by Kyle Larson
Amelia was getting dizzy and knew the more disoriented she got, the more difficult it would be to evade the drone’s shots when she broke free. The hit she dealt the drone didn’t seem to have any effect on its speed or ability to fire electro-blasts. She closed her eyes and flipped herself around, using the staff to keep her somewhat centered, and was able to establish a footing on the hull. Once she got her footing it helped her fight the dizziness.
A strange sensation came over Amelia when she opened her eyes. All the dizziness was gone and she felt completely oriented, even though she could tell the drone was still frantically tumbling through the air. She even felt calm and in complete control of her senses. Amelia wondered if it had anything to do with establishing her footing on the hull, as if it strengthened her bond to the gravity. Whatever the change was, she took advantage of the drone’s confusion and her chance to formulate a plan.
Instead of trying to pull her staff out of the hull, Amelia jammed it further in. Sparks crackled and she felt the drone sputter. It was working, but she knew she’d still need her staff, as Teve no doubt had more surprises for her and Kelvin. She worked quickly to find give on whatever the staff was stuck on. As she fiddled with it, the drone’s flight continued to get bumpier and slower. Amelia wasn’t worried about bringing down the drone, she just wanted to get her staff back.
In the distance, she thought she could hear Kelvin’s voice and looked up. Kelvin was headed straight for her, with his staff in hand, but the other hand waving frantically. Because of the wind in her ears from the speed, it was hard to tell what he was saying until he got closer.
“Amelia! Look out!”
It was too late, Amelia looked up and a dozen drones, identical to the one she was on, all headed right for her. A swarm of electro-blasts that smashed into her and the drone. Amelia lost all feeling and fell from where she stood. Kelvin knew she’d recover in a few seconds, so instead of going after her, he went for her staff that was lodged into the drone. He got his footing and used his staff to pry Amelia’s out of the hull. As another round of electro-blasts headed for him, Amelia’s staff came free and he dove toward her. He sheathed his staff in the holster that ran across his back, so the staff hung at an angle along his armor, and held tightly to Amelia’s staff.
Amelia had taken a lot more firepower than Kelvin and her body stung. Once he reached Amelia in free fall, Kelvin grabbed her by the armor and tried to do his best to get them back up into the sky. The drones didn’t seem to handle climbing altitude as well as humans could.
“Can you move your hands?” Kelvin said.
“Barely,” Amelia said, the word and the way it came outmatched her current state of capabilities. Her body stung and numbness felt like a brick weighing down on her seized muscles she wanted so badly to use.
Kelvin felt the weight of two staffs and Amelia. The drones were not going to have a problem catching up, so he quickly tested Amelia’s grip. He placed the staff in her palm and wrapped her fingers around it, using his own hand to create a grip for Amelia.
“Do you have it?” Kelvin said. He guessed it would only be a few more seconds before Amelia’s paralyzation would fade.
Amelia strengthened her grip to confirm.
Kelvin let her go and they both barely missed the round of electro-blasts. When Kelvin looked back, he could see there were now more than a dozen drones. At least twenty, and more came in. He cursed Teve in his head. When Kelvin looked back down at Amelia, he could see she was already gone.
“Kelvin! Back down to the canyons!” Amelia’s voice shouted from above him. She’d just recovered and was flying again, staff in hand.
Another wave of electro-blasts headed their way and Kelvin followed Amelia’s lead. He caught up with Amelia as they re-entered the canyon. They were going faster than before, but the drones were still behind them and the electro-blasts didn’t cease.
“So, what’s the plan?” Kelvin said.
“I’m working on it, but at least we can keep them from forming a line like they are up there. It’s like a clothesline of electro-blasts coming at us every time they fire. They’re flying right next to each other!”
“I take it blocking the exhaust is off. These things are faster than any star diver or craft I’ve seen. We can’t even get close to them without one of those electro-blasts taking us out.”
