.” Fox walked forward, determined, his forehead low, his eyes forward. He brought his hand back in a punch and threw it forward. Even though he was several yards away, Jaxx’s head pushed to the side, as if Fox really landed a fist to Jaxx’s temple. In fact, he didn’t and only intended to throw energy Jaxx’s way.

  Fox jumped up and down like a kid in an ice cream parlor. “What the fuck? This is awesome.” He put his index finger up. “Stay there, Jaxx. Let me try something.” He cracked a heavy laugh, knowing Jaxx didn’t have a choice. Fox had a weird ass power over this fake brother of his. He couldn’t wait to master it. He couldn’t wait to use his powers on anyone else who stood in his way.

  Jaxx fought Fox’s energetic grip, throwing his own energy around to kick this energy off of him. Nothing was working. He dropped his head, sweat dripping off of his nose to his chest, his arms as weak as a baby. He closed his eyes, thinking this was it. Fox was probably going to kill him or worse yet, torture him until he flat-lined. He let go of any attempt to push Fox’s energy, Fox’s power off of him and relaxed every muscle, including his mind.

  Immediately, Jaxx fell, slumping to the floor.

  “Wait. Get back up there,” yelled Fox, trying to manipulate the energy again and throw this son of a bitch back into the wall in order to play with his new-found powers some more.

  Jaxx didn’t move, didn’t lift off the ground, didn’t even flinch.

  Fox took heavy steps toward Jaxx. “I’ll do it the old way.”

  Jaxx, on the other hand, was quickly regaining his energy, the Chi running through him like water into a tree’s roots. He stood a few steps before Fox got to him and put his palm on Fox’s chest.

  Fox went to bat it away, then was tossed in the air and dropped to the ground, the back of his head conking on the stone floor.

  Fox lifted his head, then dropped it back down, too weak, too concussed to get up.

  “Don’t do that again, Fox,” growled Jaxx. He walked over to Fox and grabbed his arm, dragging him toward one of the Mez Beds. He lifted him up, grunting from Fox’s heavily muscled weight, and dropped him on the bed. He put the strange ear muffs on Fox.

  Fox shook violently, then relaxed, his eyes shutting, instantly going into REM mode. He was too weak to move. He’d hit his head hard and everything was a blur, accompanied with a streaking pain around his skull like a vice grip. He thought he must have cracked his lower occiput, where the back of his head met his neck, and blood was most likely oozing into a puddle around his head, soon to be dripping on the floor, yet no warmth or wetness soaked his upper neck. Meh, who cared. He wanted to shrug it off, he’d been through worse. The problem was; his weakness had him in a strange type of paralysis; no shrugging, no kicking Jaxx’s ass, only breathing.

  Jaxx placed the ear-muff’s over Fox’s head and around his ears. That bastard. What the hell was he doing? Before Fox could call Jaxx as many names as letters in the alphabet, a shot of lightning coursed through him, his hands immediately succumbing to numbness, his arms tingling, his chest vibrating.

  Fox then violently shook, his shoulders beating against the Mez Bed like a jack hammer and a moment later, he calmed. His eyes shot wide and his blurriness faded.

  Then blackness over took his mind. And his consciousness moved forward, traveling at an incredible velocity, heading toward an electric-blue vortex, spiraling in front of him, coming closer, closer.

  Quiet.

  Chirping.

  Birds.

  The wind blew across pine trees creating a sound similar to a distant ocean.

  He opened his eyes.

  He was standing outside a dropship, his team fanning out across the Taiyonian hillside, the cottony puffs and feathery needles born on dense clusters on woody, stout pegged trees blew in the wind, their large barrel shaped red cones stuck up above the branches.

  The cones. If he just sniffed the cones for days and days, it would open up his glands, would open up his inner powers hidden in his DNA.

  He shrugged away the nonsense penetrating his mind and gathered himself. If he remembered correctly, he was at the last of the Taiyonian invasion, back to snatch Jaxx away from these soulless enemies. Jaxx had betrayed him, had betrayed everyone, and snuck over to the other side. There would be no pity for Jaxx, only justice.

