The Quest Saga Collection: Books 1 - 5

by Dhayaa Anbajagane

  Q had fallen asleep already, and lay calmly in the chair beside her. Taylor looked at him. She longed to look into those silver-grey eyes of his, to get lost within their mystic shade. Her hand reached out and ran her fingers through his hair. She touched his face, the warmth from his skin embracing hers.

  She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, “Goodnight, Q,” she smiled.

  Taylor lay her head on the dashboard, her heart quivering with every passing moment. But even with all the excitement, her mind drugged her with drowsiness. The infinite stars around her all turned deep black as she closed her eyes and gave into her mind’s will to sleep.

  ***

  When Taylor awoke she saw Q staring into space, a wide grin on his face. She yawned, “What happened?” she asked.

  He turned to her, his grin becoming even wider, “We’re here,” he said.

  “What?” she sat up, her mind immediately rebooting into alert mode. A large haze of white lay a few hundred miles away from them, its glowing light mystical and mesmerizing.

  Taylor spoke into the comm system. “Control, this is the Endeavor,” she said but static was the only thing that answered back.

  “Control? This is the Endeavor,” she said once more.

  And again, only static replied.

  “We must have been cut off,” Q said.

  “The anomaly,” Taylor’s eyes widened, her mind realizing it was the one causing all this.

  He nodded. “It’s blocking all communications,” he said. “The good news though is that that means the first probe Burke sent might actually be somewhere around here.”

  “We can’t worry about that now,” she said. “We should send in the second probe.”

  Q smiled, “Already done,” he said.

  “What?” she asked, all confused. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “How am I supposed to know? I fell asleep even before you did.”

  “Are we monitoring the probe?”

  “I sent it down a few minutes ago,” he said. “We should get data soon.”

  “Hopefully,” she said.

  But hope was clearly not enough. Ten minutes later they still hadn’t gotten a single bit of data from the probe. Something was clearly wrong.

  “We better pull back for now,” Taylor said.

  “Not just yet,” Q said. “We have one more option left.”

  “What?”

  A glow of white light emerged around Q. “I’m heading out there,” he said.

  “WHAT?” she asked. “There is no way I’m letting you do that!”

  “There’s something I haven’t told you, Taylor,” he smiled. “I’ve been lying to you all along.”

  Q’s entire body flickered and disappeared. Taylor’s eyes went wide as her mind exploded with confusion.

  What in the world just happened?! she tensed.

  “Relax, silly,” Q’s amused voice came in through the comm system.

  “WHERE ARE YOU?!” she yelled back.

  “Ouch,” he said. “You clearly didn’t like what I did.”

  “That was a hologram wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty easy to create temporary images with my Elementa of Light,” he said. “What you saw was basically a very realistic hologram. If you’d actually tried touching him your hand would have just passed through.”

  “First of all, wow, that’s cool. Second of all, I need you to get back to the deck,” she said. “Now.”

  “Well, to be honest, I’m not exactly on the ship.”

  Anxiety spread through Taylor. “Q,” she said. “Where are you right now?”

  “I’m heading towards the anomaly,” he said.

  Okay, okay, she thought. Calm down now. Calm down. Don’t yell at him.

  She took in a deep breath. “ARE YOU CRAZY, YOU IDIOT?”

  “Now do you see why it’s easier to lie?” he chuckled. “Oh and don’t worry, I’m wearing my battle armor as well. So I’m not in just an energy suit.”

  “Get back to the ship, Q. We don’t know even know what that anomaly is.”

  “Look,” his voice turned serious. “I felt the anomaly even when we were back on Zygrade. I felt a wave of energy right before the sky turned red, a wave of energy that felt familiar. Almost too familiar. I need to confirm what it actually is.”

  “Oh my god,” Taylor’s eyes widened. “It’s him isn’t it?” she whispered softly.

  There was a long pause. “I’m not sure,” Q said. “There’s a good chance it is.”

  “But we took him out so long ago,” she said.

  “Which just makes this all the more weird,” he said.

  A deep humming came through the comm link.

  “Q?” Taylor asked. “What’s that noise? Is everything okay?”

  “I’m fine. It’s the anomaly,” he said. “I’ll transferring my video feed to you now.”

  The dashboard’s largest screen turned on and played a live feed. Taylor could see nothing but a screen of white. Raw energy was coursing through the very space around Q. But deeper within it all, far off into the distance, she could see something pulsate, sending a humming vibration through everything around it.

  Q chuckled. “It’s amazing isn’t-”

  Everything suddenly turned black and the feed shut off.

  “Q?!” Taylor panicked. “Q!”

  No reply. No response. Nothing.

  She looked through the ship’s windshield, straight at the anomaly. Its colors were slowly creeping from pure white to spatial black. She could even feel its hums became more violent with every moment that passed.

  “No,” Taylor gasped, realizing what was going on. “Q, you need to get out of there now!” she yelled into the comm link, hoping he would somehow hear her. “That anomaly is going to blow up, and even you can’t survive that!”

  The anomaly shrank for a moment.

  And then it exploded.