“Yeah, not doing that again,” Amelia said. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a chasm the canyon wall that seemed to lead deep into the rock. The drones wouldn’t be able to fit into it. “Follow me.”
The two of them cut across the canyon and flew into the gap. The gap wasn’t very far into the wall, but it gave them some shelter from the drones. They were able to catch their breath, as they came to a stop and floated in mid-air. It looked like the gap ran just as deep as the canyon. The drones all piled up at the mouth of the gap and would be waiting whenever Amelia and Kelvin decided to leave. Electro-canon blasts came through the gap but they dissipated as soon as they hit the rock wall, due to their low voltage.
“Looks like we forced ourselves into coming up with a plan now,” Kelvin joked.
“I’d rather do it in here than out there. At least we can get a chance to figure something out while not being a drone’s target practice,” Amelia said.
The drones swarmed outside the crevice. They both knew Teve wouldn’t accept this temporary solution as any kind of completion in their training. Kelvin and Amelia were still a bit shaken from the electro-blasts they’d taken. It wasn’t the pain that jarred them so much, more the sense of complete helplessness. Even though they’d become accustomed to flight, falling hundreds of feet per second was still a terrifying sensation. They wanted to avoid that sensation again.
“What do you think we should do?” Kelvin said. He’d grown accustomed to following Amelia’s lead. He was confident in his training, but he knew his friend was good at strategy.
Amelia looked up and saw the crevice spanned all the way to the top of the canyon. It looked like it got even more narrow, but it would be possible for them to get out if they needed.
“Stay here. I’m gonna try an experiment,” Amelia said.
She flew up and looked out to where the drones were. The swarm broke and several of the drones followed her movements, while the others remained where Kelvin was. They continued to hurl electro-blasts at Amelia, but she dodged them. The drones weren’t going to relent, but if they could split them up and confuse them, it might give them a chance.
Amelia flew back down to Kelvin and watched the drones track her movement. Something caught her eye on the way down and she stopped. It was a few names, carved into the side of the wall, barely noticeable. There were many names, but two stood out – Teve and Karna. The names were carved right next to one another. This must have been some kind of hideout for Gravity Warriors. It made Amelia a little sad to think of the two brothers, no doubt having the time of their life, taking the time to memorialize their bond in rock.
“That was from our first flight,” Teve’s voice said, behind her.
The sudden appearance didn’t startle Amelia. She’d become accustomed to expecting Teve to show up at the most unexpected times.
“If you think I’m fast, Karna was incredible,” Teve said, as Amelia turned to face her teacher. There was no sadness in him as he said it. He had something of a prideful smile when he mentioned his brother’s abilities. “If he were alive, I imagine he’d be the one our mother would want to train you and Kelvin.”
“I wouldn’t want another teacher, neither would Kelvin. You’ve shown me that I can do things that I always thought impossible. You’ve been a teacher, and I’d like to think of you as my friend,” Amelia said.
There was a terrible loneliness in Teve she could see, as he remembered the person he used to be. By Venusian standards, he was still young, but two-hundred-years-old was still old for the human mind. Teve was easily spun into a downward spiral of sadness. As much as he was initially annoyed with being
assigned to train Kelvin and Amelia, he was grateful it took him away from his Archive.
Before Amelia and Kelvin arrived, Teve was usually at his Archive at the southern pole of Venus. It was very cold there compared to the rest of the planet. Still, not cold enough for snow, but the rain and wind were extreme. Teve had an elite group of students he trained there, but most of them were old enough and skilled enough that they no longer required his training — so for the most part, Teve was alone. It was a life of solitude, most of his days Teve spent buried in ancient books of human history and literature. Reading was his favorite thing to do and he was fascinated with the stories of ancient Earth. Despite his wishes to stay out of the Nine Kingdoms business, Teve was intrigued enough to watch from afar.
Friendship was nearly a forgotten feeling for him. He hadn’t realized that’s what Amelia and Kelvin had given him, as well.
“Come, let’s speak with Sellwood,” Teve said. He acknowledged what Amelia said with a smile, but he was still too guarded to admit he considered her and Kelvin friends as well.
