The Commanders instantly agreed that they had to stop their warships from attacking the rural Armorican cities, but they were all stymied by one problem.
“What do we do about Prince Ryul’s situation?” General Za’ad asked. “We know that he is in Nakiri. But that’s as far as it gets.”
“Ummm,” one of the commanders raised his hand. “Forgive me if I am out of line, sir, but I believe the problem will be taken care of soon.”
“What is it Seyfried?” The General raised an eyebrow.
“When my battalion sent the warship down toward the capitol, I arranged for a small escape vessel to be dispatched towards the Vlar Mountains. That point is the easiest to make the jump from our world into Nakiri.”
“Oh god,” Q said.
“What happened boy?” Commander Seyfried asked.
“The Getafixians, they know about your escape carrier,” he said. “High Priest Idhren told us they’d detected it.”
General Za’ad cursed, “This worsens the situation then,” he said. “The rescue squad will definitely be caught, and that means we do not know what will happen to our Prince.”
Everyone sat in silence.
“Commander Seyfried,” the General said.
“Yes, General Za’ad,” he said.
“You are hereby relieved of duty until the end of this mission. Please see yourself out the door.”
The man looked stunned for a second, his gray eyes showing a hint of sadness in them. The wall split open, and a beam of light shone in from the outside.
“Yes sir,” he said, in a low voice and walked out. The wall closed after him, leaving the room in silence.
“If anyone else has attempted missions like these you better tell me here and now, else temporarily relieving you of duty won’t be the only thing that I’ll do.”
No one spoke up.
“Very well then,” he said. “In light of the new situation, we will have to assume our Prince’s life is at stake. We have nothing left to lose now. Order all warships to maintain position over their assigned cities, but tell them all to disable their main cannons. We have two warships that we sent as a backup option in case one of any failures. Get those ships to fly over Idhren’s castle. We need to raze it to the ground.”
“General?” Carlos raised an eyebrow.
“Ah, I got ahead of myself. I apologize,” he said. “We shall use the two ships to issue a warning in case Prince Ryul’s rescue operation does not go as planned.”
“Sir, who should we assign to the rescue operation?”
“You’re looking at them,” the General grinned at Q and Carlos.
Q waved his hand. “Umm, hi.”
“Do any of you have any problems with this?” he asked.
The General seemed to be giving them the option, but deep beneath it all Q could tell the commanders were forced to accept the decision. That’s the sort of poise and authority Za’ad held over everyone else.
“No sir,” they all said together.
“General Za’ad, just one last thing,” Carlos said. “The main castle is shielded by an invisible force field.”
“Invisible?” he seemed surprised. “Idhren, that cunning fox. We’re going to have to set up a force field destabilizer.”
“That won’t help. Idhren only told me half the truth. The reality is that there are two force fields overlapping the castle one over the other. They’re so close together they’re treated as one. Regular force field cancellation tactics won’t work. We’ll have to hack into the server and shut both of them down.”
“That poses a problem,” General said sighed. “You would have to be inside the castle to be able to tap into their security.”
“I’ve been in it once already. I can get into again from anywhere you want. Just load the ship up with a proper communications system and I’ll hack into that server before we reach the castle.”
“Very well then,” he stood up. “Gentlemen, I want each of you to report to me with a completed checklist in the next fifteen minutes.”
The wall split open again.
“Yes sir!” they saluted him and headed out.
“All that is left is for you both to prepare yourselves,” the General said.
Q turned to Carlos, “Initiate mission?”
His brother grinned, “Initiate mission.”
***
5-2
“Idhren,” Elizabeth whispered.
Her brain had not yet processed everything that was going on. Her entire sense of reality was going for a spin.
“High Priest,” Ryul spat. “What a mighty honor to meet the grand schemer.”
A smile briefly lit Idhren’s face, “It is my honor to meet the man whose army will decimate my cities.”
“What?”
“Oh,” Idhren turned to Avon. “Does he not know?”
The Thanonian remained quiet.
“This shall be very entertaining,” Idhren smirked, an expression she’d never imagined to see on his pious being.
“What are you talking about?” Ryul charged at him.
The two men on either side of Idhren went into a low attacking position. The ground beneath Ryul exploded and sent him flying into a pillar.
“Prince Ryul!” Avon rushed to him.
The prince slumped against the pillar, a streak of blood on his cut forehead, “You’re demons,” he muttered.
Idhren walked towards them, “Know your position Prince,” he gripped his staff, and lifted it into the air.
An air attack, Elizabeth realized. She lifted her hands above her head, and a thick sheet of rock rose between Idhren and Ryul.
The High Priest turned to her and smiled, “Not good enough,” he swung his staff and a blast of wind emerged, shredding her earthen wall and forming a mini-gust around Ryul. Avon hung desperately onto the prince, hoping to protect him against the vortex of winds.
“Let’s go someplace fun,” Idhren raised his staff into the air.
The vortex expanded, covering the expanse of the cave and swirling around like a river of air. Elizabeth retracted her wings, not wanting to get caught up in the haphazard winds. Idhren then swung his staff around and the winds dissolved, revealing a completely different scenario.
