“Aphroditis is fine, thanks to your intervention. She was escorted by Fillio to an underground bunker in DC. As for drinks, I look forward to it, Chase. But Earth has been hit hard. New York, Toronto and Dallas are all gone, leveled by Zarlack ships crashing into them. It’s really bad. I will be busy for the next few hours. Hopefully I can see you when the dust settles.”
“Let me know if you need me for anything. I’ll swing by the Iron Fire for the time being.”
“That’s a good idea. I’m sure Daniel is looking forward to it. Good to see you, Chase.”
“You too, Adonis. Chase out.”
He turned off the comms.
“Friend of yours?” inquired Keera.
“Yeah, my former commanding officer.”
“And that Daniel he spoke about?”
“My dearest friend. More like a brother, really.”
She nodded. “So we’re going onto that Iron Fire ship?”
“Yes. If you don’t mind, I’d really like to see Daniel.”
“Sure. Should I come too?”
“Only if you want to.”
“Well, I’ve had it with the Valken. We’ve been cooped up in here for long enough. It would do me good to see something different.”
“Alright, let’s hail them, tell them we’re going to land in their cargo bay.”
Chase opened a channel.
“Daniel, please respond.”
“Chase?”
“Hello, buddy, yeah it’s me. It’s been a while.”
“You can say that again. When did you arrive?”
“Just now. I’m swinging by the Iron Fire aboard the Valken, requesting permission to land.”
“Permission granted. I . . . I look forward to see you, my friend.”
A shiver ran down Chase’s back. “Me too. See you shortly.”
He turned off the comms and frowned.
“What is it?” inquired Keera.
“Something. . . I think something’s wrong.”
“How can you tell?”
“I don’t know. When he hesitated, I think I felt fear in his voice.”
“You’re probably reading too much into it. I didn’t hear fear.”
“Perhaps. . .” said Chase, not convinced one bit.
Keera and Chase exited the Valken and went towards the nearest lift.
“You seem nervous,” she said.
“I am . . . There’s something . . . I don’t know what, but I feel something’s wrong.”
“Alright, I don’t know how this works, but when you’re worried I decided that I should worry as well.” She smiled.
“Be prepared for anything, just in case.”
“Alright.”
The door of the lift opened to the bridge. Daniel was standing there. He didn’t smile.
Chase walked towards him, followed by Keera, when he heard him! “Hello, brother, miss me?”
Keera turned around and, when she saw Argos, immediately drew her blaster and started firing.
Argos lifted his hand and blocked the shots. A little smoke rose from his hand. He snatched the blaster with his mind and made it explode in midair.
Chase signaled for Keera not to interfere.
She nodded in agreement, still shaken by what had happened.
“Who’s that? Already replacing Sarah?”
Chase entered rage mode, and the ship started to shake.
“Easy there. We need to talk,” said Argos.
“We have nothing to talk about. You’re a dead man walking.”
“Let’s not escalate this in front of your friends. We wouldn’t want them all spaced because of us, would we?” said Argos with a defiant smile.
As much as Chase wanted to attack Argos right here and now, he looked around the room and saw not only Daniel, but also Ryonna and Tar’Lock. One of Ryonna’s arms was seriously injured. Chase walked towards them. “Hello, you two.”
“Hi, Chase,” said Tar’Lock casually.
Ryonna just smiled painfully.
“Are you alright, Ryonna?”
“I tried to kill him for you,” answered Ryonna.
Chase smiled back. “I appreciate the gesture, my friend, but I’m glad you didn’t succeed. And even gladder he didn’t kill you. Mind if I heal this?” Chase pointed at her poorly bandaged arm.
She nodded.
Chase put his hand on her and quickly healed her wounds.
“Will you let me help?”
“No, this fight is mine and mine alone. You should go.” Chase turned around and raised his voice so everyone could hear. “You should all go, now. Get on board the Valken at once. Keera will take you down to Earth.”
