Universe in Flames – Ultimate 10 Book Box Set: An Epic Space Opera Adventure

by Christian Kallias

  “R-run,” said Tassos, just before his neck was crushed.

  Ignoring the physical pain, Spiros jumped back to his feet and started to run.

  He dared not look back but heard heavy footsteps behind him, and they were gaining. What was he to do against such a monster? The fear of death gave him more energy and stamina than he ever thought possible. He ran faster than he ever had before, but he didn’t know where to go, or if he could escape the beast that was still gaining on him. His mind filled with dread and horrid flashes of his impending doom.

  The command center’s entrance was being pounded upon from the outside. The thick metal doors deformed more with each powerful impact. Animalistic growls accompanied the unceasing pounding. The doors would soon break.

  “Draw your weapons. Use your consoles for cover,” said Leonidis.

  Leonidis drew his service blaster pistol and aimed it at the middle of the doors, his heart pounding and his hands slightly trembling.

  He had been in firefights before, but not against tall lizard beasts that seemed to have impenetrable skin. He had witnessed their unnatural strength and agility in the holo-footage he reviewed from the multiple boarding parties as his security teams engaged the enemy. These encounters hadn’t lasted very long, and the Zarlacks had brutally murdered the entire crew of Damocles-3 that came to stop their advance. Their blaster tech was superior. Their natural scaly armor was thick enough to deflect Star Alliance portable guns, and they also used claws to impale their enemies. When that wasn’t enough, they also slashed their tails to incapacitate or even behead Star Alliance personnel.

  Leonidis knew he and every one of his crew was living their last moments. He wanted to say something, to reassure them, but he couldn’t find any words that would make a damn bit of difference. They were about to be slaughtered and, as much as he was hoping for a miracle, he knew better than to give false hope to the women and men under his command.

  He touched his implanted comm-link and tried reaching Spiros, but he still couldn’t get a signal through. Hopefully, Spiros had departed from the station, though Leonidis’ current thoughts were more focused on his family.

  The pounding on the now badly deformed doors stopped for a moment. Leonidis saw movement through a gap in the twisted metal. Soon after, the doors exploded and were propelled forward. Flames and smoke rushed inside the command center with the smell of death in their wake.

  In the ensuing chaos, everyone blindly opened fire as a small group of lizards stormed the place. The officers’ weapons were useless against their foes, and Leonidis saw the first casualties amongst his crew, killed in a horrible fashion: beheaded by tail slashing, impaled by long, sharp claws and worse. Thirty seconds in and already half of the command center crew had perished in the midst of screams and blood-spattering chaos. A Zarlack jumped and landed right in front of Leonidis, teeth clenched, a foul stench emanating from its mouth.

  Leonidis raised his blaster and instinctively shot the beast in the eye. For the first time, he saw a blaster shot finally do some damage to these creatures. The laser bolt burned through the eyeball, and purple blood shot out of the burnt socket. The Zarlack screeched and took three swaying steps backward as it held its large hand over its lifeless eye.

  That’s got to kill it.

  “Go for their eyes,” he screamed.

  A quick glance around showed him that there was only a handful of officers still standing, including his friend and first officer Michalis Maniatis.

  The lizard beast in front of Leonidis regained its composure and unleashed an angry, deafening roar. It expelled gooey and smelly spittoons toward him from its open mouth. Leonidis aimed toward the second eye, but by the time he depressed the trigger of his blaster, the Zarlack had already protected its remaining eye with its palm. The shot burned through its flesh, but that didn’t stop it.

  Before he could line up the third shot, the Zarlack slashed its tail, hitting Leonidis’ firing hand, and sent his blaster scattering across the floor. Then a punch that felt more like a hammer blow hit Leonidis under the jaw and propelled him crashing hard into the console behind him. Shards of glass pierced his clothes and skin and lodged in his back. Leonidis screamed with pain.

  The Zarlack walked toward him and extended a long trio of sharp claws from its fist.

  This is it. Now I’m going to die.

  Leonidis glanced to the side to see if a weapon was nearby and saw the beheaded body of his communications officer, blood spilling from his clean-cut neck. The sight disgusted him but also brought rage back to the surface.

  If I must die, I’m going down fighting.

  13

  The Zarlack was gaining on Spiros and getting dangerously close. Spiros had only a handful of seconds to do something, or he would surely die.

  The thought gave him the courage to think outside the box for a technological way to save his life. He had to survive. So many people had died. He couldn’t just let himself be killed this way. If he did, their deaths would be rendered meaningless.

  While still running as fast as he possibly could, ignoring the terrible pain throughout his old body’s joints, he accessed the schematics of the corridor he was in and located a nearby juncture point where a force field could be erected. He hacked into the controls with his implants to shave off extra seconds he didn’t have, going in with authorization codes, and overlaid the exact location of the force-field generator on top of his vision so he would know exactly when to trigger it.

  Too early and he would trap himself on the wrong side or, worse, be cut in two as the field deployed. He boosted power to the generator by diverting energy from the laser batteries on this deck. Their loss wouldn’t affect the battle outside, which was already lost anyway.

