ConQuest (The Quest Saga) (5 page)

“Well, I’m going to get something to eat. Do you want anything?” Taylor asked

“Nah, I’m just going to take another nap. I’m really tired.”

Taylor left the room. A few minutes later Q was fast asleep.

He had hoped he wouldn’t have a weird dream again and surprisingly for once the universe obliged. It gave him a horrid nightmare instead!

Q was back on the soccer field again. After some time, he realized this was the exact scene that had happened after he scored the penalty.

Taylor came up to him. “C’mon, let’s take you home,” she said.

Q walked with her until the entrance. He knew he was supposed to get onto her Harley Davidson but that didn’t happen.

The whole Rock Crushers team blocked the entrance.

“Going somewhere, lovebirds?” the largest one said.

“What should we do, Nigel?” said another one

Q was about to protest about the lovebirds part but he figured it’d be best to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t need those guys trying to beat him up.

“What do you want?” Taylor asked the guy called Nigel. Q couldn’t believe that a girl like Taylor just talked back to a hunk like that. The guy was a giant for god’s sake!              

“Lookie here boys, I’m scared,” Nigel pretended to cry. Anger started to swell up inside Q. Bullying him was one thing. Bullying Taylor was another. And he didn't like it one bit.

Q let out a battle cry and charged at him. Nigel had a smirk on his face as if he was expecting Q to do that. Q tried to whack him in his stomach but Nigel saw through it immediately. He stepped aside, grabbed Q’s arm and lifted him in the air like he was a rag doll.

“Nooo!” Taylor shrieked.

Nigel brought Q down, full force. Q felt like his whole body was turning into powder. He tried to get up, but a piercing pain shot through his leg. He instantly knew he’d broken it. He was surprised that was all he had broken. Nigel walked up to him.

“I’m not giving up,” Q said, but his body said otherwise. Nigel curled his hand into a fist and grinned at Q.

“Later, loser,” he said.

“STOP IT!” Taylor yelled from behind him.

It was so frightening that even Nigel got a bit scared. She raised her hands. Q wondered if all she did was to make sure they killed her as well.

That reminded him, he didn’t even know why these guys were trying to kill him.

Taylor drew a sign with her hands. It started glowing in mid-air. He was busy admiring the glowing sign when he heard something that sounded like paper being torn. He turned back and stared in disbelief.

The Rock Crushers were growing in size right before his eyes. The sound he heard was their shirts ripping apart. Ever notice how when monsters turn to their true form they always lose the shirt but have their shorts on?

Q was stunned. He wanted to run away but his legs weren’t obeying him. The ‘whatever they were’ giants walked towards Q when all of a sudden they got blasted by a huge blue flame. He looked back at Taylor, who was staring at him coolly.

“Flames of ice,” she said. “Ice so cold that it burns.”

Q was having trouble saying anything. He just opened his mouth and closed it. No words came out. He tried to get up but his leg made him fall again. The pain was too much. He cried out in pain, not being able to bear it any longer.

“You okay?” Taylor asked Q.

“No, I’m not okay! I want to go back home. You enter and exit portals, kill giants. I have no idea what is going on here! How could I be okay?” Q said. The experience had been too much for his mind to handle.

“Whoa... hold on what’s this about monsters?”

He opened his eyes. “You perfectly know what I’m…” He stopped.

He wasn’t at the football field anymore. He was back at the hospital. It was then that he realized that it was all a nightmare.

“Relax, you just had a nightmare. What happened?”

Q told her everything from the giants to her making scary gestures and of course ‘Flames of Ice’.

“I don't know, Q. I have no idea what this means,” she said.

“But…” Q started to feel faint.

“C’mon. You need some food,” Taylor said.

She helped Q onto his feet and they went to the cafeteria. Q needed to take in a little bit of food to get his energy back. Carlos joined them as well.

Q told him about his dreams. Carlos listened to him with concern.

“It was probably just a random nightmare,” he told Q.

Q felt a little more confident. If both Taylor and Carlos felt the same way then there was probably nothing to worry about.

His imagination had probably come up with some sort of story to feed into his mind.