“Chase,” said Daniel, “let us help.”
Chase simply shook his head. He sent a message telepathically to Daniel. I’m sorry for leaving and for what I said to you when I did. It was unfair of me. Today is the day I make it right. But I need you to get everyone of my friends out of here. Now, please!
Daniel hesitated, but then he saw the look of determination in his friend’s eyes. He nodded and addressed the room. “You heard him. Let’s go, now!”
Keera approached Chase and whispered to him. “You’ll try and leave a body as proof for the bounty, won’t you?”
“I’ll try.”
“Be careful.”
He looked into her eyes and smiled.
“Miss?” said Daniel to Keera.
“Keera. I’m coming.”
She rejoined the others in the lift. Its door slid closed.
Chase didn’t look towards Argos. Instead he kept his back to him. He felt that anger rise, the rage, the thirst to kill. Like an insatiable bloodlust. But he remembered what Ares had taught him as well. He was not going to blindly throw himself into a fit of rage. He would take this fight very seriously. But for now he needed to wait until his friends departed the ship.
Argos made a noise in his throat.
Chase raised his hand, palm outwards. When he saw the Valken in space, that was his cue. He closed his eyes, and a purple aura shone brightly around him. He saw Sarah’s face in his mind. I will avenge you.
Then he disappeared and re-appeared behind Argos, throwing a powerful knee strike, only to hit nothing but air. Argos had moved away as fast as he had arrived behind him, appearing again a few feet away.
“We need to talk!” he shouted.
“I have nothing to say to you!” Chase prepared a fireball in his right hand.
“Oh, but you’ll want to hear—”
Argos couldn’t finish his sentence because Chase had already launched the fireball at him. He blocked it with one hand, but something happened. It wasn’t that easy to block. The fireball crackled and exploded in Argos’ hand, burning it in the process.
“Not bad. I see you haven’t missed a beat during these past few months. But I’d rather you didn’t waste—”
Again Chase, having no interest in letting Argos speak, launched himself at him, throwing one blow after another, jabs, uppercuts, power punches, all blocked by Argos. But he was forced to retreat so far he was eventually backed against a wall.
Chase threw both his hands forward and unleashed a powerful, energy-based attack. Argos protected himself with his elbows crossed in front of his face. The bulkhead near where he stood exploded in a bright, flashing display, causing much damage to that part of the bridge.
When the smoke settled, Argos was still there, some of his skin slightly burned; but he seemed otherwise undamaged by the brunt of the attack.
“Alright then, if I need to kick your ass first,” he said.
His eyes shone a bright red and he launched himself at Chase. He was fast, very fast. Like Chase before him, he attacked with a flurry of punches and kicks in quick succession. Chase dodged and blocked the attacks for a good minute, when suddenly Argos’ speed increased tenfold. Chase struggled to keep up and one punch broke through his defenses. With Chase losing balance, Argos pressed his advantage and started pounding Chase heavily, left j
ab, right punch, left knee to the face, and then sent Chase flying into the wall with a powerful fireball. Chase broke three ribs on impact and groaned in pain. Argos remained where he had last attacked Chase, who took a second to heal his ribs.
“This is boring,” said Argos. “There’s not much space on this bridge. Let’s change scenery, shall we?”
Before Chase could do or say anything Argos burst through the nearest glass windows of the bridge and the ship lost pressure. Air escaped into space and Chase felt his body sucked through the hole Argos had just made. He raised a force field around himself and followed Argos into space.
11
Chase pursued Argos through space. He was approaching Earth’s atmosphere at a speed faster than any sub-light engine could provide. Both of them left an energy trail in their wake, looking like comets in the dark void of space.
Soon they entered the atmosphere, their personal force fields lighting up for a few seconds as they did. As they descended towards Earth, somewhere over Asia, they dropped their shields and started attacking each other with punches and kicks in the air, each parrying and dodging the other’s attack. A few fireballs flew here and there, not finding their targets. The ground was approaching fast. Their fighting intensified but they were evenly matched and neither took the upper hand.
