CJ drew out the blade from his shoulder, flipped it, and then launched it at the soldier. The blade stuck in its throat, and it was dead before it even hit the ground. CJ gasped for air. He could see the look of appreciation on King’s face as she tried to compose herself, but he didn’t have time to help. He drew the Assegai from the creature’s body and slid it across the floor.
“Keep fighting!” he yelled.
He was gone before she could reply. She picked up her Assegai, composed herself, and turned back to the fight.
“Good luck, CJ,” she whispered.
Chapter 15
CJ peered out through the air lock. He had come out towards the bow of the vessel, and although he could see the edge of the cliff top above, he was sheltered from the view of whoever he had seen up there. He climbed out and took a running jump onto a plateau of the cliff face. He hit the slippery rock face and barely held on with his one hand. In the other, he held the sword he had taken from the enemy. It was a trophy he wasn’t willing to give up just yet.
He scrambled up the jagged rocks on a part run and part climb. He was so motivated that he had climbed a hundred metres in no time at all and was reaching the crest of the cliff face. He crawled up slowly and cautiously, but as he reached the top, there was a noise from behind him. It was Kaner.
“What are you doing here?” CJ whispered.
“Covering your back,” he replied.
CJ nodded in appreciation. He wasn’t expecting it, and didn’t need it, but he was still glad of the support.
“What are you doing up here?”
“Finding whoever is charge of those things, and jamming this blade down their throat. Are you ready?”
Kaner nodded.
“All right, then. We do this quickly and without hesitation. Let’s go.”
They rushed up onto the top and quickly spotted two Morohtan warriors watching the Tempest from the edge. Kaner fired two shots into the back of one, and he toppled over the edge. The other rushed at them, firing as he went. CJ activated his shield and took two of the impacts before smashing the enemy’s weapon down and cleaving into his neck. He drew out the blade and kicked the dead creature to the ground.
“Impressive,” said a deep and thunderous voice.
They both turned to find themselves facing something far larger and more powerful than the Morohtan warriors. It looked similar to the others, but was almost twice their size. Its armour was ornately adorned with gold inscriptions like he would expect to see on a Krys Lord, and he held in his hands a broad headed spear with two gun barrels either side of the blade head. His face was visible from a partially withdrawn helmet, and they could see deep scars in his face. He was disfigured from what looked like a severe explosion or fire.
“Who the hell are you?” CJ asked.
“I am Prince Ganbaatar.”
“That’s impossible. You’re dead. Taylor killed you!” Kaner yelled.
“Taylor will meet his end when the time is right,” he replied calmly.
“Yeah, well, it looks like he sure made a mess of you. I don’t have much love for following in his footsteps, but I’ll gladly finish what he started in your case.”
Ganbaatar smiled as if he were not threatened at all. Kaner lifted his rifle to fire, but Ganbaatar launched a hidden blade from his left arm. It struck the barrel and knocked it from his hands. Kaner drew out his Assegai and activated his shield as the two of them readied themselves for combat. CJ smiled as if he was going to enjoy what was about to go down, but the look of worry on Kaner’s face made him realise he needed to take this foe more seriously.
CJ rushed forward, but a thrust from the spear forced him to duck aside. He narrowly missed the blade, and Ganbaatar spun the weapon over his head and smashed it down onto Kaner. He raised his shield up in time, but the impact smashed him down onto one knee. A kick beneath it launched him into the air and off the cliff edge. CJ watched as he went over the edge, but could do nothing to stop it.
A look of worry overcame him that he tried to hide. This enemy was like nothing he had ever seen before. A Krys Lord was the most powerful being he had ever known, but he had never crossed blades with one. Now he was in that situation. He rushed forward and cut with his sword. He was fast and strong, more so than any other Human or Krys he knew, but Ganbaatar parried off every one of his strikes before punching from across the face and slashing his right arm with the blade of his spear.
He was outclassed and now aware that this was how Taylor must have felt after facing impossible odds so many times.
How did he do it?
He went forward one last time, but Ganbaatar knocked his shield aside, and in one quick rotation, struck him with the base of the spear and knocked him out cold. CJ hit the ground hard and wasn’t moving.
* * *
King let out a cry and rushed towards the back of one of the enemy, thrusting her Assegai in deep, as it tried to fight a Krys soldier to the fore. It reached around and smashed its elbow into her face. Blood burst out from her nostrils, but she wasn’t going to be distracted. She drew out the blade and stabbed the creature one time after another until blood gushed from its wounds, and it dropped dead before her.
“Where are the others?” she asked the Krys soldier.
He shrugged.
“I am Lieutenant King.”
“Private Boron,” he replied.
The Private looked glad she had come to his aid. He had a gaping wound in his left arm and had clearly lost feeling in it.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely.
“Come on, we need to find the others.”
“No, not yet,” he insisted as he pointed her to a doorway. She didn’t understand at first but then noticed the letters on the door, ‘Armoury D.’ She rushed inside and saw a line of exo-suits lined up. She’d only had limited experience of their use, but she didn’t have much choice. She jumped into the armoured suit. It clamped on and adjusted to her body. It was almost as slimline as a medieval knight’s armour, and yet powered. She could move in it as if there was no weight or restriction at all. She holstered the Assegai she had found into the fitting on the thigh area before grabbing a rifle and six magazines of ammunition.