As they moved away from the wall, Teve glanced at the many other names carved into the wall. One of them was nearly as fresh as he and Karna’s carvings had been. It had been done around the same time but the sight chilled Teve. An old friend who became a traitor, the name still haunted him — Justeph.
The two of them floated down to where Kelvin waited. The drones all clumped around the opening of the crevice. Kelvin could tell they were starting to adapt and form a plan. Some of the drones had broken off from the swarm and were searching for ways into the crevice.
“They’re getting smarter,” Kelvin said.
“They’re programmed to improvise. This crevice isn’t going to keep you hidden forever. Hope the two of you don’t think you’re the first students to try this trick. It’s a classic,” Teve said. “Now, you’ve proven you can fly faster than the drones, which is the average speed of most star divers. Good for you, but now you’re going to need to fight these things. If the Wanderers make it down here, their weapons will do more than stun you. At the very least, they’ll knock you out of the sky, but more than likely, they’ll kill you.”
Kelvin and Amelia shivered at the thought.
“I’m saying this to scare you. These people have already proven they’re capable of anything. You can’t just fly away from them. The two of you need to fight back,” Teve said, and he swung at them. Kelvin and Amelia deflected the quick blows Teve made in their direction. It was more aggressive than they’d seen from him.
There wasn’t much space in the crevice, so it forced Kelvin and Amelia to hold their position and fight. They couldn’t fly away, because there was nowhere to go. It was harder than any sparring they’d done with Teve before. Each blow they parried felt like they were fighting thunder. The reverberations and sparks from the staff gave the match a sense of violence they’d not yet felt. Teve was trying to make them understand that the enemies they faced would be unforgiving. It didn’t mean they had to be, they just had to be prepared to fight against anything.
“These staffs will absorb electro-blasts. You can protect yourself with them. Pretend each blow is an electro-blast. I’m going to go fast.” Teve’s speed increased and he was almost like a propeller. There were moments Kelvin and Amelia could barely tell where he’d go next. “The electro-blasts can be stopped by your staff. Those drones out there, you can take them all out if you can defend against this attack.”
Teve finally stopped. Kelvin and Amelia took a few seconds to catch their breaths. Their arms were very sore, until the sensation of pain vanished in seconds.
“Go. We are running out of time and I need you to be ready. If these drones land one shot on you, we start the whole exercise over,” Teve said. “We’ll do this until you can take out a hundred drones. We’re not stopping until you’re flawless.”
Amelia charged toward the drones, her staff ready to attack. The electro-blasts increased in frequency, but Amelia swiped them away as if she were swatting flies and headed back toward the canyon. Once Teve pointed out that the electro-blasts moved no faster than his staff, it seemed easy to her. She flew out of the crevice like she’d been shot out of a cannon. The drones dropped quickly as she smashed her staff into them, while she dodged their fire. Many more arrived than when she and Kelvin first entered the crevice and she could see many more pouring in from above.
Kelvin rushed to join Amelia and found how easy it was to deflect the electro-blasts. As their apprehensions went away, each blow they dealt with the drones knocked them out of the sky. It was raining drones in the canyon. Both of them couldn’t help but think how many would be piled up at the bottom of wherever the canyon ended. Teve flew in between them and easily dodged the electro-blasts and the blows delivered by his students.
“A few hundred more are headed this way. I’d go up, if I were you,” Teve said. Without giving them a chance to reply, he flew away quickly.
They could see why he’d given that advice when the canyon started to become crowded with the drones. They followed the advice of their teacher and broke out of the swarm. The drones didn’t sit around and wait, they’d gotten smarter and seemed to have anticipated the movement. As Kelvin and Amelia smashed their staffs into several incoming drones, they had to pay attention to the ones that flew up from the canyon with them.
