AcQuest: A Space Opera Military Technothriller (The Quest Saga Science Fiction Adventure Series Book 3)

by Anbajagane, Dhayaa

  Kai-2 had a wide smirk on his face, like he was telling Kai that he should be honored to be killed by his hand. Kai knew the Brain was using his memories, but he could not for the love of him see how the Brain had reasoned that Kai-2 should be given an attitude like this.

  Kai was pretty worried about his time limit too. Trish has said he would have five minutes to hack into the Brain, and he was sure he was very close to breaching his time limit.

  “Do not worry,” the Brain’s voice echoed. “The time in this realm passes by much quicker than the real world. I will ensure your five minutes are not up before you end this challenge.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr.Brain,” Kai chuckled and focused on his opponents. Now he could take his own time and plan his path to victory.

  Kai-2 looked at Chris and nodded. She lifted her sword into the air and sank it into the ground. As soon as the tip hit the hard surface, a huge wave of light emerged. Kai shielded his eyes from the bright radiation. When the light died down, Chris and Kai-2 were gone. The scenery had changed too.

  Kai was now in a multi-scenery battlefield. He was in a desert and to his right and left were a forest, and an ocean. There was no way the two would have reached the forest in time, and the ocean didn't seem like a place they’d choose. That left only one route left.

  Up.

  Kai threw his head back and saw a black silhouette against the shining sun, its size rapidly increasing. He instinctively held his sword up and a blade clashed into it with incredulous force. It took all Kai’s strength to just misdirect it to his side. The strangest part was that Kai-2 wasn't the one who’d delivered the blow. It was Chris.

  He didn't know that Chris was this strong but then again, the Brain could have enhanced everyone’s abilities. Technically that meant that Kai-2 was everything that Kai was, but better. He wasn’t worried about that though. The Brain was using his friends as opponents. There was just one person he was really worried about. A dangerous one.

  Kai blocked the fierce blows from Chris’ sword, the clashing sound of metal leaving a coarse ringing in his ears. They fought back and forth, slowly moving to the edge of the forest. Kai jumped back a few meters to get out of Chris’ range and take a breather. She was fighting a little too well for his liking.

  He heard rustling coming from the bushes behind him. Kai-2 pushed apart the low branches and walked out coolly without a weapon on him. Kai was starting to hate this duplicate more and more. Where did that guy get this kind of attitude?

  Kai-2 raised his hand. A million bits of gray came out of nowhere and wrapped around his arm. In seconds his arm had transformed into a huge black sword that extended from his shoulder. He slashed it at the air on his side, kicking up a gust of wind that pushed Kai back.

  Kai-2 ran at Kai and landed a flurry of attacks. Kai managed to deflect the blows but the immense power of the strikes kept pushing him back.

  I need to get out of this, and fast, Kai thought.

  Kai-2 suddenly stopped mid-strike crouched to the ground. Before Kai knew what was going on Chris had jumped over Kai-2 and had her sword pointed right at him. Kai pulled his sword up to block her strike, but she dropped her sword to the ground instead and punched Kai hard in the stomach.

  Kai managed a weak parry and pushed her pack. He stumbled away from Kai-2 and Chris’s immediate striking range. He knelt onto the ground and held his stomach. Chris had completely knocked his breath out of him.

  “If I die in here does the real me die as well?” Kai yelled out, hoping that the Brain would hear him.

  The Brain’s laughter echoed through the silent air. “We shall find out.”

  ***

  Kai desperately needed a break. Chris and Kai-2 were relentlessly coming after him. He fended off Chris’ strike and jabbed towards her arm. He was inches away from a strike, but he retracted his sword. His chest felt heavy, “Stupid feelings,” he muttered.

  He looked at Chris’ emotionless face. He knew this wasn't the real Chris, that she was nothing but a stupid imitation.

  Then why do I want to protect her? he thought. Okay. Concentrate, he scolded himself.

