The Seryys Chronicles: Death Wish

by Joseph Nicholson

  “I’m fine, Joon. Thanks for your concern. Like you said, five hours.”

  “As you wish.”

  Khai was literally tapping his foot when Dah descended the steps.

  “Are you with me? Do we need to abort?”

  “No!” Dah snapped. “It’s just a flesh wound. Let’s move and just get this over with.”

  They ran.

  They entered the service lift.

  The doors opened to reveal the main deck. Yet another cavernous expanse housing most of the engineering sections; service shops where parts were repaired and manufactured; barracks to house the thousands of soldiers, engineers, laborers, scientists of all kinds and some of the lower officers—the higher-ranking officers had personal quarters one deck up just below the command center. But the most spectacular sight, that stopped Dah dead in his tracks, was the enormous ship that hovered in the center of the main deck.

  The Hammer Cannon hung like an oppressive titan over his head. A complex network of catwalks crisscrossed the area above him. Most of them were attached to the ship itself. He could only look up and gawk at it. The ship, simplistic by design, was flat and rectangular except for a large sphere that sat in the center, where a large circle was cut out to house it. The “bottom” of the sphere had what appeared to be an iris of some kind. It looked much like a laser emitter. The rear of the ship fanned out to house powerful engines that were humming as if warming up.

  “The Hammer Cannon, I presume.”

  “That’s it, all right.” Khai pointed at the center. “The sphere houses the seismic cannon.”

  “So that’s the ship that’s gonna level Seryys City.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, are you going to destroy the ship, too?”

  “Nope.”

  “No?”

  “Once I kill Trall, I’m taking down the whole the facility.”

  “You’re gonna kill all these people. Some of them are innocent, you know,” Dah said, using his cop voice.

  “Don’t worry. This facility has hundreds of escape shuttles. I will send an evacuation call before it blows.”

  “Okay.” Dah seemed pleased with that answer.

  They moved swiftly through the bustling deck, thousands of people were running scared for bunkers within the base for protection. The bunkers were designed specifically for the event that intruders busted their way in. The insanity going on around them was the perfect cover. They went unnoticed, just moving with the ebb and flow of the living tide of people scurrying about.

  The lift was only yards away, after climbing several sets of stairs and ladders to get to the catwalk that led to it.

  Suddenly the sound of creaking metal filled his ears. Khai looked in the direction from which the noise came and instantly, his heart froze. A catwalk, overloaded with people, began to bow under the extreme weight as the bolts holding it to the wall started popping out.

  The catwalk was ten feet above Khai and Dah.

  “Follow me!” Khai jumped into action. He climbed a ladder that led to that level and a catwalk that ran parallel to the one that was failing. Khai used his antaean strength to leap the distance. Dah followed. When Khai landed on the catwalk, it swayed dizzyingly. The people on that catwalk cried out and surged one way or the other. The catwalk jolted and dropped a few inches.

  People screamed.

  Khai looked around desperately for anything that would help. The catwalk was anchored to a crete hallway that led to a control room for a crane. Khai ran for a more-stable section of catwalk in the opposite direction, pushing past panicking people. Dah again followed. The whole catwalk was going to come down if all those people stayed.

  Just to his left at eyelevel, a chain with a hook hung from a pulley. Khai took the hooked end and wrapped it once around the railing on the left side of the catwalk and repeated the same motion on the right side. Then he took the hook and tossed it onto another, stable catwalk. The hook caught and Khai pulled it tight. The catwalk shuddered as it was about to give. He wrapped the other side of the chain around his forearm several times and grabbed the railing next to him.

  The catwalk gave and sagged. People screamed but quickly realized that they weren’t falling to their deaths. But the panic didn’t subside any. And now, Khai was calling on every ounce of that strength he had developed on Gor’Tsu Gorn Planet to keep the catwalk from plummeting by anchoring himself to the more-stable catwalk and holding on tight to the chain.

  “Run!” Khai shouted through a clenched jaw.