“I’ll go back and handle the ones behind us, Millie,” Kelvin said, as he turned and plunged back into the flock of them. The training exercise had gone from stressful and difficult to something that was almost like a sporting match. Kelvin was almost having fun knocking the drones out of the sky. He turned to see Amelia continued to handle the others very well. He had to dodge the falling drones that had come under her attack, as their powerless and damaged hulls fell into the depths of the canyon. She was very far above him and it continued to rain drones.
After a few minutes of knocking the drones out, the onslaught was nearly finished. Once the last drones in front of her tumbled back down, she flew to where Kelvin was, still just above the mouth of the canyon. He’d just finished the last of the drones and there didn’t seem to be any more headed for them.
“That was kinda fun,” Kelvin said. It had been a good distraction from the disturbing conversation he’d had with his sister the night before, as well the weighty information Tendai imparted on him.
“I wonder where he went,” Amelia said. “How are you holding up, Kelvin? You never told me what your sister said.”
Everything bad came back to Kelvin, but only for a couple of seconds. The adrenaline from the training was exhilarating and it made any problem seem manageable, even his sister and the fleet of ships in orbit above the planet.
“Nothing’s changed. She’s convinced she’s going to attack this planet and that she’s going to win. Either she has something planned or she’s completely lost her mind. I don’t think she has any idea what’s down here,” Kelvin said.
“Riz does though,” Amelia said. “That’s what has me worried. They must have some sort of plan.”
Kelvin wanted to share what Tendai told him about the Colonel. The Colonel wasn’t with Aren, but Kelvin suspected she acted on his behalf. Neither Kelvin nor anyone had any idea how fractured the leadership of the Wanderers was, so they assumed Riz, the Colonel, and Aren worked together. He had to trust that Tendai had a plan, but he also thought that maybe she was just trying to protect her son. Kelvin could tell there was a sadness in Teve and Tendai must have known that too. Sadness could stoke anger and that could cause Teve to lose sight of protecting Venus. Kelvin wondered if Teve and the Colonel had ever been friends.
“Millie, did he tell you about his brother? About Karna?” Kelvin asked.
Amelia hesitates to answer him, knowing full well how triggering the tale of Karna could be for Kelvin. From what she heard, it sounded like Karna and Aren were very similar.
“He did, Kelvin. It's a sad story. There's no time to get into it now and he should be the one
to tell you, ” Amelia replied.
Kelvin was surprised that Amelia knew about it. He knew that she and Teve spoke while he was with Tendai. From Amelia not telling him right away what they had discussed, Kelvin knew she was holding back something. He figured they both had their reasons and she was doing it for the same reason he was for Tendai – respect.
“I understand. You’re right about that. It’s his story to tell. Sounds like he and I might have a lot in common,” Kelvin said.
After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, Kelvin looked behind him toward the horizon. Against a backdrop of gorgeous mountains, another ship approached. They were high above the canyon, once again, so they could see the ship come out of the horizon. It was moving fast toward them and it was much bigger than the other drones. As it got closer, they could see that it was the size of a battleship. Once it was in range, it started to pummel them with electro-blasts.
“Are we supposed to take that out?” Kelvin shouted.
“I don’t think we have a choice!”
The two friends put aside their secrets, took their staffs, and charged the behemoth in front of them.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CAPTAIN ALI AND Holloway scaled a massive communications dish. It was the last obstruction as they tried to move slow. Since the Monarch had increased speed, it was difficult for their magnetic boots to keep them grounded to the hull. It would have taken them too long to go around the communications dish, as it was the size of three soccer stadiums back on Earth. The fastest way was up and over since their boots kept them grounded to anything metal. Getting past the communications dish would be anything but easy.
“They’ve broken off from the rest of their fleet. Did you notice that?” Holloway said.
“Yeah, that’s not a good sign. Probably means they’re taking the Monarch back to the Antioch Belt or somewhere else. The rest of the Earth Navy was closing in on our position. The ship is fast enough that it can still keep its distance from our ships. This just got a hundred times more difficult, not to mention they’ve picked up speed,” Captain Ali confirmed.