  How could this be? This was a memory, one that was real, happening at this very moment. He was trapped in his body, his movements and thoughts the same as the day this really occurred – during the punch in and punch out operation to extract Jaxx. He couldn’t change the memory, he couldn’t rewrite this operation’s mistakes. Or his mistakes. He couldn’t save his compatriots when they needed him. He couldn’t kill the asshole who caused it all.

  “The fucking traitor,” mumbled Fox, the same mumble he had at the same exact time and moment it first came – during Operation Snatch Jaxx at the base of a hill full of green and gold ferns, black rock, and small patches of white shrubbery.

  “What was that, Sarge?” asked Barnes, a Special Agent Space Marine, S.A.S.M., for short. In truth, they were the S.E.A.L.’s of space, under the same branch, under the same types of rigorous missions, though more dangerous, more deadly. The black void of space was a different monster.

  “Nothing, S.A. Barnes, continue to fan out. The Taiyonians know we’re here. They wiped out our last effort to gather Jaxx, so let’s not get burned twice by the same flame.” He hated it when he used cliché statements, but they worked.

  He looked over his S.A.S.M. team, all fifty yards from each other, some crouched behind boulders, others trees. They were surveying the area, using their combat ready full-face helmets equipped with a heads-up display to detect any approaching enemy, air or ground. They wore striated-ebb nebula titanium exo-suits, weapons magnetized to their backs.

  A S.A.S.M. team consisted of seven. This one was no exception. That’s all they ever needed to carry out a successful mission, barring the last team that arrived yesterday. All dead, all massacred, just to retrieve this mother fucker Jaxx.

  Fox wasn’t going to make the same mistake as the last S.A.S.M. team.

  He held his IPR-8 in his hands, and an ISR-110, a long-barreled ion sniper rifle, was magnetized to the back of his exo-suit. He scanned the area, his helmet bringing up an advanced scouting infrared Optical Rival Reader, ORR, able to sweep the area and detect...everything.

  No Taiyonian was within 2.3 radius miles, the farthest the ORR capabilities could reach, though his helmet’s sound detection was picking up the air battle even farther away.

  Good.

  Perhaps the Secret Space Program were creating havoc, interrupting the Taiyonian military capabilities on all levels.

  His team climbed and crested the hill quickly, allowing themselves space no more than fifty yards from one another, a ghost tactic. If a S.A.S.M. team member was fired upon, they could easily locate the enemy and surround, ending the piece of shits before they ever knew what happened.

  S.A.S.M. exo-suits were fast, acting like the Yivix race Mechs of the inner galaxy. They could jump far, carry a hundred times their weight, and take on ample amounts of punishment from cannon fire from just about any Extraterrestrial technology out there.

  And all this shit, this S.A.S.M. extraction team, for one man – Jaxx.

  He shook his head, disappointed.

  Yet, there was this pull, this connection that he never understood – a tie between he and Jaxx that he couldn’t wait to cut in half.

  The S.A.S.M. team stood atop the hill, studying the surrounding area. Nothing but miles and miles of foreign forest lay before them with a vast city tucked in front of a snow-capped mountain range. The city was their target, as that’s the as
sumed whereabouts of Jaxx, where the last S.A.S.M. team located Defector Jaxx before things went wrong.

  They at least left the Secret Space Program with a map of their trek and findings. It had been conveniently downloaded in each of Fox’s team’s suits.

  God he wished he could just put a bullet in Jaxx’s head. Those weren’t his orders. Too bad.

  “Alive and well,” were the orders from Admiral Gentry Race.

  His stomach twirled at the thought of Jaxx getting hurt in any way; as if he was betraying a son or a friend or a kin. His stomach never cared about death, mutilation, or straight up murder. His mind knew what was right – to end Jaxx. His body wasn’t complying, drawing jitters upon jitters against his mind’s motives. He’d have to get a good, long vacation when he got back to Star Warden.

  His scanner beeped. Men – Taiyonians – were coming in hordes from the northeast.

  “Team S.A.S.M. Seven, this is team leader bravo, dismounted movement northeast, coordinates nine-nine-four. Estimated company, the ORR counts two hundred and eighteen units heading in our direction, over.”

  “Positive. I have the read as well,” said S.A. Marley, second in command behind Fox. “Orders?”