  The moment he walked past the mark he had set on his HUD, he mentally activated the force field and jumped forward. He heard the force field come to life just before he crashed to the floor.

  He turned around just in time to see the Zarlack run and crash into the field and be violently ejected backward before falling on its back.

  Spiros let a long sigh escape his burning lungs. He was not in the right shape for such long efforts and was now desperately trying to catch his breath. The Zarlack lay on its back, unconscious, while Spiros took a few much-needed breaths of air.

  Leonidis grabbed the small lightblade from his belt and turned it on. The six-inch, light-blue energy blade vibrated to life. This would probably be his last move, so he had to make it count.

  The Zarlack ambled toward him, still holding a hand over its burnt eye. The other burned with hatred. It growled, and Leonidis didn’t need words to understand the beast’s call for revenge. It wanted to kill him. At least in that last moment, they had this in common. Leonidis was also determined to kill his foe.

  Leonidis sprinted toward the beast, shouting from the bottom of his lungs, which seemed to confuse his enemy, who stopped advancing. The Zarlack slashed its tail at Leonidis, and he let himself fall, using his momentum to skid on the floor between the Zarlack’s legs, effectively dodging his enemy’s tail.

  Leonidis grabbed one of his foe’s ankles with his free hand and felt the sharp scales cut through his skin. He then squatted and propelled himself toward the back of the Zarlack’s neck. Leonidis planted his lightblade at the bottom of the neckline where the scales appeared thinner. His blade shot through, and its tip emerged on the other side, piercing the Zarlack’s throat.

  The Zarlack fell hard on its knees while Leonidis held on for dear life, with his legs around the beast’s torso. The upper body of the beast angled forward, and Leonidis knew he had killed his enemy. He unlocked his feet and landed on the side of the collapsed lizard. He recovered the still-pulsating lightblade from the corpse and turned around, a look of determination in his eyes.

  “Who’s next?” he said out loud.

  He was now running on pure adrenaline and rage. His fear levels were off the charts, but he was determined to end his life on a high note an
d go down fighting until his very last breath.

  He caught a glimpse of a pair of Zarlacks converging toward his first officer.

  “Watch out, Michalis. Go for the back of their n—”

  But before Leonidis could finish his warning, the first Zarlack had punched through the lieutenant commander’s chest with its tail, while a second jumped in the air, grabbed his friend’s head and ripped it from of his body, along with Michalis’ entire spine.

  Barbaric bastards! You asshole. You’re my next kill.

  Leonidis screamed his frustration as he sprinted toward the Zarlack who had beheaded his friend, a look of utter hatred in his eyes.

  The Zarlack turned around and saw Leonidis running toward it. It threw the severed head and spine toward Leonidis who had to take a step to the side to dodge it. Some of the blood on the spine spilled onto Leonidis’ face. He wiped it with his injured hand. This spread both Michalis’ blood and his own into four red lines across his cheeks. It looked like war paint. The feeling of blood on his face strengthened his resolve. He would end the murderous beast’s life even if that were the last thing he ever did.

  Spiros stood and dusted himself off. He felt slightly better, though he still had a sharp pain in his shoulder and the mother of all head-pounding headaches.

  He couldn’t worry about that now. He had to find a way to get off the station. That’s when it hit him like a hammer. The Phoenix had stealth and a jump engine. Most shuttles on Damocles-3 didn’t. There was one larger troop-deploying shuttlecraft, but it was five decks below. He could probably make a short jump with it. But they would surely track it and destroy it. It would also take too long to reach the shuttle from his current position. The more time passed, the more Zarlacks boarded and the less freedom anyone would have to roam the station.

  Soon he would be overwhelmed and unable to get anywhere. And shortly after that, the station’s self-destruct mode would detonate and kill everyone on board, himself included.

  The Zarlack started moving again. Its tail flailed for a second before it released a muffled growl.

  This is not good.

  Spiros didn’t expect the lizard to recover so quickly. These beasts were far more resilient than they seemed.

  The Zarlack rose and shook its head. When it saw Spiros on the other side of the force field, it rushed and punched it with full strength and screeched from the pain. That didn’t stop it, though. It kept pounding on the field and even slashed its tail toward it. It then locked its frustrated gaze onto Spiros and roared.

  Spiros didn’t want to stay and test the longevity of the field, so he turned and resumed running.

  His options seemed more and more limited. He couldn’t escape the station, and he couldn’t just try to survive under the current regime, or he would get blown up by the self-destruct. There was only one thing he could do, even though it was a longshot and something he hoped he could avoid. He had to hide inside the station, at least until some backup was dispatched. But before any of that could happen, he needed to stop the self-destruct sequence.

  Fortunately, he wasn’t far from engineering, and that was the best place to execute the next part of his desperate plan.

  14

  Leonidis only had a couple of seconds to make his move. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and planted his lightblade into it. It emitted a high-pitched sound.

  Leonidis threw the extinguisher at the Zarlack, which caught the bottle-shaped projectile with its tail. It brought its tail and the whistling extinguisher near its face and removed the blade. The extinguisher exploded and threw the Zarlack to the ground.