  “Q!” she screamed. Her mind froze, her heart stopped, her body collapsed into her chair.

  Taylor glanced lifelessly at the blast that surged towards her, annihilating everything in its path. She still had time to turn the Endeavor around. She still had a chance to escape. She still had a chance to live.

  It doesn’t matter, she thought. Nothing matters. She sank into her chair, her eyes empty, her mind and body broken by just one thought.

  Q was gone.

  ***

  1-2

  Carlos remained calm in the noisy air of the control room. The place was quite vast, and on the far wall was a large screen, its pixel surface displaying many vivid images all at once. Rows of tables and computers were cramped into the room, with a crowd of people working through them all.

  Carlos calmly stood right at the entrance, away from all the action.

  “It’s odd to see Aliea’s High Commander make a visit to the control room,” Burke walked up to him. “Wait,” he smiled excitedly, “Are you here to approve ‘Project Z’?” he asked, his face beaming.

  Carlos sighed. “I already told you that project is more dangerous than you assume.”

  “Fine,” Burke’s face went back to serious mode. “What are you here for then?” he asked.

  “I just wanted to check up on our Sorcerers’ mission,” he said. “The control room is monitoring it aren’t they?”

  Burke nodded. “We’re monitoring them all right,” he grinned. “The Endeavor is holding up really well.”

  A rapid beeping sounded inside the room. A video feed on the main screen shut off, displaying a pure black behind the words, ‘Connection Lost’.

  “Sir, we’ve lost connection,” a voice from the control room spoke up.

  “Backup comm systems are all down,” one more said.

  “Everyone, updates. Now!” Burke yelled.

  “Tracking data, disconnected.”

  “Shield status data, disconnected.”

  “Personal comm systems, disconnected.”

  “Weapon systems, disconnected.”

>   “Emergency systems, disconnected.”

  “Damn it!” Burke said. “What does work then?”

  “Burke, what’s going on?” Carlos asked.

  “Well,” he said. “I think I may have spoken a little hastily about the Endeavor.”

  “What?” Carlos grabbed Burke by the shoulder. “Are those two okay?”

  “They will be if you let me do my job,” he said with a straight face.

  “Sorry,” Carlos said quietly and released his grip.

  “Sir, we have a reading on the Endeavor’s black box,” a woman said.

  “Download all data,” Burke said. “Now.”

  “Requesting data transfer,” she said. Carlos could see everyone stop their work and wait with baited breath as the download bar loaded up onto the screen, the red stick rapidly racing its way to one hundred percent.

  “Download completed!” she said, and a breath of relief went through the whole room.

  “Put up the file,” Burke said, and a stream of data logs loaded up onto the big screen. Towards the end, the data logs suddenly turned from intelligent words to data trash - random symbols and glitches that one could never make head or tail of.

  “This can’t be right,” the woman said. “The file must have not fully downloaded.”

  “It’s been fully retrieved all right,” Burke said, his face all serious. “Thank you all for you time,” he said and headed to the entrance. Carlos watched awkwardly as the people in the room stumbled around, completely confused about what to do next.

  “Oh,” Burke stopped short and turned around. “Search the black box logs for any data transmissions, voice transmission, distress calls or otherwise. Also, locate the captain’s log. Send all data directly to me. None of it gets by anyone else.”

  “Yes sir,” they all said and got right to work.

  “Burke, seriously,” Carlos asked. “What’s going on?”

  The young scientist sighed. “Something you really don’t want to know.”

  ***

  This can’t be happening, Burke thought. This really can’t be happening.

  His mind tried to fight the possibility, but the data on the black box was tough to argue with.

  “Do we really need to go to the council room for this?” Carlos asked as he followed behind Burke. “Why can’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

  “Look,” Burke said. “You wouldn’t want anything bad about the Sorcerers’ mission leaking to the public right?”

  Carlos shook his head, “Of course not.”

  “Then come up to the council room,” he said. “It’s the only place in Aliea that has proper cyber security. Plus it’s the only place the two of us can talk without having to see constantly check if anyone else is eavesdropping.”

  “Fine,” Carlos said. They got into the elevator, up to the top floor and into the council room.

  Burke wasted no time in turning on the large display and connecting it to the control room. Streams of data poured in one after the other.

  Good, he thought. We were able to salvage most of what we need.

  Carlos took his seat at the head of the table. “You need to tell me what’s going on.”

  “You can’t interrupt me though. This will take a while.”

  “Agreed,” he nodded.

  Burke took in a deep breath. “Okay, so we lost total communication with the Endeavor. It’s very unlikely all systems failed at once. This supports the possibility that the anomaly is cutting off all connection lines. The black box is a device we install in every major ship. It records every last bit of data that the ship collects, whether it’s from the heat sensors, or from the comm systems or voice transmissions. Anything really. If an action involves the ship, the black box will record it all.

  He took in a puff of air, and went on. “Now the problem of course, is that the black box doesn’t really transmit any signals on a regular basis. In case of total comm system failure though, it’s programmed to transmit a weak signal, and unload all its data onto the Aliea servers,” he said. “Now the weak signal is hardly traceable, and is almost non-existent. I believe that because of this weakness the signal was able to pass by the anomaly’s communication barrier quite easily.”