He teleported us, she realized. Just how powerful is he?
Teleportation was a god-level skill. Creating portals was easy, but teleporting a living being, let alone a group of them, was insanely hard. She took a good look around her. Avon, Ryul and the other Thanonians had been brought along as well. They were in a different sort of cave, only this one looked more like a corridor than an actual cavern.
“Oh my god,” Ryul pointed behind her, fear radiating through his eyes.
She turned around, her hands already reaching for her daggers. But what she saw wasn’t something that could be attacked. It was far worse.
A glass wall stood strong and on the other side was a snow-white room, with a large green sphere in the middle. The sphere stood the entire height of the room and had pipes and tubes extending out of it and into the walls.
“What the hell is that?” Avon asked.
“That, my dear Thanonian,” Idhren peered through the glass. “Is the H.U.L.K.”
“The H.U.L.K?”
“It is a very interesting,” he paused. “Contraption.”
“Sire!” a man ran out of the darkness.
There’s an exit here, Elizabeth realized. The possibility of escape had been validated. All she had to do was figure out how she’d do it. She immediately felt a strong weight on her shoulders, as though the air was pushing her down. She turned around and saw that all the Thanonians were held down as well. Her eyes caught the powerful glow emanate from the orb atop Idhren’s staff.
He’s holding us down, she realized, and that meant they weren’t going anywhere until he let them.
The Getafixian man leaned close to Idhren and Elizabeth strained to listen to their conversation, managing to use her suit to amplify their voices.
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“What is wrong?” Idhren said, his gaze still fixated on the H.U.L.K.
“The stealth ship Commander Carlos and Q were in was destroyed by the Thanonians.”
Elizabeth’s heart nearly burst.
No, she thought. Please. Not them too.
“Have they been killed?” Idhren asked, as though he didn’t really care.
“Both the Commander and Q are alive. The cadets we sent though have lost all bio signals and have been declared dead. But one of the cadet’s comm. devices seems to have broken off and nestled in Commander Carlos’ clothing. It relayed back something very interesting.”
He took out a high-tech tablet, and noise started to flow from it.
“Take them away,” a voice said. “We will have these men tell us all they know.”
The sound of metal handcuffs clinking came through.
“General Za’ad,” a voice said, and this time Elizabeth knew exactly who it was.
Carlos.
“I know.” Carlos said.
“You know?” the other voice asked. “You know what?”
“Prince Ryul.”
She could hear Idhren’s breathing aggravate. He grabbed the tablet and smashed it against the ground. “ARGH,” he yelled out.
The Getafixian man trembled, and averted eye contact with the High Priest.
“God damn men. Messing up my plans completely.”
“What is wrong, sire?” one of the men in hoods asked.
“Commander Carlos knows of our plans. Call the palace and ask them to check for possible hacks in the system.”
“Yes, sire,” two men bowed and ran into the darkness.
“If Carlos was aware of Prince Ryul’s captivity, he must have found out about project ZeQuest.”
“It’s highly likely, Sire. Project ZeQuest is the only file that has the details of Prince Ryul and Nakiri. If Commander Carlos were able to find one thing out, he probably knows them all.”
“Do we still have access to the comm device?”
“No, Sire. It seems to have fallen off.”
“Fine. See if Falael can be contacted, and make sure you do not use him for our plans. That man does not know of Project ZeQuest.”
“Yes, Sire.”
Idhren rubbed his eyes, “This means those Thanonian idiots won’t carry out the kill order.”
Kill order? her eyes widened. What is he talking about?
“What do we do for the H.U.L.K then, Sire?”
“I’ll take care of that,” he flicked his staff. The deluge of wind came again, encompassing all of them in darkness and when it stopped they had teleported to another spot.
Elizabeth found herself in a chair and tried to stand up, but immediately realized she’d been bound to it. Idhren had teleported her straight into the chair. The next thing she realized was that her suit had been deactivated. She had no clue how but it had gone back to bracelet form and was now wrapped around her wrist.
Even though she didn’t have the air regulator she usually had in her helmet, she breathed in regularly, armed with the knowledge that the Armorican atmosphere, much like her home planet, and Earth, had an adequate amount of oxygen present.
“Welcome,” she heard Idhren’s voice from the darkness in front of her. “To what I call the Harvest room.”
A sole light on the ceiling turned on, illuminating a table underneath it. Idhren stood next to the table, his hand touching a machine that hovered over it.
Oh god, fear struck in Elizabeth’s mind.
The cave walls, the metal chairs, the tables and the machines.
She knew what this place was.
“Ready the extraction engine,” he said and looked down at the table.
Elizabeth saw that a white-haired, elfish boy lay there, bound by his cuffs.
This can’t be happening, Elizabeth’s mind went into turmoil, waves of anger and anguish washing upon her all at once.
“We thank you for your sacrifice,” Idhren said, “Prince Ryul.”
***
5-3
“This is not fun at all,” Q squirmed in the pilot seat, his eyes locked onto the view screen in front of him.
“We’re trying to prevent a genocide,” Carlos said from the seat next to him. “If this were fun, then there would have to be something very wrong with what we’re doing.”