  Kai-2 and Chris charged at him. Kai knew he couldn't face both of them simultaneously. He needed to buy some time to figure out a plan. He looked around for a possible hiding spot. The thick jungle behind him was the only one he could use. He rushed into the greenery with his pursuers right behind him.

  “Hide. Run. What’s the use?” the Brain said.

  “Shut up,” Kai said. “I’m in the middle of running for my life.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  “I thought I asked you to shut up,” Kai said.

  The Brain didn't bother him after that. Maybe it felt offended.

  Kai focused on putting as much distance as possible from Kai-2 and Chris. He sped away at full throttle, calming down only when the faint sound of footsteps faded away into the background. He found it surprising that he was outrunning those two, considering that Chris had always been faster and Kai-2 was a genetically superior version of him. He hid himself behind a tree and concentrated on the situation.

  What would Q do? he thought.

  Q only had one final gambit to every problem he faced. Create a devastating explosion.

  An explosion, he grinned. He had found a way out. He held out his hands with palms facing the ground. He reached deep within him and tried to summon his energy. All he needed to do was find a few metals.

  Kai let go of the thoughts and focused on the task at hand. For a few moments nothing happened. He realized that he wasn't drawing out enough power and focused deeper within himself. He concentrated on every emotion that he was feeling. Hatred. Fear. Anger. Every trickle and drop he could find. Everything.

  “This battle is getting boring,” the Brain said. “Let’s make it a little more entertaining.”

  “What are you trying to do?” he said, his voice cold and harsh.

  “It shall be marvelous.”

  That didn't sound good. Kai heard the rustling of leaves coming from above him. He looked up to see Kai-2 and Chris slide down from the nearby trees. He realized he had never lost them. On the contrary, they had been right behind him all along.

  Kai sighed in remorse. Maybe this really wasn't a winnable battle. He focused on his opponents, expecting an attack at any moment, but surprisingly, Kai-2 walked towards Chris instead.

  Kai wondered what they were going to do now.

  “Watch,” the Brain said, a scent of excitement in his voice.

  Kai realized that something big was going to happen. He held onto the hilt of his sword and alerted his senses. Kai-2 swung his arm and hit Chris with the flat of his blade. She flew straight into a tree. Her emotionless face suddenly flooded with pain. She held her arm and groaned in pain.

  His watched in horror as Kai-2 walked towards Chris, his blade threatening to do more than just bruise her. Kai’s mind flooded with emotions. She might not be his Chris but he couldn’t let this Chris be hurt, whether she was his friend or not.

  His body started glowing. He could feel the power surging through him. He could feel an immense amount of anger swelling up inside him.

  No one was allowed to hurt her.

  No one.

  “Yes!” the Brain exclaimed, “Unleash your true potential.”

  Kai-2 lifted up Chis’ chin using the tip of his blade. Her eyes were dull and blank. She wasn't even trying to fight back to live. Kai tried hard to fight back tears. His inner voice yelled out at her, asking her to fight, asking her to live.

  Kai-2 drew his hand back as far as he could. He paused for a moment and smirked at Kai with a look of pure evil. Kai charged at his clone but it was too late. The cheap imitation drove his blade straight through Chris.

  She coughed hard, her breathing turning loud and frantic. And then it stopped.

  She glowed with a blue light and her body dissolved into a sparkly powder, floating away in the wind. Kai grasped at bits of the glowing powder but
they disappeared as soon as they touched his hand.

  This is just an illusion, he told himself, this isn’t the real Chris

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He threw his arm up to the sky and the ground around him trembled.

  Kai could feel the air around him heat up, his hand went completely numb. A tornado swirled around him, made of nothing but specks of metal from the ground. They all converged into his hand, and reassembled themselves. Kai jumped out of the twister, a gray sword in either hand, the sharp blades spouting electric sparks all along their surfaces.

  Kai flipped them both in the air to check their weight and balance. “Just perfect,” he grinned.

  Kai-2 looked at him in horror.

  “That’s right, kiddo,” Kai said. “My turn.”