All of a sudden, the alarms went off. The whole cafeteria went into panic mode.

“Pilot mishap?” Q joked.  

“I’ll go check. It’s probably nothing,” Carlos said and left for the bridge.

The people ran about like they were a rampant army of ants. People bumped into each other, falling to the ground. Q wondered if there had been this much commotion the first time he heard the alarms.

He stood up and looked around at all the people. He had to do something. He couldn’t just sit still and watch from the sidelines. Maybe some hidden talents would emerge this time just like the force field did.

“Q, what are you.......” started Taylor.

“No time,” he said and ran to the exit.

Suddenly the door blasted open. Q flew ten feet back and fell hard on the ground.

He gazed at the demolished entrance. It was covered in smoke. He could make out a few large forms emerging from the smoke.

When the smoke finally cleared, there stood the monsters Q had seen in his dream! They dropped a limp body on the floor. Q looked closer. It was Carlos!

The largest monster of the lot came out of the smoke and smiled with his crooked teeth.                                                                          “Hello, lovebirds,” Nigel said.

Annihilation

The people in the cafeteria froze in reaction to the sudden intrusion. Their eyes looked towards Taylor and Q, desperately pleading for help.

Taylor analyzed the situation. They needed a strategy. She looked around her. All the doors and windows had been shattered into pieces. All the people in the cafeteria seemed to be either navigators or healers. That made sense since all the warriors had practice right then.

But that meant that they effectively didn't have any warriors to fight with at all.

Carlos lay unconscious on the floor and Taylor hoped he was still breathing. Q got onto his feet and tried to take Nigel one-on-one.

Nigel bellowed loud and clear. Fear rang through the cafeteria. All the cadets unfroze and ran out screaming and tumbling.

Nigel pushed Q hard. Q lost his footing and went tumbling down. Even though he was hurt he managed to get up quickly. He charged at Nigel but Taylor caught his hand and stopped him.

“I’ve got a better idea,” she said.

She talked into a transmitter that she pulled out from her suit.

Instantly, a huge ship crashed into the cafeteria. The door opened and Kai was standing in the doorway.

“Get in. All of you,” he shouted.

Q stared at Taylor. “What...How...?”

“Broadcasted a S.O.S.” she related quickly. “Spacecrafts usually respond immediately”.

Q ran to Carlos and carried him to the ship. Taylor guided all the others to the ship as well. He looked around to see where Nigel was.

He heard a monster-like groan. He looked around. There he was!

Apparently Kai had slammed the ship into Nigel and knocked him unconscious!

“All aboard,” Kai ordered loudly and took off as soon as everyone was in.

    Once he was inside, Q could not believe what he was looking at. The inside of the ship was awesome! Everything around him was tech beyond his imagination. Even his video games couldn’t feature something like this.

As Q put Carlos down on one of the seats, he groaned.

“Thank god he’s alive,” mouthed Q silently.

Taylor glanced through the window. The sight she saw sent shivers down her spine. The whole academy was being wrecked by insanely huge giants. Even Godzilla would feel dwarfed!

Q walked over to her. “What are those things?” he exclaimed.

“Indiff giants,” Taylor mumbled. “They’re from the same planet as the Corein giants.”

“The what now?”

“The Indiff giants are the large ones destroying the academy. The Corein giants are Nigel’s species. They’re both from the same planet, Ing.”

Q looked through the window.

Cadets were helplessly fighting them. Some of them escaped in their space ships; others lay on the cold ground, lifeless.

Kai put the ship on autopilot and came over to the passengers’ area.

“Welcome to the Atlas!” he said, trying to make his voice as cheerful as possible.

For a small guy he had quite a loud voice; deep too.

“Where are you planning to take us?” a cadet asked.

“Well. I’d like to say I have it all figured out but honestly I didn’t think we’d make it this far.”

Taylor and Q couldn’t help smiling. This guy sure was a goof off.

“Anyone care for my opinion?” groaned a voice.

Carlos sat up, still in a daze. Taylor and Q ran over and hugged him.

“You’re not dead!” Taylor sounded relieved.

“You can't get rid me that easily,” Carlos smiled.