“Fine, fine,” he grumbled. “Deploy manual pilot.”
The panel in front of him split open and a semicircular steering wheel, extended out. To the left of the pilot wheel was a screen that Carlos was furiously tapping on, his hands flying through the air.
“It’s bad enough that we have to get stuck in a stealth ship the size of a tin can, do you have to throw your hands around every few seconds?”
“No space to type, and also,” he paused as he typed something out. “No time to talk.”
“Ugh,” Q said and turned his attention back to the view screen. The white clouds beneath them parted and gave way to the green plains of Armorica’s capital city.
“Enable heat scans, radius two miles.”
A screen at his side shifted images, bringing up a heat scan with all the hot and cold spots. He noticed hundreds of small red spots littered around below them.
“There are a ton of civilians down there,” he said. “It won’t be good if the Getafixians attack us head on in such a spot.”
“Mmmhmm,” his brother said, his hands still blazing through the screen.
Q got that Carlos was hacking into the palace’s network, but did that mean he couldn’t even reply to any other question? First of all, Q found it really hard and frankly, weird, to accept that the Getafixians were the villains here. It’d be such a waste to have such cool hot springs and end up being the villain.
He didn’t get why it’d be a waste but he just agreed with himself on it. The end matter was, this was quite an insane mission for him to be carrying out. The only reason he was okay with it was because his now silent brother was confident as to what was going on in Armorica’s shadows.
“Got it,” Carlos yelled, and his screen glowed with a green dialog box.
“Force field around the palace won’t go back up for now?”
“It can’t go back up until I let it,” he grinned.
“Great. Does General Za’ad know you took it down?”
“He knows where to look to see if it’s down or not. However, right now we have a bigger mission at stake.”
“This ship has the coordinates he gave us right?”
“Yeah,” his screens shifted to the ship’s interface and he scrolled through. “Yeah, we’re on course. We’ve got to get to the Vlar mountains.”
“Where exactly…” a dark shadow ran across Q’s face. “What the hell?”
A dark cluster of clouds appeared before them, their shades nearly as dark as those on Thanos. They didn’t seem dangerous, but he didn’t want to head into them.
“The Vlar Mountains are just behind those clouds,” Carlos said.
Q let the ship head into it, and it trembled from the high speed winds it had to face.
“It’s only a little further,” Carlos said, and likewise, the trembling stopped and the clouds grew thinner.
On the other side of it all lay a sight of mystic beauty.
A vast plain ran along the ground with a crystal clear river between it and a beautiful mountain range. Green grass stretched all around the plains right up till the river banks. A tinge of mist floated over the water and flowed onto the plains, making everything look ethereal and mystic all at once.
The ship shook again, this time the disturbance coming from seemingly nowhere.
“Damn it,” Carlos spat.
“What’s wrong?”
The ship went into a barrel roll, tossing Q up and down over and over again. When it finally subsided, he wasn’t in the ship anymore. He felt cold rocks under his fingers, and he looked up dazed, at a tall figure in a white gown.
“Hello, my boy,” Idhren said. “Yo
u’re just in time.”
Screams of pain and anguish filled Q’s ears. To his right he could see Elizabeth on the verge of tears, trying desperately to not look at something behind Idhren. He picked himself up and jumped back, putting good distance between him and Idhren. And then he saw it.
Around ten metal arms were swirling around on a table behind Idhren. He could see very little except for the pale thin arms that flew around the air, as though fighting the tentacles.
Torture, he realized.
“Ah yes, he is bearing the pain for a good cause,” Idhren said.
Q bent low and swung his arms forward. A wave of electricity materialized through the air and headed right at Idhren. The High priest lifted his staff, and the crystal orb glowed. Winds ran in from everywhere, creating a barrier against the wave. But Q’s wave smashed through it and hit the metal arms head on, electrocuting all of them and shutting them down.
“This one won’t be so lucky,” Idhren had swiftly moved over to Elizabeth, and now had his staff around her neck.
“Wind is a sharp weapon,” he said and a flick of wind shot past Q, shallowly cutting his finger.
“Stop it, Idhren,” Carlos emerged from behind the table. He had bruises on his legs and face, as though he’d taken the harder route in.
“Hello, Commander. Are you glad I teleported you here?” he smiled.
“Leave the girl alone.”
“You know I cannot do that. She’s a hostage.”
“All you need is energy for the H.U.L.K. bomb,” Carlos said. “You don’t need her.”
“Well, yes. I do need energy for my bomb. But now that you revoked my kill order. I do need her.”
“Why in the world do you need her if all you want is energy?!”
Q’s eyes went wide, his heart beat faster. He understood it all. Why Idhren wanted a kill order. Why he needed it for the bomb. What that machine was.
“You,” he glared at Idhren. “You despicable creatures.”
The High Priest smiled, as though he were amused that Q had figured it out.
“You’re planning to use life energy to fuel the bomb aren’t you?”
“My, my,” Idhren said. “Children are so much smarter these days.”
ZeQuest: A Space Opera Mystery Novella (The Quest Saga Science Fiction Adventure Series Book 2) Page 9