  He jumped into the air and rammed the blades into the ground. A huge tremor exploded, and shook the forest. Kai-2 desperately tried to stay on his feet, going as far as to jump high up into the air to escape from the vibrating ground. Kai took advantage of the situation and surged at him, catching him in mid-air, and throwing him to the ground.

  He landed softly onto the ground and turned around. Kai-2 lay in the middle of a mini crater, his body wounded and weak from the immense power of the blow.

  “Work on that attitude,” Kai said and slashed at Kai-2. The sword went right through the clone, disintegrating him into sparkly powder. A shiver went down Kai’s spine. He had just killed himself. That wasn’t something you did every day, or even once for that matter.

  “Final level,” the Brain’s voice echoed through the air.

  Oh god, he thought. He had been ready for this from the moment he had battled Carlos. Well, he had tried to be ready. Was he actually ready? No.

  “Hello there,” a voice said.

  A boy emerged from the shadows amongst the trees. Kai cowered in the powerful aura radiated from him.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “I am Q, the Wielder of Light.”

  ***

  Q was well aware that the Anti-verse was a copy of his Universe. He was aware that the Anti-verse would house copies of people he knew in his Universe. But all that still didn’t prepare him for the situation he now found himself in.

  He stared at the blond-haired, blue-eyed girl who stood in front of him. “Taylor?” he asked.

  “Yes. I told you already. My name is Taylor Quasar.”

  “But… I… How?” he stuttered.

  She looked at him in confusion, “Did you not say something about your friends?”

  Q immediately shifted towards Burke and Jade, “We’ve got to go help them,” he said.

  “Cadets march ahead!” Taylor said and turned to Q, “Lead us to your friends.”

  He took them through the tunnel, until he came to the opening he had fallen through accidentally.

  “We’ll have to go up there,” Q said. The Hoods spread out their arms and chanted. The air around solidified and lifted them upwards. The Hoods put Q back up on the surface, and he could see the towering stature of Jade at a distance.

  “They’re only a little further away,” he said and ran forward. Burke and Jade lay in the exact same position as Q had seen them before he left. Not a good sign.

  “Great Neutrons! What happened to them?” Taylor asked.

  “The Griffin took a direct hit from a missile.”

  “A missile?”

  “Is...um.. something wrong?” Q asked. “The missiles were from Aliea’s defenses weren't they?”

  “Aliea does not have any planetary defenses.”

  “Then where did the missiles come from?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  A few Hoods ran over to Burke and Jade.

  Burke had stopped muttering ‘doughnuts’ over and over again and switched to saying ‘cupcakes’ instead.

  Ten Hoods formed a circle around Jade. Q wondered what they were going to do. They thrust out their hands with their palms sideways, facing Jade. A purple barrier formed under Jade and they lifted their hands up slowly, raising it from the ground and lifting the griffin along with it. Q found that to be pretty impressive. Two other Hoods held onto Burke, and another two held onto Q.

  “Back to the academy,” Taylor said.

  The Hoods used their Elementa of Wind to fly Jade, Burke, and Q back to Aliea. Once they reached there, the Hoods wasted no time and took Burke and Jade into what Q assumed to be the infirmary. The building itself seemed like it had faced a pretty big explosion. One side of the wall had collapsed completely, making it tilt to one side.

  Q looked around at the other buildings in this Anti-verse version of Aliea. He found it sad that the building they used for the infirmary was actually the best looking one. All that remained of most of the other buildings were but a few bricks and some debris.

  “What happened here?” he asked.

  Taylor turned towards him, “A certain devastating event.”

  “Man, you’re just like the Taylor I know,” Q muttered.

  “The Taylor you know?” she raised her eyebrow.

  “Yeah, The Taylor from my Universe,” he said.

  “Ah, I see. You are from a parallel Universe?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And this Taylor from your Universe. Is she similar to me?”

  “She’s just like you. She never tells me anything and-”

  “Well, it does seem likely that we would be copies of each other.”

  “-interrupts me as well.”

  Q swore he saw a smile on Taylor’s lips.