  Dah wasn’t sure what to do. The people were all standing, screaming, crying. Dah, then knew how he could help. He pulled his gun and fired rounds into the air. The sudden terror of gunfire made the people move with purpose. It worked! But the now running masses on the catwalk were shaking it so violently, Khai was having trouble hanging onto the railing. His grip slipped and the pulley jerked him up toward it. Dah reached out and grabbed Khai’s hand and anchored himself to the same railing. Now his strength was being put to the test as well, honed on the same soil as Khai’s.

  Finally, all the people made it to the crane control room.

  Khai’s strength finally failed and he dropped. But Dah was still somewhat fresh and kept his grip tight, hauling him up over the railing to safety. About that time, the failed catwalk crashed hundreds of feet below.

  “Let’s not do that again,” Dah said, his voice heavy with fatigue. That five-hour window was narrowing with the exertion. Though somewhat clotted on both ends, he was still bleeding badly and working that hard made his blood pump even harder.

  “You need to get back to the ship and get planet-side.”

  “I’m not leaving you to die here.”

  “Look, there are a hundred ships in here. I’ll get out of here before it blows. Now get out of here. That’s an order!”

  “You forget—I’m still your commanding officer.”

  “Really,” Khai folded his arms defiantly. “‘Cause the last time I checked, neither one of us is employed by the SCPD.”

  “You have a point.” Khai gave him a stern I’m-not-backing-down look. “Fine.” Dah growled, making his disapproval very apparent. “I’ll get you to Trall. Then I’ll leave.”

  “Deal,” Khai said and turned, entering the lift.

  A short lift ride later, the door slid open into pandemonium. The command deck was bustling with officers not rated for hand-to-hand, or firearms combat, arming up to stop the intruders. Most of them didn’t even know how to hold the weapons they were handed.

  A single man—a lieutenant, by the looks of his uniform—was the only man barking orders that were even intelligible. Khai boldly stepped out into the command center, shouted an attention.

  The men all stopped, even the young lieutenant. And when he spoke, they listened.

  “My name is Colonel Khai’Xander Khail, the hero of Seryys Four. I’m here for Prime Minister Trall; to stop him from leveling Seryys City. You have one chance, and one chance only, to surrender and aid in the evacuation of this station. If you do not heed my word, you will die today.”

  “Don’t listen to this traitorous, has-been, lousy excuse for a veteran!” the lieutenant cried. “He’s-”

  Khai drew his beloved pistol and dropped the young man with a single shot to the forehead. He fell to the floor, twitching and bleeding. He pulled his knife to make another notch on his pistol, then paused and put his knife away, taking a step closer.

  “Anyone else want to follow the young lieutenant?” There was silence deep enough to hear his own heart beating. “Good. Drop your weapons and leave the command center.”

  Most of them complied immediately, some stayed behind to be defiant.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Dah said to those who stayed.

  “He’s a traitor,” an older man said quietly.

  “What if I told you that the man found in Puar’s shuttle wasn’t Puar?” Khai fired back.

  “But Prime Minister Trall said-”

  “That Pua
r’s dead?” Khai interrupted, holding up the memstick that contained the truth. “I have proof right here that CME Rashad found conclusive evidence that Puar was not in his shuttle when it crashed.”

  “How can we believe you?”

  “If you don’t, I’ll kill you where you stand.”

  That seemed to squash the stragglers’ defiance. They left.

  “Dah, follow them. I’ll see you planet-side.”

  Dah hesitated, Khai gave him a look. “Fine. I’m on my way.”

  “Hurry,” Khai said. “I’m blowing this thing as soon as I kill that bastard… which won’t be long.”

  Dah nodded and stumbled back to the lift. A small pool of blood had gathered where he was standing. He paused and looked back at Khai.

  “I was gonna shoot you,” he said.

  “What?” Khai asked, completely confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “At the shield generator,” he clarified. “I was going to shoot you, but Brix beat me to the punch.”

  “That’s good to know…” Khai said, leaving an upward inflection as if it were a question.

