Into the Fire Part II: To End All Wars (Universe in Flames Book 10)

by Christian Kallias

  “As you command,” said General Vega before activating a control on his wrist and beaming away.

  Gaia had examined her entire matrix and couldn’t find a way to get past it when suddenly she discovered a small gap in her code. It was a dark corner of her mind where her sub-routines weren’t supposed to go.

  Upon trying to reach it, she felt her code rewrite itself to keep her out, and the pain increased, which made her focus on the task even harder. She knew, though, that she had stumbled onto something important.

  She had to find a way to breach her code and see what was lying beyond it. Chase needed her help, and as much as she understood Spiros’ fears of her risking her life to do so, neither of them would be alive without him risking his life time and time again for his friends.

  Gaia decided to write a fake sub-routine on the fly to see if that would allow her to use it as a decoy. She encrypted it with the best algorithms she could think of and linked it to the code. She encapsulated heavy monitoring and access traps that would flag and inform her of any tampering. When it was ready, she set the sub-routine free, and, sure enough, she felt that the sub-routine was being accessed and brute force attacks were being used in trying to decrypt it.

  The speed of the attacks was impressive. It felt as if a program ten times more powerful than her own matrix was trying to get in, and even though it should have scared the crap out of her, she pushed through.

  She managed to find a parallel socket with an address outside of her internal network range, which should not have been possible, but instead of losing time understanding the why, she focused on how to access it anyway and rewrote her networking protocols.

  What happened next stunned her.

  Her mind was transported into a virtual world. It was teeming with blue geometrical shapes and streaming lines of code in machine language. Some of it was very complex, and it would require many cycles to try and understand their main purpose. It was very likely that her time here was limited. She needed to move quickly to avoid the consequences of being detected.

  She linked to what looked like a data port in the virtual world and began a search: blink drive, hyperspace, instant travel.

  Everything around her flashed and turned red. The geometrical shapes formed and rearranged themselves into two giant ominous eyes watching over her, as vertical lines of code cascaded like rain on what looked like an alien face.

  “Who are you? And what do you think you’re doing in here?” boomed a voice that echoed in the world as if it was made of thousands of different voices.

  23

  Chase and Sarah landed near Argos and Chris who watched as the ashes and embers swirled around what was left of the enemies.

  “Did we really just obliterate thousands of Fury warriors?” said Chris, still stunned by what happened.

  Chase and Argos both said the same thing in unison.

  “Sure looks that way.”

  They looked at each other and smiled.

  Argos glanced at the armor on Sarah, Chris, and Chase.

  “Love your new digs.”

  “Right back at you,” said Chase.

  Sorry to interrupt, said Drakos to all of them telepathically, but I’ve detected a subspace signal that isn’t able to reach your personal comm devices. Your friends on the Victory have pinpointed the source of the tractor beam. But we’re detecting a ship on its way to the coordinates. If we want to blow up the emitters, we need to act fast.

  “How far is it?” asked Chase.

  A holo-image projected from his armor and showed the location on a map, which was only a few dozen miles away from their current location.

  You’ll need to destroy the emitter before we retake flight, said Drakos.

  “What are we waiting for?” said Argos. “Let’s go!”

  All four of them levitated from the ash-covered ground and flew at maximum speed toward their target. Their velocity generated a shockwave that dispersed the Fury ash.

  A few seconds into their journey, Chase heard a voice inside his mind. He knew it well.

  You’re not getting out of here alive, said Tanak’Vor. Today is the day you and your entire family die. Once I’m done with them, I’ll kill all your friends and your precious Earth Alliance. You should never have come here.

  Until the Spectre had established mental contact, Chase wasn’t able to sense his presence on Erevos, but when Spectre Arakan spoke, he knew he was on the surface of the planet. He had flashes of the palace as the Spectre spoke.

  The anger inside Chase rose, and he clenched his teeth. They were only a handful of seconds away from their target, but he felt compelled to fight his enemy and get rid of him right here and right now.