  The blade spun in the air and Leonidis reached to grab it. One false move and he would slice all his fingers, but he grabbed the handle with a precise and fluid motion.

  He then launched himself toward the downed Zarlack and went for its eyes, but he was smashed out of the way by a slash of his enemy’s tail. He rolled on the floor and stopped against a nearby console, his head pounding.

  By the time Leonidis looked up, another Zarlack was jumping toward him. Leonidis ripped the back panel off the console, located the power source and rolled out of the way quickly enough to avoid getting crushed by a large Zarlack foot.

  Leonidis quickly jumped back on his feet and threw the lightblade toward the exposed power source of the console. The Zarlack saw the move and tried stopping the knife with his palm a couple of inches before impact. The knife impaled his hand and pierced the other side. The momentum of the throw carried the tip of the blade just far enough to make contact with the power source.

  The console exploded and took out the entire arm, shoulder and half of the face of the Zarlack, who fell dead, flat on the floor. Glass shrapnel was thrown around, and one piece perforated Leonidis’ left shoulder.

  Leonidis heard the growl of another incoming Zarlack approaching from behind. He ripped the glass from his shoulder, determined to use it to bring down his next foe.

  But almost as soon as he had the bloody shard of glass in his hand, a scaly tail wound around his neck and cut his airflow. Soon, Leonidis’ legs were no longer touching the floor.

  The Zarlack who held him by the throat brought him nearer. Razor-sharp claws extended from its fist. Leonidis fought through the pain and lack of air supply and, in a desperate move, planted the bloody glass shard into the Zarlack’s left eye.

  The lizard screamed from the pain but didn’t release its grip on Leonidis. Before Leonidis could extract the shard and go for the second eye, he felt a strong pain in his chest.

  Blood rushed upward from his chest and into the back of his throat. He spat blood uncontrollably onto the Zarlack’s tail. Leonidis looked down and saw that the Zarlack had punched through his ribcage with its hand. He felt the hand going through him and saw his own heart being ripped out with it.

  Leonidis felt dizzy and his vision blurred, though he was able to see the Zarlack close its fist, crushing his severed heart. His last thought before his entire world faded into eternal darkness was of his wife and son.

  When Spiros arrived in engineering, he was surprised to find the place empty. The engineers had probably tried to leave or hide throughout the station. Which was exactly what Spiros hoped to achieve, as well. But he needed a viable hideout; one that he could use for both short-term and long-term hiding.

  Without wasting time, he hacked into the computer core to access the self-destruct mode. A simple command override wouldn’t work. The procedure was layered with multiple security fail-safes to make sure it couldn’t be stopped once started, except with the right vocal code spoken by the station’s commander and no one else.

  Trying to run a fake vocal signature and finding the code would take too long. Spiros only had three minutes to disarm the self-destruct. That wasn’t enough time to hack the fail-safe manually especially with slow holo-control inputs. Spiros reached for a cable in his pocket and connected one end to a port on the back of his neck and the other end to the holo-console’s port.

  He closed his eyes and started hacking the Damocles-3’s main computer. Soon, he had all the CPU processing power at his fingertips. There were ninety seconds left on the clock when Spiros started hacking full force. The first three fail-safes mostly required a brute-force approach.

  The next two were slightly trickier, but Spiros had a myriad of tools to hack almost any system loaded in a hidden partition inside his implant. Being slightly paranoid by nature, having hacking tools inside his brain felt like the best way to get out of a sticky situation, if one arose.

  Spiros never thought he would be using it in such dire circumstances. The last fail-safe was the most difficult, and he was running out of time. Brute force wouldn’t work in this case. It would take too long. Forty seconds. The only way to make this work was to bypass the last power node, making sure the trigger was without power when the countdown reached its end.

  Twenty seconds.

  He located the power grid, isolated the correct zone and drilled down to find the exact no
de responsible for triggering the explosive that would set off the catalyst explosion, resulting in a systematic destruction of the station.

  Ten seconds.

  Spiros identified the power node and re-routed power around it, making sure the secondary backup circuit was also severed.

  Three, two, one, zero. Nothing happened, and Spiros let out a long sigh of relief.

  Stopping the self-destruct procedure was only part of his plan. He was still far from safe.

  15

  Spiros moved toward the back of engineering, behind the power core. He had been part of the crew that came on board to supervise the final build-up of Damocles-3. He knew everything about the station and, in this case, where the best place to hide was.

  That was in an abandoned staging room behind a series of bulkheads that ran behind the main power core. After the core was brought online, and due to the radiation in that area, it had simply been abandoned as lost space when the engineers realized it would take too much effort and energy to shield the room efficiently for it to be converted into either quarters or a depot.

  The trick now was to make it invisible to everyone else prodding in the system in the future. That meant going inside the computer, altering the blueprints, making sure to disable the sensor coverage in the area, and setting up a dedicated network. He had to redirect power there without attracting any attention if scrutiny was applied by whoever had control of the Damocles-3 computer. He also needed to install a force field around the room to prevent radiation from slowly killing him.

  He took a deep breath and started applying the changes using the entirety of the computer resources at his disposal. Right now, nobody was using it, so he had carte blanche, but that would surely change soon, so he had to hurry.