  Fox pulled his sniper rifle from the back of his exo-suit and slapped his ion pulse rifle in its place, magnetizing it. “I’m going to tag a couple.” Which meant he’d down them, killing them, doing what he did best. “S.A. Gainer, follow suit. Let’s make ORR count less units on recall.”

  A S.A.S.M. team always carried two snipers, three heavy particle cannon soldiers, always using HPC-11-Rapid Fires small cannons that hung slack by a strap on each of the three designated member’s shoulders that when pulling the trigger could spark up an entire forest, creating an inferno if needed, and if a forest wasn’t near, they’d spark up whatever was in their way. Lastly, two soldiers in a S.A.S.M. team carried shock pirate guns, or in other words, ion grenade launchers that weren’t accurate, but always packed a punch.

  “S.A. Gainer, get in position and I’ll do the same.” Fox took a spot on the ground and lowered his sniper rifle’s bipod on the ground, stabilizing his rifle, then eyed through the rifle’s scope, sliding his finger a feather width from the trigger. He switched the scope to optic infrared, a better way to track, seek, and find an enemy. The scope automatically positioned the gun to the closest target, closing in on 1.9 miles away. A long shot, but doable. That wasn’t his target, though. He needed to shoot at the back of the pack, slowly picking one target off then the other before the rest of the force knew what was going on. If he hit the front, they’d all see and duck for cover immediately. Always a rookie move.

  The scope labeled each target by number count and corrected the line of fire in response to the planet’s current temperature and wind flow, making the pull of the trigger the only stress for a space marine sniper.

  Fox’s scope indicated the last enemy soldier in range being – ET Target 218.

  “Turn tracer fire off,” Fox told Gainer.

  “Tracer fire off, Sir. ET Target 217, locked.”

  Fox kept his eye on his target. “218, locked.”

  “Fire.” He pulled the trigger, the recoil of the rifle’s stock pressing against Fox’s exo-suit’s shoulder armor. On the optic scope’s infrared view, he saw the Taiyonian warrior – his target – fall to the ground and lay motionless. “218 down.” He shifted his rifle. “ET Target 216, locked.”

  “Fire,” said Gainer. “217 down. ET Target 215, locked,” replied Gainer.

  “Fire.”

  “Fire.”

  The triggers pulled, another warrior down and then another.

  Fox shifted his rifle an inch to the left. “Target 214, locked.”

  “Target 213, locked.”

  “Fire.”

  “Fire.”

  A pause.

  “What the fuck?” came Gainer.

  Fox wrinkled his forehead, an eyebrow raising. The targets stopped, froze in place, then continued trudging forward. “We missed. Target 214, locked.”

  “213, locked.”

  “Fire.”

  “Fire.”

  “Missed again?” asked Gainer.

  “What’s going on, Sarge?” inquired Marley.

  Fox checked his scope. “Targets were hit. Twice. I don’t...” he hesitated. “Hold on.” He pulled up his scope’s camera, watching the replay of his last target. Nothing was out of the ordinary, except that the soldier didn’t fall, didn’t die. He slowed the camera down, viewing the replay once again. Just before his ion blast hit ET Target 214, the Taiyonian brought his arm up and a hazy shield popped up out of nowhere, absorbing the shot, then the shield disappeared in the blink of an eye.

  These infantrymen were fast. And they must have shield technology embedded in them.

  “Fall back,” Fox said.

  “Falling back, Sir,” responded Marley.

  Fox stood and rushed down the hill, watching his helmet’s view screen indicators. His men were angling off, fifty yards from the next person, some fifty-one yards from the other, but no one was perfect. “Marley, take S.A. Jenson and S.A. Lewis to coordinates seven-seven-three and await my orders.”

  “Aye, Sir.”

  They detached from the team, heading northwest.

  “The rest of you,” called Fox. “Follow my –”

  A blast kicked up in front of him, lifting him off his feet and somersaulting him dozens of feet in the air and a hundred feet back, taking with him large clumps of dirt and rocks. His leg kicked a thin tree straight from its roots, toppling it over, his arms flailed, breaking branches from tree after tree.