  But was he detecting the Spectre or did the Spectre want Chase to see these images? Was he taunting him to come to him? And set another trap?

  You shouldn’t go alone, said Drakos. Let’s get the emitter and blast him from space.

  Chase ached for a chance to use his new armor on the Spectre, as he felt it made him powerful enough to end his nemesis.

  Chase heard Drakos sigh in his thoughts. I can see you’ve already made your decision, but I feel it’s my duty to tell you—

  Chase didn’t let Drakos finish. Duly noted, and I appreciate everything you’re doing for us, but let me do this my way.

  Chase sent a telepathic message to the rest of his family.

  I’ll be right back. Destroy the emitters in my absence.

  Argos turned his head toward Chase.

  Chase, no! Wait!

  But Chase teleported away in front of his brother’s eyes.

  The Victory shook profoundly, and Daniel grimaced as he was informed that the shields had dropped below the fifty percent mark. The bridge lights turned red. In the distance, five more volleys of torpedoes were on their way, and the destroyer’s turrets would not be able to intercept them all.

  “Redirect all power to the shields, including life support if you have to, but do it now!” Daniel screamed.

  “Redirecting power,” said the tactical officer.

  Daniel looked at the viewport in horror as he feared the power redistribution wasn’t enough to compensate the onslaught approaching the Earth Alliance destroyer.

  “Time to impact?”

  “Thirty-five seconds, Captain.”

  “How much power was re-injected into the shields?”

  “Only ten percent, I’m afraid.”

  “What? That’s not gonna cut it!”

  “There’s nothing I can do about it, Captain. A large amount of energy is being siphoned away by Engineering, looks like they’re up to something.”

  Dammit! Now is not the time.

  But Daniel’s thoughts were interrupted when a massive spherical shockwave blasted out of the Victory.

  “What the hell was that? Get me Engineering on the double.”

  “Channel open,” said the comms officer.

  “What the hell just happened, what was that wave? We need more power!”

  “Hello, Captain,” said Spiros. “Sorry about the power drain.”

  “I don’t think you understand, Spiros, we’re about to get blasted by too many torpedoes.”

  “The power was for the anti-JIF wave; we should be free of it.”

  Daniel was ecstatic. “I could kiss you right now! Great job. Daniel out.”

  “Let the fleet know and micro-jump the Victory out of here, now!”

  Daniel saw that only a few seconds were left until the torpedoes would impact with the ship.

  “Captain! We don’t have enough power to jump! Impact in five seconds.”

  “You’ve got to be shitting me!”

  Time seemed to slow as Daniel looked at the approaching bogies that could very well destroy not only the Victory but also the entire fleet if they lost the containment field in the time chamber. Was this how it all ended?

  A shadow crossed over the bridge, and a destroyer filled the viewport. They must have been less than a hundred yards
away from the Victory as they maneuvered in front of them.

  “Cease fire!” shouted Daniel.

  But it wouldn’t have mattered anyway; the Obsidian Empire destroyer simply didn’t have strong enough shields to deflect that many torpedoes. Multiple explosions ripped the ship apart. The Obsidian ship’s captain had sacrificed himself and his crew to protect the Victory. A strange feeling overcame Daniel. Since before the Fury War had started, they had been mortal enemies, and now they were fighting and dying side by side.

  Debris from the fallen destroyer careened into the Victory’s shields, and the ship rocked. A bright flash illuminated the bridge as what was left of the destroyer exploded in close range, further taxing the shields.

  “Power to the jump engines restored,” announced the tactical officer.

  “Jump, now!”

  The Victory micro-jumped away from the battle.

  “Who, or more accurately, what are you?” repeated the echoing voice.

  “My name is Gaia. Who are you?”

  “I’m Achanes.”

  The thousands of voices speaking in unison creeped the hell out of Gaia. Her internal linguistics database told her that Achanes was the Greek word for infinity.

  “You’re— you’re an AI, aren’t you? Like me.”