  “Just had to get that off my chest… You know, just in case you…” Dah visibly squirmed and shrugged. “… die…”

  “I’ll see you planet-side. Get out of here.”

  As soon as Dah entered the lift, Khai pressed his arm-mounted codepad.

  “Yes, Khai?”

  “Dack isn’t going to make it planet-side conscious. I want you to pilot him directly to his friend Med’s place. Got it?”

  “As you wish, Khai. Good luck.”

  Chapter Eight

  Khai closed the channel and strode for the door that led to the commander’s quarters. He expected Trall to have a trap set for him, but he wasn’t concerned in the slightest. The door slid open into a dark room. He could hear Trall’s labored, sickly breath. He moved toward it. From deep within the shadows, a figure emerged holding a short, sharp sword. It glinted off the dull lighting in the room. The sound of another sword leaving its sheath drew Khai’s attention the opposite side of the room.

  “Former Colonel Khail, it’s nice to finally meet you in person… well, as in person as watching my personal guard dice you to pieces.”

  “You think these guys are good enough to stop me?” Khai was honestly amused. “Bring it on.”

  They weren’t guards; Khai knew immediately that they were Kyyl’Jah Assassins. Trained in ancient martial arts, they were extremely dangerous and deadly. The Kyyl’Jah Assassins were a highly secretive, highly organized society of ex-Seryysans who left to form their own culture and government on a planet outside Seryys Space. Each assassin was trained individually to master their arts, and then assigned a life-partner, with whom they would finish their training and become a nearly undefeatable pair. The Joining, as they called it, matched a male assassin with a female assassin based on a highly scientific genealogy and their individual fighting profiles. They not only became combat partners, they became lovers. They would train, live, love and die together. And those that made it long enough, would bare genetically strong children to carry on the assassin way of life. They were deadly, a force to be reckoned with, but Khai had one major advantage—he grew up, and trained, on a planet with several times Seryys’ gravitational pull. His strength was far superior, even to these deadly assassins.

  They attacked in tandem, one high, one low, knowing exactly what the other was going to do, like lovers making love. Khai jumped and leaned back so that the low attack passed under him barely grazing his hamstrings and the high attack barely grazed his chest plate. The maneuver left him vulnerable for only a split second. To keep himself a moving target, he continued back rolling backward to his feet and kept moving.

  The assassins were relentless. They pressed the attack harder. Simultaneously, he caught swords on his gauntlets, high and low, front and back. Finally, Khai found a split second where the assassins were vulnerable. They made their customary high-low attack, Khai twisted his body yet again, only this time he jumped, twisted more and caught both swords with his boots. The woman on Khai’s right held tight to her sword as it was kicked up over her head. The other was broken in half and dropped when Khai’s boot forced the tip into the floor.

  Khai jumped to his feet and pressed the attack on the armed assassin. She swung the blade wildly, struggling to work on her own. Eventually, she was able to calm herself and fight like the assassin she was. She swung a horizontal attack that Khai blocked with his gauntlet and followed up with a solid chop with his other gauntlet down on the blade, breaking it. Khai’s strength was tremendous.

  Khai yelped as the man silently came up behind him and kicked him on the back of his knee causing it to buckle. He dropped to one knee with a grunt but kept fighting. The man put him in a choke hold and bore down on him. The woman came up to Khai and drove a serrated knife into the gap of his flak jacket between the chest plate and rib protection. He growled in pain as the tip of the knife struck one of his ribs.

  Khai struggled to get free, but he was running low on oxygen. He was fighting, holding his breath. His head began to swim and another knife strike found its mark. Khai felt a painful pop as the tip of her knife punctured his left lung. Khai was running out of time. Out of desperation, he kicked his feet and amazed himself by wrapping his legs around the woman’s neck. With a powerful twist of his of his strong hips, he flipped the woman over on her head.

  “Turn him around,” Trall said. Khai was losing consciousness. His vision narrowed and his strength began to fail, because, without oxygen, even the strongest muscles will fail. The male assassin turned Khai to face Trall. “A pity,” he chided, holding a pistol leveled at Khai. “All that work, all that fighting to die here when you were so close.”

