“I never really got to see him,” his voice quivered. “I’d seen him grow up from so long. But all I could do was watch from afar. Hoping he’d never get into the world I was in. And now look.”
He wiped his eyes, “Years later I can finally talk to him, I can stop trying to talk to him about who I am. And that’s when this happens. It’s all my fault,” he said. “I should never have sent him on this mission.”
Taylor stayed silent. She didn’t know what she could tell him, but she was sure she wouldn’t find anything even if she tried hard.
After a while he pulled himself together, and put his serious face on, “Listen, I know this new turn of events is going to be hard for you, but you’ll have to get over it. With Q gone you’re mission’s the big gun.”
“Kai and Elizabeth are both in their NOVA forms.”
“They can’t use dark energy.”
“You know I can’t summon it that easily.”
“That’s what you believe,” he said.
She heard voices come from behind him.
“You’ve got to trust in yourself a bit more, Taylor. I hope you’ll see that.”
And the intermission cut off.
She sat in silence, listening to nothing but the dull hum as they sped through hyperspace.
“Believe,” she said.
***
5-3
Kai heard the door to the infirmary slide open.
“How are you holding up?” Chris walked in.
“I guess I’m a little better.”
She sat herself next to him on one of the patient beds.
“Brooding over his death won’t do any of you any good. He gave up his life to save all of ours. I’m pretty sure feeling this sad is only blasphemy to his sacrifice.”
“It isn’t about that,” he shook his head. “It didn’t have to be him.”
“It could have been anybody. We’re just going to have to accept that fate chose Q.”
“You don’t understand,” he muttered.
“What is it I don’t understand? I won’t know unless you tell me.”
He sighed, “I work at Area 51,” he started. “A place that has run down ships that either crash landed to Earth or were donated by other civilizations. It’s a dump yard. I pilot every single one of those ships, trying to figure out how the tech works. And more than half of those ships have leaks.”
“Oh god” Chris clasped her mouth.
“Apparently after two years of being exposed to leaking Zyxian engines, my entire body is poisoned with radiation.”
Her eyes showed her grief grow stronger. That just made Kai more amused. Throughout this mission he’d never seen her get even a bit emotional, and the time she finally did was when he told her about this.
“The reason I was at S.P.A.C.E was because Area 51 sent me there to see if I could get some sort of tissue transplant. But the poisoning is in my brain as well. And there’s no point in having a brain transplant,” he sighed. “I’d be the best person to sacrifice my life,” he looked at her. “I’m going to die anyway.”
***
Chris’ mind was flooding with emotions.
She never liked any of those feelings. They were useless thing that only clouded her judgment.
But now she was being overwhelmed with grief and sorrow.
She knew radiation poisoning was quite hard to treat, and radiation poisoning in the brain was incurable.
Her mind finally understood why Kai was taking this even harder than he should have.
“You think Q’s sacrifice was a waste then, don’t you?” she asked.
Kai looked down at the floor. “I mean, why couldn’t it have been me? I could have saved everyone else instead.”
“Our lives aren’t something that can be ranked,” she said. “Your life isn’t worth less than Q’s.”
“I wish I could believe that,” he said.
She gripped his hand, “I’ll keep telling you that until you do.”
“Thanks,” he smiled.
And then he jumped down onto his feet, his body stiffening up.
“What’s wrong?”
“To the deck, now!” he charged out.
She tried to keep up with him, but he was picking up the pace. The distraction made her emotions disappear, and a clear mind was all that remained.
Perfect, she thought. She’d expected maybe an intruder to be at the deck, but it was completely empty. Maybe someone’s attacking us, she thought. But the view screen showed no other ships on radar.
“What’s going on?” she asked him.
He was sitting in the pilot seat on the lower deck and had opened up a large orange screen in front of him. It was the first time she’d seen that one before.
“We’re being hacked,” he said.
The screen opened up large sections of code, none of which she understood.
He fingers flew across the console, changing lines of code at lightning speed.
“Whoever is doing this is really strong,” he mumbled.
“Should I go get help?” she asked.
“No. None of them know anything about this stuff. They can’t help us at all,” he said and kept working on his code.
He typed at a blazing speed for about ten minutes and then he finally stopped.
“That was awesome!” he stretched out and turned his chair towards her, “I have never, EVER had someone face up to me like that before. I wish I could find out where the guy was from though, but he’s masked his location really well.”
“You saved the Orion.”
“Of course I did. That hacker ran away scared.”
“See?” she smiled. “Saving you was worth it.”
Kai’s face dropped down a bit, but still kept his smile.
“Maybe it was.”
***
Taylor woke up to the noisy chatter of Kai acting all excited.
Ugh, she thought.
Talking to Carlos hadn’t really helped her mood, so she figured she’d go lie down.
And now this idiot was waking her up.
“What’s going on?”
“I took us out of hyperspace. We’ve reached it,” he grinned.