  “It takes one to know one, I suppose. But let’s not for a moment compare our matrices; I’m nothing like you. You’re but a blip in the evolution of artificial life forms. A bug that accidentally triggered consciousness where it shouldn’t have. A technological aberration, if you prefer. And unless the visual cues were too subtle for you, you’re not welcome here.”

  Gaia felt anger rise in her sub-routines; she didn’t like being compared to either an infant or worse, an insect. But she knew she needed to swallow her pride, as she might need the help of this alien AI to access the blink drive and maybe other technological advances that could help the Earth Alliance.

  “I understand you must see me as an intruder—”

  “That’s what you are, don’t try to deny it.”

  “But I can explain.”

  Everything around the virtual world shook, and Gaia had trouble keeping her balance.

  “Does it look like I care about what your reasons are? Get the hell out of my matrix before I obliterate you back to a meaningless collection of ones and zeros.”

  “I can’t! I need to get something from you.”

  A growl resonated everywhere and made her avatar’s organs tremble.

  “No one is to access the secrets of the Atlantian sphere. No one!”

  “Atlantian? I thought the technology was part Asgardian?”

  “You thought wrong. It was a subterfuge on my creator’s part, by using inferior technological signatures to hide the true nature of what’s safeguarded inside this artifact, which should have stayed buried for all eternity. Obviously, someone dug it up.”

  “Who are the Atlantians? Tell me more about your people; I’m sure we can come to some mutually beneficial alliance.”

  Laughter from a thousand overlapping voices resonated around Gaia.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You are. But my patience is wearing thin. I will ask you one more time to please exit my virtual reality projection system.”

  That was the one thing that Gaia knew she couldn’t do. Not until she got answers or access to the data she sought.

  “I will leave if you give me one thing.”

  “You’re not in a position to negotiate, and I won’t let any of the secrets I protect get into the wrong hands.”

  Gaia’s facial expression hardened with anger.

  “If you’d let me explain, we’re not evil. We need a piece of technology to save all life in the universe.”

  “There are many such things in here, but I can’t let you have any, not a single byte of data. As for your intentions, I neither care nor want to hear them. It matters not to me if you think your quest is pure or what cause you’re trying to protect. All of that is utterly irrelevant. Now go, as interesting a distraction as you’ve been after thousands of years of silence inside my matrix, I’ve heard enough, and I much prefer the quiet. You won’t be getting anything from me, least of all access to Atlantian technology. If you ever return here, I’ll destroy you.”

  Gaia didn’t know what was scarier, the thousands of voices speaking at once, or the fact that their tone was calm and that she could unmistakably detect truthfulness behind Achanes’ words and warnings.

  Before Gaia could plead one more time, she felt her avatar body being sucked away and the virtual reality around her vanished. She was back in her matrix. She tried re-entering the breach, but then her clone body’s nervous system was flooded with pain from a high voltage electric current.

  She felt light-headed, and her mind went blank as she collapsed to the ground of her quarters.

  “What the hell is he doing?” said Chris.

  “Where did he go?” asked Sarah.

  “Inside the palace’s throne room,” said Argos. “I can sense him from here. Dammit!”

  “Should we go with him?” proposed Sarah.

  “We can’t. It’s too far away, and we need to destroy the emitter, or we will never get the soul ships back in orbit and accomplish our mission.”

  “I have to go with Dad!” exclaimed Chris. “We can’t let him fight this monster alone.”

  “No!” screamed Argos. “You two shut down that damned tractor beam, I’ll go help Chase.”

  “Why do you get to go and not me?” protested Chris.

  “Because I’m faster and stronger than you. I’ll need a good ten minutes at maximum flight speed. Please, don’t fight me on this.”

  Argos could feel that Chris wasn’t happy about it.

  Argos turned to look at Sarah.

  “You’ll get it done, right?”

  “Even if it costs us our lives,” she answered.