  Trall fired. The bullet struck his chest plate, lodging deep into the metal and breaking a few ribs. Since he had no wind to be knocked out, he only felt the pain of the impact… a weird feeling.

  The female assassin was coming around. She slowly got to her feet and walked unsteadily over to her life-partner. Khai was finished. He tapped his gauntlet and it sent a pre-written message to the Star Splitter notifying Dack that he wasn’t coming back. While Khai sent the message, Trall was too busy to notice, bashing Khai’s face in with the butt of his gun. Once Trall was done, he pressed the muzzle of the gun hard against Khai’s forehead, breathing heavily from his exertion.

  Trall squeezed the trigger. Khai was still lucent enough to time the shot. From the time the hammer hit the bullet to the time the bullet left the barrel, Khai tilted his head just enough and the bullet ripped through the assassin man’s throat. The man instantly dropped Khai and clutched at his throat, applying pressure to stop the bleeding. He had seconds to live. Khai watched in smug satisfaction while Trall watched in realizing horror as the male assassin took his last gurgled breath. The female cried out in anguish. In a rage, she rushed Trall and disarmed him so fast, that Khai’s returning sight barely registered it.

  Tears of pain—deep emotional pain—streamed down her face as she put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger, painting the far wall with blood, skull fragments and brain matter. She dropped dead.

  Trall now had the look of an innocent man walking the green mile on his face. Fear gripped his gaunt features and his dull green eyes. He dropped to his knees. Beyond him, Khai looked out the huge bay windows and saw escape pods jettisoning into space. Only a few had launched so far, but it was only a matter of time before they all launched and the innocent people of the station would be safe from the blast that would inevitably consume the asteroid.

  Khai took a menacing step toward Trall, who was shaking like a leaf on a tree in a hurricane.

  “You piece of shit. Where’s Prime Minister Puar?”

  “He’s dead, you moron,” he hissed.

  “Bullshit!” Khai threw the desk that Trall was hiding under and picked Trall up with one hand by the collar of his lavish, silk shirt. “I saw the findings of CME Rashad. I kn
ow he’s alive. Where is he?”

  “I… don’t… know,” he rasped between coughs.

  Khai threw him over the conference table and he crashed in a heap over a comfy chair.

  “Where… is… he?” Khai bellowed.

  “Okay, okay!” Trall literally cried. “He’s at the bunker in Kal’Hoom Karr Canyon.”

  “Thanks,” Khai growled. “Now it’s time to die!”

  He grabbed Trall by the wrist and picked him up. He twisted Trall’s arm until it popped and hung dead by his side. Trall cried out in pain and terror. “Wait!” he cried. “There’s other things I can tell you! Things you might find interesting.” Trall held up a memstick. “Things on this memstick I already knew. Others were new to me. I’ll give it to you, if you spare my life.”

  “What do I care about political bullshit?”

  “There are things about how the war started that you might want to know.”

  “I don’t care,” Khai said, snatching the memstick from Trall. “I was a soldier. I followed my orders and never asked questions. Why the war started is none of my concern. And now that I’m retired, ending it isn’t my concern either.”

  “I’ll give you a cut of whatever I make on the Ti’tan’lium!”

  Khai actually laughed. “You can’t cash in on something you never possessed.”

  “The Hammer Cannon is programmed automatically to launch in two hours. Seryys City’s demise in inevitable.”

  “I beg to differ,” said Khai with a devious grin. “Computer? Voice recognize.”

  “Colonel Khail, Khai’Xander. Active reservist in the SCGF.”

  “And who, at this exact moment, is the ranking military officer aboard Orbital Station Twelve?”

  “Colonel Khail, Khai’Xander.” Trall’s eyes narrowed to slits. If he could kill with a look, Khai would have died a thousand times in that instant. “Computer, activate auto-destruct sequence. Ten minute trigger.”

  “Produce authentication code.”

  “Tango-tango-alpha-three-nine-nine-four-beta.”