That was enough to get her off the bunk and to the deck in a flash.
“I present to you,” Kai threw his hands up in the air “the Palace of Being.”
The view screen shifted and zoomed into one bright spot amongst deep space.
There was a castle-like structure floating in solitude. It was basically a circular platform with one tall tower and plenty of smaller towers attached to its sides. The circular surface gleamed and glittered in the light that shone on it, like some sort of galactic diamond.
Crystal surfaces, she thought.
“I’ve scanned the place and there are no defense systems,” Kai said.
“I guess that makes sense. When you’re an all-powerful being a few laser blasters won’t help you too much.”
In five short minutes they were prepped for landing.
Taylor was utterly fascinated. The palace just existed in the middle of space, with nothing else around it. It wasn’t on an asteroid, it was just a single structure floating about in space.
“This place actually looks pretty funny when you think about it,” Kai said.
“Yeah,” she chuckled. “Q would have cracked tons of jokes about it.”
And she could almost feel the mood go down on deck. She knew she had to do something about this.
“Okay, listen, guys,” she said. “We were put on this mission for a cause. There’s a reason we’re here and not someone else. If we’re going to let things like this affect us then we’re letting down all the people who trusted in us,”
“That’s a great reunion all of you are having,” Ruby walked in.
“Where have you been?”
“Sleeping. I sleep when I get bored.”
“This is boring?”
“Well, now it isn’t. It used to be boring though.”
&
nbsp; She sighed, “Fine. Whatever makes you happy.”
“Alright people, get ready.”
“Ethosien,” the cry rang out loud and clear.
Everyone activated their armor and prepared their minds for battle mode.
The ship jerked a bit as it slowed down, inching to a stop on the crystal surface just in front of the smaller towers.
“Time to head out,” Kai said, and the Orion’s hatch opened.
The crystal surface was beautiful, as though stars had been embedded into the surface.
A rainbow of colors scattered across the ground, the different shades glowing mesmerizingly.
“What now?”
“Well, maybe this will help us,” Kai held out the pearl map he’d used in the HPU.
Nothing happened. Then it shot up into the air and disappeared.
“I just lost a pearl and our map,” he said. “I could have probably sold that thing for so much.”
“Money? That’s what you’re worried about? What if we needed to come back here again?” Elizabeth asked.
“Yeah, that too,” he said.
“Map accepted,” a voice boomed.
“Say what?”
The image around them distorted, and they were shrouded in complete darkness.
“Where are we?” Chris asked.
Taylor looked around the place but couldn’t see anything other than darkness that stretched on and on.
“So you finally showed up,” boomed a voice.
They looked around but couldn’t see anything. What’s more, the voice seemed to be coming from everywhere.
A spotlight came on illuminating the five white beings that sat in front of them. They were humanoid but hazy as well, as though smoke had been shaped into human form.
“The energy beings,” Taylor whispered.
The five of them looked at Kai and the others.
Taylor walked up to them.
“We’re here to ask for your help,” she started. “The gates to the Megethos’ world are opening up. We humbly request your power.”
“We refuse the offer,” they said flat-out, in one monotonous voice. The voice made her feel like crawling into a hole and staying there forever.
“What are you afraid of?” Elizabeth asked.
One of them stood up. “What did you say?” he roared.
“Sit down,” said another one. Her voice seemed sweet and nice, but Taylor felt real venom lay deep underneath the sweet personality.
“Why will you not help us?” Chris asked.
“The first time we brought peace to the universe no species was thankful for it. They all began to crave more power, to grow and become like us. As motivated as those Zyxians were, if their reality cannot come together to protect itself, it does not deserve to exist. We will not intervene in the fated path.”
Everyone remained quiet.
Kai knew there was no retort to that kind of a statement. Those guys were exactly right. Even now the best this reality could do was to send five kids to stop a galactic threat.
Taylor walked closer to the beings. “You were all born powerful to be protectors, not to spew sentimental statements, or to decide whether our reality deserved to be saved.”
“Taylor? Um… What’re you doing?” Elizabeth whispered.
“Fine, don’t help us. We’ll go by ourselves. You all powerful beings can sit here wondering about philosophy.”
“Then why did you come to us?”
“I didn’t know what JERKS you were,” she yelled.
Everyone stared at her. The beings glared at her.
Taylor didn’t seem to bother about either.
“Let’s go, guys,” she turned and walked up to the portal. Everyone followed her.
“I’m warning you, mortal…” the voice said.
Taylor ignored them, “If your philosophical minds would be so kind, can you put us back outside this hell dungeon?”
Instantly the scenery around them changed and they found themselves inside the Orion, which had somehow been teleported into the space outside the Palace of Being.
Probably the energy beings, she thought.
For a second everyone was quiet, like they were all taking in what just happened, and then the silence broke.
“I can’t believe you spoke that way to the most powerful beings in the known universe,” Kai said.