“What did they come here for?” asked Boron, as he took a medi-strip from the kit on the wall and sealed his own wound. He fed a needle into his skin soon after and regained some control of the arm.
“To kill us, I should think. What other reason do the Morohtans need?”
“But we don’t fight for the Alliance. We aren’t in this war.”
“And you think they care? They want to kill us all, no matter what name we go by, or whom we follow. Bolormaa is cutting a bloody path through the universe of all living creatures. I don’t know why, but she isn’t going to leave you out just because you call yourselves independent, or pirates, or anything else for that matter.”
“Then I guess we really are in this war, and always will be.”
“Until either you are dead, or they are,” she replied coldly.
She moved to the door, but he put his hand on her arm and stopped her in her tracks.
“You saved my life. I will not forget.”
“Yeah, well you can thank me once we get through all this.”
She primed her rifle, stepped out in to the corridor, and ran towards the nearest gunfire. She came across Mirov and several others. They were advancing with a wall of gunfire against the enemy who were being driven back towards an air lock.
“You here to get your hands dirty, Lieutenant?” he asked, slamming in a new magazine.
She didn’t reply, but the two of them joined the line and kept up the fire. Several wounded enemy soldiers were scampering towards the exit under a hail of fire. Two were killed outright, and a hail of fire hit the rest. Another appeared in a doorway to their side and leapt onto King. She collapsed under the weight of it as she drew out her Assegai and kept stabbing it in the flank, but it was already dead as Boron kicked it off of her.
/> King was back on her feet in seconds, and they pursued the enemy out of the air lock and onto the roof of the upper hull of the Tempest. Two more were shot on the top, and another leapt off to save itself, but Mirov wasn’t willing to let it get away. He rushed to the edge and fired several well-aimed shots until it fell dead to the ground below. The odd gunshot still rang out below as their people cleared the decks, but they looked at one another in relief. They realised had held the enemy off.
“Sir! It’s Lieutenant Kaner!”
They rushed across the hull and found one of their own helping him upright. The Lieutenant looked badly beaten up, and his left leg was broken if not worse.
“Where is CJ?” Mirov asked.
Kaner pointed up towards the edge. As they peered up, they heard the roar of engines as a small Morohtan transport appeared over the edge. It surged forward and quickly gained altitude before vanishing into the clouds.
“They have him, don’t they?”
They could all tell from the look on Kaner’s face that she was right.
“Mirov, you are in charge now,” she added.
“I…I,” his voice was weak and in despair.
“You have to rise to the occasion,” she whispered. “Kaner is wounded, CJ is gone, and the crew won’t trust me. It’s your command now. Do what he would do.”
Mirov understood he had to suck it up and get to work.
“All right, I want a sweep and clear of the vessel, sentries on all exits. Let’s clean this shit up!” he yelled.
King and Boron helped to support Kaner. They took him down to the medical bay. There were already six other wounded there, and the odd gunshot still rang out through the corridors of the ship. They pulled Kaner onto one of the tables. King looked around, but there were no medics in sight. She had no choice but to do the work herself, so she got to it as best as she could.
“You said they took him, who?” she asked, as she attached a device to his leg that would reset it. He grimaced with pain, but it was clear that they would get no more sign of weakness from him.
“It was a Morohtan Prince. I have never seen any creature so strong in all my days. We stood no chance against him.”
“You fought a Prince? And survived?” she asked in amazement.
“You are part of an elite few,” said Boron.
“It was an experience I would not like to repeat.”
“I thought you Krys boys liked to fight,” said King.
“When there is a chance we can win, yes. Fighting that Prince was like fighting a God.”
“But they are not Gods, they can be killed. Taylor has killed one.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“We know he did.”
She saw the look of doubt in his eyes, and she had to pursue it.
“This Prince, did he tell you his name?”
“Ganbaatar.”
“Impossible, he’s dead.”
“And yet there he was. Living and breathing, and beating us like we were children against a Lord.”
“You must be mistaken,” she said casually, as if she had already ruled out the possibility of it actually being him.
“It was him, and he was deeply scarred from his encounter with Taylor, but far from dead.”
King staggered back a few paces in horror as she realised it might well be him.
“What is it?” Boron asked.
“We heard reports of a disfigured Prince not long after Taylor supposedly killed him, but we never put the two together. We just assumed it was another of their kind. Well, if he is not dead…”
“He will want revenge for what Taylor did to him.”
“But why come here? Why come after CJ? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it makes all the sense in the world. They don’t know who CJ is. As far as they know, he is Taylor’s closest friend. That is the spin we were going to put on it before all this began.”
“They have come after CJ for that? They will kill him, surely.”
The room fell silent as they tried to find some solution to their problem, but nobody had an answer, not one. Rivera rushed into the room as if in a panic.
“Where is CJ? Where is he?”