  Burke turned to the screen, and the data stream being loaded onto it. Text and numbers in green populated the back background. The last few lines of junk code loaded as well, and the image became static.

  “Now, this is where the mess is,” his fingers pointed to the bottom of the screen. “Do you see the codes at the end? They’re junk codes, which means they were entered into the black box by a bad circuit. There are only a few lines of junk code after which everything is blank. This implies two things. First of all, the bad circuit was probably a circuit that was abruptly melted. Second of all, there’s only one way any of my circuits inside the ship could have melted.”

  Carlos’ expressions changed, his face showing that he had realized what was being implied.

  Burke himself didn’t really want to imply the reality of the situation either, but he was left with no choice. He couldn’t lie just to make everyone feel better.

  He looked right at his High Commander, not a hint of uncertainty in his eyes, “The Endeavor exploded.”

  ***

  Kai had been silently working on one of his custom ships when he received the call from Carlos. It wasn’t the most comprehensive of conversations either.

  I need you here. Now, he recalled Carlos words.

  “Well, that doesn’t make any sense at all does it?” he mumbled as he headed up to the top floor of the Demon Riser and straight for the Council room.

  He walked in to see Carlos sitting at the head of the table as always, with Burke next to him, a forced smile on his face. Also sitting at the table were two girls. Christina, or ‘Chris’, and Elizabeth.

  “Ah you’re finally here, Kai,” Carlos said.

  “Wait long?” he asked.

  Carlos quietly gestured at him to take a seat.

  Okaayy, he thought. Clearly something serious has happened.

  “What’s going on, Carlos?” Elizabeth asked.

  The High Commander began to tell his tale, and everyone listened to him, their minds slowly turning more and more anxious as the narrative intensified.

  And right at the end, Kai’s mind went nuts.

  “THE ENDEAVOR EXPLODED?” he jumped out his seat.

  Burke quietly nodded. “But we’ve been able to use telescopes and long range radar to determine that parts of the ship still exist. The images and data we received are not very conclusive, so we’re not exactly sure what we can expect.”

  “So you want us to go confirm the situation for you?” Chris asked, her black eyes emotionlessly looking at the High Commander, her chocolate-colored face frozen cold.

  “Exactly,” Carlos said. “At the moment we are completely in the dark about the situation.”

  “We couldn’t pull out any data from the Endeavor, other than its black box.”

  “Did you search the black box for any other info?” Kai asked.

  Burke hesitated to speak.

  “It’s fine, Burke,” Carlos said. “They can know.”

  “What happened?” Elizabeth asked, her flaming-red eyes staring in anxiety and curiosity, her similar-colored hair flowing in the gentle draft inside the room.

  “Well,” Burke said. “There were only a few records we were able to completely pull from the black box.”

  “And?” Kai asked.

  “We have two important pieces of information,” he said.

  The screen behind Carlos turned on, displaying an audio file’s wave movements. A voice came through the council room’s speakers.

  “Oh god,” Taylor’s voice gasped. “Q, you need to get out of there now!” she yelled. “That anomaly is going to explode, and even you can’t survive that!”

  The audio file ended, and screen shut off. Kai looked around him. Elizabeth was petrified. Her eyes looked straight at t
he wall, wide and horrified. She looked like she had seen the worst horror movie of her life, and to be fair, that wasn’t too far away from the truth.

  Burke continued. “Based on this transmission, we can conclude that the Endeavor’s explosion was in retaliation to an ever larger explosion caused by the anomaly.”

  “Wait, but what Taylor was saying...” Elizabeth said.

  Carlos sighed. “We checked the black box’s records several times to make sure there were no errors in what we had received,” he said, “The records are clear. Someone opened the doors of the Endeavor minutes before that transmission took place.”

  “Someone entered the Endeavor?” Chris asked.

  “An intruder?” Elizabeth asked.

  Kai shook his head. “No one but Aliea and the pilot can open the Endeavor’s doors.”

  “Exactly,” Burke said. “And based on Taylor’s statements, we can only conclude that Q left the Endeavor to head closer to the anomaly.”

  “Wait, then the explosion…”

  “Oh my god,” Elizabeth gasped, her hands clasping her mouth in horror.

  “We’re not sure of anything yet,” Burke said calmly. “Radical assumptions will be our worst enemies. As of the moment, we must believe that Q and Taylor are both very much alive.”

  They all quietly nodded in agreement.

  “So let me get this straight,” Kai said. “You called us here because you want us to go look into the wreckage of the Endeavor and see what we find?”

  Carlos nodded, “We need more information on whatever it was that happened.”

  “It won’t be easy though,” Burke said. “The anomaly still has a communication barrier around it. Once you enter the region, you won’t be able to contact us.”

  “Ah,” Elizabeth said.

  “Things are quite complex at the moment,” Burke said admittedly.

  Kai grinned. “So when do we leave?”

  ***

  Carlos watched as the three young cadets left the room in a mix of emotions.