They were still approaching the ground at tremendous speed, aiming a flurry of punches and kicks at one another. They didn’t even see the skyscraper in their trajectory. They traversed it, shattering glass and concrete upon both entry and exit. The branding lights of the commercial skyscraper blinked wildly before turning off.
Then they landed on the ground in the middle of the city, each creating a fifty-foot crater in the street’s concrete upon impact.
Chase’s aura burned its usual deep purple and Argos’ a bright red. Color-matching lightning sparkled and danced all around them. They locked eyes.
An adolescent who witnessed their landing watched the scene with big eyes. He let escape a word of astonishment. “Sugoi!”
Chase looked at the boy and made a gesture with his head, signaling him to leave, but the boy didn’t move. He didn’t like the idea of fighting in a populated area. Fortunately it looked like a mostly commercial zone, in the middle of the night. Hopefully that would limit casualties to some extent.
The streets were filled with bright and blinking lights. From the appearance and the boy’s accent, Chase identified the city as Tokyo. He intensified his aura and lights around the city started popping out with sparks and lightning.
He jumped at Argos and landed a series of power punches. With each, another light would go out nearby from the shockwave created when Argos blocked the attack. In the middle of his next combo Chase grabbed two nearby cars with his mind and threw them at Argos, who only escaped by flying upwards. The cars crashed against one another and made a commotion, shattering glass. Other nearby cars’ alarms started to wail.
Chase pursued Argos in the air and landed a powerful, circling kick to his brother’s face. The impact shattered a nearby building’s windows and sent Argos flying into the opposite building, passing through it from one side to the other as if it was made of cardboard.
The sky turned black. Lightning flashed and rain started pouring heavily. Argos rose from behind the building through which he had just flown and returned at maximum speed, with both fists extended in front of him. Chase dodged and sent Argos flying upwards with a perfectly timed knee strike.
He then unleashed a flurry of fireballs towards Argos, who hadn’t yet recovered from the blow. He was thrown left and right with each impact, unable to recover or dodge the sheer quantity of attacks being thrown at him. Buildings and the street all around lit up in brilliant blue flashes, and more windows exploded in the block where the fight was unfolding.
When Chase stopped firing he saw Argos’ body fall to the ground. He seemed unconscious. He flew after him, ready to deliver the finishing blow. But a few feet before impacting the ground, Argos somersaulted in the air and landed with a boom, carving another huge crater in the concrete.
Before the dust could settle he was already sending cars towards Chase by the dozen. Chase dodged half of them and had to use fireballs to stop the others, blowing them to pieces. But then Argos was on top of him with both hands locked, and he hammered Chase with so much power he almost lost consciousness. He flew towards the ground and passed through three feet of concrete. The ground-floor windows of the nearest building all exploded. Water pipes in the street ruptured and water began fountaining high into the air.
Chase put his hand on his head and shook it, just in time to see more cars careering towards him. He jumped away right before five cars smashed the ground where he had been standing a second before. He flew at maximum speed in between buildings and Argos went in pursuit.
Then Chase abruptly stopped, taking Argos by surprise. He punched him with a fireball-lit, right uppercut, sending him flying upwards. He pursued and, when he reached him, knocked him back down with an incredibly powerful reverse kick. Argos crashed into the street at a forty-five degree angle that left a ten-foot-wide and hundred-yards long trail of broken concrete. More pipes broke along the trail and more water flew all around.
Not willing to let him breathe, Chase flew towards Argos and unearthed a tall lighting pole from the street on his way. He used it as a gigantic baseball bat and sent Argos flying through three buildings on his way up, ending his home run somewhere within the seventieth floor of a fourth skyscraper.
When Chase entered the building, Argos was getting back up, blood, burns and bruises all over.