From the looks on their faces it was not good news.
“He is lost,” said Lieutenant King.
Chapter 16
CJ woke with a pounding headache and in complete darkness. His feet were tied and so were his hands, and it quickly became obvious that he was dangling. He was tied upside down, and the blood was rushing to his head. That wasn’t helping his pain.
“Who’s there? What do you want from me!” he shouted.
There was only silence.
His lips were dry, and he could feel his own blood congealed on his face. It had dripped down to his mouth and then dried there. His body was sore, and the air putrid. He heard a buzzing sound that was growing progressively louder until suddenly lights lit up all around him. Initially, it was blinding and painful, but his eyes soon adjusted. He was in a large diamond-shaped room. The roof sections met in the middle from where his chains originated, the chains he was dangling from.
“I suppose this is all some kind of joke to you? Well, I’m not laughing! If you wanted to kill me, you should have done it already!”
As he finished, two sides of the diamond walls retracted to reveal an entrance, and the Prince who had knocked him out strode into the room.
“You are one ugly son of a bitch,” he said, staring at the four barbed legs of the creature and its disfigured face.
“You know why you are here, don’t you?”
“Because you brought me here. That’s pretty obvious.”
“No, that is how you came to be here, but not why.”
“I have no idea. I have no side in this war. I don’t fight for the Alliance. I just wanted to be left alone, is that too much to ask?”
“You are Charlie Jones, the ally of Colonel Mitch Taylor.”
“No, I am not!”
Ganbaatar lifted his hand to uncover a small device, and he pressed a button. An electric surged pulsed through CJ’s body, and he writhed violently as the current flowed through his body and pounded against his brain. He felt as though his head was being crushed and his body burnt alive until finally it stopped. He gasped for air.
“What the hell is the matter with you? I have no loyalty to Taylor. I haven’t seen him in four hundred years, and the last time I did, I tried to kill him and everything he cared for!”
“You are a liar, and not a very good one.”
He pressed the button again and shocked CJ for twice as long this time. As it stopped, he began to laugh. Ganbaatar did not know what to make of it.
“What do you find funny?”
“That I am going to die here for an enemy that I’d just as soon kill myself. You’ve got the wrong man!”
He was shocked once again, and finally he let out a cry of pain as it became too much, but Ganbaatar didn’t stop until CJ passed out.
“What a shame that your bodies are so weak,” he said, looking at CJ hanging unconsciously before him, “We could have had so much more fun here, but now you make me wait. I do not like being made to wait.”
He strode out of the room in a huff as though displeased with his work. As he did, CJ opened his eyes. He hadn’t been unconscious, but he couldn’t let the enemy know how strong he was, and he needed time to think. He looked around the room for some way of establishing where he was, and how he could get out. He soon came to the conclusion that there was no way out.
CJ had so many questions, and yet he doubted Ganbaatar would be willing to hear them.
We both want Taylor dead, why can’t he understand that? Why can’t we come to some kind of arrangement?
He had to think fast. Not just because he wanted to live through this, but to live long enough to see Taylor’s demise.
He felt the tension release on the chain above, and he dropped head-first to the floor. He managed to arch his upper b
ody up enough so that he didn't fracture his skull or break his spine, but still landed back first and the wind knocked out of him. However much he was able to hide his consciousness before, the game was now up. He coughed as he rolled over and tried to breathe. A hatch opened at the side of the wall, and a bowl of food was slid in. It looked like the sort of thing you'd give a dog.
"What is this? Do you want me dead or not?" he demanded.
He tucked his knees up to his chest and fed his feet through the chains on his hands so that he could get his hands out in front of him.
He slapped the bowl back towards the wall in disgust.
"If you're going to kill me, just get it over with!"
But no response came. The lights were glaring and only compounded his headache, but finally exhaustion took over, and he fell into a deep sleep. It didn't last half as long as he needed when he was abruptly awoken with a swift and sharp kick to the ribs. He gasped for air as he awoke and coughed. The pain surged through his body.
"Enough sleeping, it is time you started talking."
He rolled over and opened his eyes. The man who had kicked him looked remarkably Human, but large for a Human, and wearing a sleek and highly advanced body armour from head to toe. Even his eyes and mouth were covered by a mirrored mask that concealed his identity. He stood there perfectly still as though he were a statue.
“Do you like my latest creation?” another voice asked.
The alien who had called himself Ganbaatar strode into the room and stood beside the man who had beaten him. He put his hand on the man’s head and pressed a button. The front of his helmet retracted to reveal a face. It was Human, but pale and with electrical cabling running around the edges that fed into his suit.
“Made in your image,” he declared.
The man didn’t look alive and did not move a single muscle. His breathing was slower than any Human would be, and he hadn’t blinked the entire time CJ had been looking at him.
“It was a man once, a Human. Or some of him was at least. Humans have proven to be a surprisingly powerful foe, and I have been eager to incorporate them into my armies, but not as you know them. You are weak, inside and out. I made Humanity…better.”
Phoenix Odyssey Book 1 (Battle Beyond Earth) Page 12