  He cringed as he hit the ground, skidding into a boulder, bringing him to a quick halt. He went to stand but a heavy foot slammed against his chest, smashing him back to the earth. His helmet’s heads up display staticked for a moment, then went black, an instant later blinking back on, all infrared off and normal view in its place.

  A man wearing a jump suit with Secret Space Program – SSP – symbols where a right shirt pocket would be loomed over him, a phaser in his hand, pointing it directly at Fox. He was surrounded by dozens of Asian-looking people wearing black pants and blue coats that flared into a cape, lined in red. What looked to be technologically advanced bow and arrows were strapped to their backs.

  “Don’t move, Fox.”

  A tug pulled at Fox’s heart and he squinted, not knowing what that tug meant and why it came. It happened every so often when he was around Jaxx, and it happened again.

  Fucker.

  Jaxx bent down, compassion in his eyes. “You hate me. I don’t care. I’m not going to harm you and I’ve convinced my friends not to harm you either. Your men, on the other hand...they can’t know about the red cones. They can’t know what you and I know about them. They have to be eliminated.”

  30

  J-Quadrant, Solar System

  Flood of Dawn, Callisto

  Fox moaned on the table, then twitched. His eyes were closed but moving rapidly as if he was watching a montage of action. Or, as Jaxx remembered from the hypnotherapy sessions with Dr. Donny, Fox was probably very much inside the action, experiencing it as if it was happening now.

  A strange pull invited Jaxx closer to Fox like a moth to a flame, generating a pulsing heat at his heart. He took a step forward, his mind wandering, wanting to know what Fox was seeing. Yet, how did he know Fox was experiencing a past memory?

  He took another step, his hand shaking as he lifted it over Fox’s chest. Like a positively charged magnet to a negatively charged one, Jaxx’s hand landed on Fox’s chest as if an extra-strength vacuum was on high, practically welding his hand in place.

  He tugged back, but his hand didn’t budge. He leaned to the side, gritting his teeth, pulling with all his might, but it was as if his hand was attached to Fox’s chest with extra-strength super glue. It wouldn’t budge.

  Jaxx stiffened and unconsciously stood on his toes, his veins nearly popping out of his skin, a flash of el
ectricity blasting through him. He opened his mouth, wanting to yell, to scream from the pain consuming him but silence, his was voice gone, inactive.

  A sharp breeze sung into his ears and he closed his eyes, only to open them a second later. He was holding a phaser, aiming it at Fox, his foot on Fox’s exo-suit, the Chi-like power racing through every cell of his body.

  He was strong and in control. “Leave, now.”

  Fox slowly shook his head, his external speakers on full. “My men are coming. Enjoy your last few breaths.”

  Jjjjakhoo! Jjjakhoo! Jjjakhoo!

  HPC-11-Rapid Fires small cannons from Fox’s team, let loose a hail storm about to plummet on Jaxx’s tree-covered position. For a moment, silence, and then a flock of flying creatures screeched and fled from the treetops as the deathly quiet turned into whistling particle charges heading in fast.

  Jaxx went to one knee, his other foot still on Fox’s chest and placed his hand toward the incoming cannon fire, switching on an energy shield from a gold cuff on his forearm.

  An explosion, rocking Jaxx’s friends back into him, erupted against their shields, a plume of energy sucked in like a wind, trying to grab them, expose them to the incoming S.A.S.M. team. Then another hit and another, plowing them back more into Jaxx.

  A few shields malfunctioned, turning off, leaving two Taiyonians defenseless. They brought their bow like weapons up, firing one photon tipped arrow after another in rapid succession. They bounced off the incoming S.A.S.M. teams exo-suits.

  The S.A.S.M. team was fast, well-trained, and spread out. The closest soldier unclasped his IPR-8 from his back and zipped two quick shots at the two Taiyonians, landing with deadly accuracy. The two flopped to the ground, dead before they knew what hit them.

  More incoming fire and the rest of Jaxx’s little company held strong, their shields energizing around them, allowing them to release bow shot after bow shot, temporarily halting the advancing S.A.S.M.’s.

  Jaxx looked down, seeing the moss-like grass at his feet, a few red pinecones on the ground, but no Fox. A moment ago he had his foot on Fox’s chest. How did he not feel the guy’s escape?