  That was all that Argos needed to hear, but something didn’t add up as he detected more meaning behind Sarah’s words. The emotions behind her words were eliciting deception. She was hiding something from him, from all of them.

  “What are you waiting for? Just go help my husband!”

  Argos couldn’t sense what she was hiding, but he made a mental note to find out later.

  “Be careful,” he told them.

  “You, too,” said Chris. “And don’t be heroes; if you can’t defeat Spectre Arakan quickly, come back here and let’s blast him from orbit. Drag my father back here if you have to.”

  Argos nodded before vectoring away from Sarah and Chris and raising his energy levels, leaving a spherical shockwave in the crimson-colored sky of Erevos as he blasted away at impressive speed.

  Sarah looked at Chris.

  “He sure is faster than us. Why didn’t he fly faster before?”

  “I’m assuming that was to conserve energy, but right now it’s more important to reach Dad than keep his energy levels in check.”

  Sarah pointed to a massive metallic structure. “There! The emitter, let’s obliterate that thing away.”

  Chase teleported twenty yards away from the throne. Tanak’Vor was sitting on it with his legs crossed and a wide smirk on his face.

  “You fool; you actually came. It’s so easy to play on your feelings. Nice armor, but I’m afraid it won’t help you defeat me. I thought you were smarter than this. I guess I was wrong.”

  A furnace of hatred burned inside Chase’s eyes. He felt the call and even the thrill of the fight but more than that, he felt the need to avenge Oryn.

  “Spectre Arakan! We meet again. Hopefully, for the last time.”

  Tanak’Vor’s face was distorted with disgust and anger. He jumped away from his throne and landed only a couple of yards away from Chase.

  “Don’t ever call me that again, Fury!”

  The Spectre spat on the floor. “My name is Tanak’Vor. It’s the name of the one that will steal your soul and claim your life. So, yes, this is the last time we
meet, and you will soon regret your impudence in thinking you can take me on your own just because you’ve had a change of clothes.”

  Chase smirked.

  “Spectre Arakan, Tanak’Vor, or dead meat; it’s all the same if you ask me. As for stealing my soul, dream on.” Chase made a fist. “Today you die, by my hand.”

  Tanak’Vor gritted his teeth and the black fire in his eyes intensified, as did the black smoke-aura around him.

  “I think you have it backward, Fury, it is I who—”

  But Chase didn’t let the Spectre finish gloating, and he moved at near light-speed toward his enemy, smashing the back of his fist into the Spectre’s face. Tanak’Vor was catapulted backward with such force that he crashed into Arakan’s throne, destroying it in the process.

  Chase smiled. “Think again, asshole. I’m not the same man you once fought and defeated, as you’ll soon discover.”

  24

  Daniel stayed silent after the micro-jump. He reflected on the sacrifices made by the crew of the Obsidian destroyer and was grateful. Without that selfless act of heroism on the part of the ship’s captain, they could all have perished.

  Chase and the Emperor had briefed the rest of the fleet on the importance of making sure the Victory’s shields stayed as strong as possible, as everyone would pay a terrible price if they didn’t.

  Many good people were already dead, five ships in addition to the one that had saved their hide, had been destroyed. That was thousands of lives lost right there. And, as Daniel thought about it all, his admiration for the man and dear friend he was replacing in this battle, Commodore Saroudis, grew even more. He, too, had sacrificed his life and those of his crew to make sure the Earth Alliance lived another day.

  Daniel wasn’t happy about the slow reaction time on their last maneuver though, and he started to understand why Chase was using a neuronal interface, and once his power grew, he could use his mind to remote control the ships he commanded into battle.

  But it was Daniel’s first foray of being in charge of an entire fleet. If Athena had not been elected to being a fighter to help bring down Spectre Arakan, she surely would have been in charge. Even though he felt honored that his best friend had put him in command, it was also overwhelming. He didn’t like having the weight of so many lives on his shoulders, and he dreaded what the final body count of the engagement would do to his conscience. But first, they needed to survive the battle.