Kai saluted. “High-Commander sir!” he said.

“Take me into sector Alpha. There’s a place I know,” Carlos said.

BOOM! They heard a loud explosion.

Everyone fell flat on the floor. The ship swayed about violently.

“What was that?” Q asked nervously.

“Pilot, sequence gamma-niner-niner,” Carlos said.

Kai immediately ran to the pit. Taylor stayed in the passengers’ area to help calm the cadets down.

“Q, you’re with me,” Carlos said and ran towards the back end of the ship.

Kai entered the pit. The most high tech part of the ship. It was quite small. Five people could probably stand in it at the same time. There was a tall seat in front of a huge panel. A thousand buttons glowed on the panel. Each one told the pilot something about the ship. Kai walked past the two additional seats in the pit and strapped himself to the main one. He looked at the enemy. It was the giants!

Not the Larger-than-Godzilla ones. It was Nigel and his gang.

They had taken control of the academy’s ships and were right on their tail.

“They don’t know who they’re dealing with.” Kai had a smirk on his face. He put the ship into a nosedive.

He could hear the cadets screaming at the sudden drop.

The battle had begun.

Predator

Q and Carlos strapped themselves to the chairs at the back just as the ship became completely vertical. Q looked in front of him. There was a huge gun there with rolls of ammo next to it.

“What kind of sci-fi gun uses rolls?” Q asked Carlos.

“Take a closer look.”

Q reached out and lifted them up. A label on it said ‘Nuke’. He dropped them back immediately.

“No way,” Q said.

“We just decided they were much cooler than round metal bullets,” Carlos laughed madly.

All of a sudden there seemed to be more danger inside the ship than outside. Q loaded the rolls carefully into the gun. Carlos just shot at the enemy. He hit every single one of those ships and roasted them; without wasting a bullet.

Kai waited till the point of no return and pulled the Atlas up from a nosedive. Any further and the ship would’ve crashed into the surface of the planet. The ships that didn’t get mauled by Carlos’ freak fireworks act went on straight and crashed into the ground below.

Carlos walked into the cockpit followed by Q.

“That was some awesome shooting!” Q was amazed at Carlos’ potential.

“I’m not a High-Commander for nothing you know,” he grinned.

“Well done, pilot,” Carlos congratulated Kai.

“Thank you, sir” Kai trembled. Q wondered if Carlos was the sort of High-Commander who was feared by everyone.

Suddenly the ship went into yet another nosedive.

“Stop that, Kai. We’ve had enough.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Kai said. His face tensed up.

“The engine is malfunctioning!” Taylor said in alarm.

“We’re going to crash!” Kai yelled.

Then all hell broke loose among the cadets. Remember the classic problem of having three people on a broken plane with only one parachute? Well this was the same situation here, only that there were ten times as many people and no parachutes at all.

Kai pulled hard at the wheel. Nothing happened.

“Okay. I think we’ve had enough fun.” Carlos seemed perfectly calm.

He closed his eyes and chanted an incantation of some sort. His body started glowing. He raised both his hands to his chest. He stretched them out in one fluid motion.

“Adoris!” he said in a raised voice.

The ship slowly came to a halt. They were still quite high up but with the speed they had been falling at, they would’ve crashed in seconds.

Taylor stared at Carlos. She didn’t know that Carlos could do that!

“Why didn’t you do this before?” she asked him.

“Well, it isn’t easy to use. It’s quite complicated actually. I can use this kind of power only when I have a certain level of emotional build-up. It’s like crying. You cry when you’re sad and not whenever you want to. The same way, you can use these kinds of powers only when there’s a certain level of emotion flowing through your body.”

“So what’s with the chanting? Magic?” Q asked. To him, the whole chanting thing looked too fantasy-like and not futuristic enough.

“In a way, yes. We’re using our life energy and emotions as powers. We train ourselves to unlock these powers with a certain codeword. My codeword for this power is Adoris. I can stop all movements of a particular object. In simple terms I can freeze it,” Carlos said.

So thanks to Carlos, instead of falling to their doom, they were floating like paper in the air. They floated all the way down and landed softly on the surface.