Chase felt his anger quenching little by little with every bit of pain he inflicted on Argos. But the pain within his heart was still very present and the resulting hate overwhelmed him to the core. Would it end once he had killed Argos? he wondered. He checked his energy levels and noticed he had used about thirty percent of his pool of energy. This fight was only beginning.
Argos spat blood on the floor. “Having fun are we? Think we can take a minute to talk now?”
“As I told you before, I have nothing to say to you.”
“Yeah I got that, like twenty minutes ago, but I have things I want to tell you.”
“Not interested!”
The floor they were on was a company’s open space, filled with desks and computers. Chase started throwing desks with his mind, one after the other, at Argos. He then kicked him straight in the torso and sent his brother crashing towards the nearest drink dispenser, which was flattened in the middle where Argos hit it. Soda cans rolled from the bottom, many exploding on their way out, sending soda spraying all around.
When Chase arrived near the dispenser, Argos promptly jumped, grabbed it and used it to smash Chase and send him flying through three sets of walls in nearby offices. Lights exploded, sparks flew, and sprinklers turned on.
When Chase rose back to his feet, Argos was behind him and had grabbed him by the hips, locking his hands tight around him, and they both flew through several walls before exiting the building. In midair Argos threw Chase away and kicked him in the face, sending him even higher into the air.
Chase somersaulted in midair, regained his balance, joined his hands together and created a soccer-ball-sized fireball that he fired towards Argos. He promptly deflected it with a swift movement of his forearm and sent the fireball crashing into a nearby building. Multiple explosions occurred and the top of the building collapsed on itself, sending a ton of fiery debris and broken glass towards the street below.
“Are we gonna play this game for much longer?” inquired Argos.
“It’s not a game. These are your last moments.”
“I don’t think so. I mean, you’re not nearly powerful enough. You control your anger, instead of channeling it as you did when I nearly killed your friend on Damocles-3. You’re nowhere near that level of power at the moment. Therefore we could fight all night and sure, we would make a lot of noise, probably kill a lot of innocent bysta
nders in the process too, but you won’t kill me with this pathetic display.”
Chase wondered if Argos was perhaps right. He didn’t feel the same level of power as when he unleashed his full Fury power during their last fight.
“It might just take longer, but I’ll end you. This ends here, tonight!”
“Right, then I suggest you get properly pissed off. You’d think that killing the love of your life, Sarah, and your unborn child would do the trick, wouldn’t you?”
As the words echoed within his unconscious mind, Chase went ballistic. The mere uttering of her name by Argos generated a blast of furious and destructive hatred in every cell in Chase’s body. His aura glowed ten times stronger and his long hair was thrown into the air, creating a beautiful, black, dancing flame. His eyes glowed orange and soon the tint of his aura changed from purple to orange as well.
“There we go,” said Argos with a crooked smile.
Chase pressed his fists against his hips and released an inhuman shout that generated a powerful shockwave. The buildings around Chase were incinerated. His rage was unbounded, overriding whatever control he had managed until now.
He flew so fast it looked as if he teleported towards Argos, and he unleashed a combo of punches and kicks at near light speed. Argos blocked only the first few but was soon overwhelmed by the sheer number of attacks. He miraculously managed to fly away amidst a few hundred hits. Chase pursued, but Argos collapsed two nearby buildings on him as he flew past them.
Chase pierced through their rubble with ease, to Argos’ surprise, and smashed him on the chin with a powerful, ascending knee strike that sent Argos flying for miles, destroying one building after another in his wake, until gravity took hold of him and he hit water near the harbor. The impact sent tons of water splashing upwards.
Chase pursed him underwater, throwing even more water into the air upon entry. He then continued hitting Argos with fire-lit punches under water. Many underwater shockwaves created giant, illuminated bubbles on the surface.
Universe in Flames – Ultimate 10 Book Box Set: An Epic Space Opera Adventure Page 102