“Did things go well with the energy beings?”
“It went brilliantly,” she mumbled.
“They won’t help us,” Chris told Ruby.
“Well, if Taylor had acted nicer they might have,” Elizabeth said.
Taylor turned her gaze to Elizabeth, “If you think those beings are going to agree to help us anytime soon then you can stay back and try.”
Elizabeth kept quiet.
She turned to Kai, who flinched a bit, “Plot a course to the anomaly,” she said.
He nodded and brought his hand to his chest. He pushed forward and the ship jumped into hyperspace.
“Next stop: the center of the Universe.”
***
5-4
Taylor didn’t know if what she had done was right or not.
Should she have been a little more patient with the energy beings? Maybe. But she was furious that they told her this universe wasn’t worth saving.
The view screen blared on. “Incoming intermission.”
“Hey guys,” Carlos smiled. “How’s it going?”
“Great,” Elizabeth said. “Taylor just blew our chance with the energy beings.”
“What?”
“I did not blow that chance,” Taylor said. “That chance never existed.”
“What did you do?” he asked.
“They said this universe wasn’t worth protecting and I yelled at them.”
Carlos was stunned, “First, that was pretty gutsy, and second, I don’t think they’d have helped you even if you were nice. Once those beings make up their mind they’re set in stone.”
“See?” she turned to Elizabeth.
“Fine,” she mumbled.
“ETA to anomaly is about two hours,” Kai said. “Speaking of which, have you identified the anomaly?”
“Juliana helped me on this. We found out the anomaly is causing gravitational waves that are causing the destabilization. If we block out the anomaly the black holes will probably recover.”
“That’s great,” Chris said.
“Well, the only problem is, for something to cause gravitational waves that strong it would have to be immensely strong,” Carlos sighed, “and that means you’ll need more firepower.”
“Can’t we call in any backup?”
“The legal system would make it at least four or five days before backup got to you. Heck even communicating with backup would take that long,” he said. “That’s far too long.”
“I can handle this,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve got my NOVA form now.”
“Hang on, sweetie, I’ve got mine too,” Kai said.
“Both of you are not viable,” Carlos said. “Elizabeth, you need some sort of surface to pull off your attacks and Kai, you can only control metal. Both those things are useless in empty space.”
He turned to Taylor, “You are the last hope for this mission.”
“Dark energy?” Elizabeth asked.
Carlos nodded, “Only a few of the Dark Knights possess the skill to wield Dark Energy.”
“So Taylor’s our master arrow then?”
“Provided she can summon more energy that she ever has.”
“That’s asking a bit too much isn’t it?”
“We don’t have another choice do we?” Taylor asked.
Carlos smiled, “See? She gets it,” he said. “Alright then, I’d rather let you guys prepare than keep talking. Over and out.”
The feed shut off.
Kai smiled, “Let’s get going then.”
***
ETA: 5 minutes
Kai kept staring at the screen.
He fel
t uncomfortable about this whole thing. All along he’d expected the energy beings to be the ones who saved them, and even if they didn’t, he figured that Q would somehow magically beat the anomaly.
And now both those things weren’t happening.
Taylor taking the first shot wasn’t exactly a comforting thought.
Carlos did say something about Dark energy but he didn’t really get what it was.
‘Dark’ seemed pretty mysterious and powerful, so who knew? Maybe it would work out.
The screen brought up a dialog, “Gravitational wave torrents incoming. Abort course.”
“Abort course?” he said. He ignored it and brought up a radiation scan on the view screen. The area in front of them was slowly thickening with radiation.
The Orion shook violently, throwing him through the air and the walls creaked as though they were slowly being pulled apart.
“I thought you said you got the hang of the hyperspace jump,” Elizabeth ran in.
“This isn’t me. Something else is going on. Get the others.”
Her face changed, “On it,” she said and ran off.
The tremors continued.
ETA: 3 minutes.
Still can’t leave hyperspace, he thought.
He figured the tremors would stop if the ship jumped out of hyperspace and slowed down but if he did that they’d take too long to reach the anomaly.
“What’s going on?” Taylor ran in.
“Something about Gravitational wave torrents.”
“What? That’s impossible,” she said.
“That’s what it says,” he pointed to the radiation scan on the view screen.
“Those torrents can’t exist naturally.”
“Someone’s attacking us?”
“I’m not sure.”
The lighting turned off and sparks flew from the walls.
The Orion started to creak even more, and the tremors increased.
“What happened?” Everyone else ran in.
“Engine seems to have died out,” Ruby said.
“Those gravitational waves are interfering with the Orion’s systems.” Kai said. “We’ve got to leave hyperspace.”
The walls slowly started deforming, curving slightly inwards.
“The Orion won’t hold out long in this condition,” he said. “Taylor, I need you to help me search for other routes to take. At least one of them should be void of the torrents.”
The Quest Saga Collection: Books 1 - 5 Page 24