  A Hood walked up to her, “Commander, we have treated the two casualties. No severities found whatsoever,” he saluted and left.

  Q was amused at the saluting hood, and then he realized something.

  “You’re the Commander?” he asked.

  “Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Harder than you think.” He wondered what kind of part Carlos played in the Anti-verse then. “Do you, by any chance, know a guy named Carlos?” he asked.

  Taylor thought for a while. “The name does not strike me as one I have heard before,” she said.

  Q’s heart tightened. This place wasn't like his Universe at all. Only the people in it were the same. The situations were all so different. He felt an impending need to shift topics. “Can you find out if Burke was treated?” he asked.

  “Do you sense disloyalty among my people?” her voice boomed. If her eyes were like lightning, then her voice was like thunder, domineering and defiant.

  “No, I was just wondering,” Q said cheerfully.

  “Very well,” she said. “Elizabeth!”

  Q stumbled. Elizabeth? he thought.

  A Hood ran to Taylor. This one seemed different from the one who came before. She was shorter and much thinner. Her brown hair jutted out of the hooded robe in a short ponytail.

  This is Elizabeth before she matured into a winged Seraphian, he realized. The Seraphians all looked like regular humans until they hit the peak of adolescence, where they would undergo drastic physical transformations, the prime one being the addition of wings.

  “What of the scientist?” Taylor asked.

  “The last I heard he wanted some sort of food,” Elizabeth said.

  Q controlled his urge to laugh.

  “And of his wounds?”

  “There were none at all.”

  “Was he treated then?”

  “The mages have provided him an energy suit to rest with ease in our world.”

  Q felt relieved. The Hoods seemed to be quite knowledgeable about stuff like this. Well, they were the former Aliea academy after all. Q flicked his wrist, and felt his energy suit around Burke dissipate. He sighed in relief. It felt good to not use up all that energy.

  “You may take your absence,” Taylor said and Elizabeth left.

  “Q!” yelled a voice.

  Q turned around to see Burke running towards him with about ten Hoods chasing right after him. He put his arms around Q and hugged him tight
ly, almost crushing him with his bear arms.

  “I’m glad to see you too,” Q gasped for breath.

  Taylor sent off the Hoods who had chased after Burke, “Come, let us get you two a place to rest.” She took them to a small room in a worn out building. Q found it quite rural compared to the amazing and lavish rooms they had back in Aliea, but it was still better than talking in the desert land outside Aliea.

  “Just what happened to this place?” Burke asked.

  Taylor walked to the window and looked out. This time she didn't seem like she would refrain from providing an answer.

  “This place, Zygrade, used to be a wonderful planet. Mainly because of the Academy of course,” she said and turned around. “One day, we faced an intruder. He attacked us with a massive warship.”

  Warship? Q thought. This scenario seemed eerily familiar to the one back home.

  She sighed deeply, “He and his army surprised us completely and took over the academy. But we did not accept our fate. We rebelled, revolted and finally won. But in the end we had lost what we had fought so hard to protect. The battle had been so intense that Aliea was completely obliterated, lost forever.”

  “Just who were those people?” Burke asked.

  “We do not know who they were but they were a powerful adversary. Some of their allies stayed back on this planet. What for, I will never know.”

  Q felt an uncanny resemblance between what had happened here and what was going on back home in Aliea. All the more reason for him to try as hard as he could to stop the Aliea back home from turning in the sight that lay before him.

  “These allies of the enemy must have been the ones who fired those missiles at us,” Burke said.

  Q nodded in agreement. It seemed to be the most likely possibility.

  “It has to be those fiends,” Taylor nodded. “They must have thought you to be our allies and fired at you. They will do anything to take Aliea back from us.”

  Q looked around. He didn't have the heart to tell Taylor that this destroyed version of Aliea didn't seem like a place people would fight over. Instead he found something more constructive to ask.

  “If they’re on this planet why don’t you go after them?” he asked. If the Hoods went after the so called ‘Allies of whoever invaded Aliea’ then they would ensure peace for a long time to come.