ConQuest (The Quest Saga) (7 page)

Zygrade

Taylor went over to a window and peeped out. They were on a planet about the size of Pluto. It was a pinkish planet that had quite a sci-fi look about it.

It was an eerie place. It had a mysterious mist that covered the entire surface of the planet. Q could almost imagine Dracula emerging from the mist to welcome him.

Carlos guided Kai fly towards a huge mountain on the planet. The thing looked to be at least a mile into the air! It was completely black with no sign of life at all.

Kai pulled the Atlas up.

“Is it just me or is it getting really hot in here?” Q asked.

Taylor could feel it as well. The temperature was rapidly increasing.

“What’s going on?” Q asked Carlos.

Taylor looked through the windows. Her heart skipped a beat!

“This isn’t a mountain,” she shrieked. “It’s a Volcano!”

Q looked through the windows as well. He could see the red hot lava in the crater of the volcano.

What he didn't understand was why they were heading straight for it!

Suddenly the ship’s communication system blared up.

“Space craft A-T-L-A-S. This is a restricted airspace. Please leave immediately,” a voice said.

Kai slowed down the Atlas down until it was floating in the air.

Carlos spoke up. “This is Commander Carlos of S.P.A.C.E. This is an S.O.S. Academy has been destroyed. Requesting permission to land,” he said.

Taylor could hear noisy chatter coming from the other side. It looked like they were discussing something.

“Permission granted,” the voice declared.

The holographic screen instantly vanished.

The ship started to rumble. The cadets screamed and screeched.

“I think they’ve realized we’re in a volcano.” Q sounded nonchalant.

“Oh, my God!” Taylor yelped.

Q looked through the window. The sight was amazing!

The lava was parting halfway. Something seemed to be pushing it to the corners of the crater.

A huge circular door opened up in the volcano.

Kai lowered the ship through the door carefully.

Lights lit up all around them. They were in some sort of a high tech tunnel. Kai followed it till it ended.

“What now?” Taylor asked.

The tunnel rumbled. Another tunnel opened up in front of them. Kai wasted no time in entering it. He kept going until they reached a hangar.

Q looked at all the high tech ships that were in the hangar. They seemed to be much, much larger than the Atlas.

Kai landed the Atlas. A platform emerged from the floor and lifted the Atlas through an opening that had formed in the roof of the tunnel.

The Atlas jerked as the platform stopped lifting them. They had reached level ground.

The cadets slowly got down from the Atlas.

Q looked around. This place was amazing!

There was a huge pyramid covering over the city to regulate air pressure. There were tons of buildings of all shapes and sizes. In the middle of the city though, was a huge tower that extended towards the top of the pyramid.

“Welcome to Aliea Academy!”

Aliea Academy

“Aliea academy?” Q asked. “What is this place?”

“Remember I told you S.P.A.C.E was a place that trained cadets? It actually trained only men and women. Young kids come here to Aliea to train,” Carlos revealed.

“So this is like a teenage academy?” Taylor asked eagerly.

“You could call it that. Anyway, let’s get going, shall we?”

Carlos guided all of them to the large tower in the middle.

“What is that place?” Q tried to be heard over the noisy chatter of the cadets behind them.

“Demon Riser. It’s the control centre in Aliea Academy.”

Q wondered why all of these buildings had to have weird names. ‘Chepauk’ then ‘Demon Riser’; what next?

Carlos walked to a kid at random and spoke to him for a while. Q figured he was a student at Aliea.

After a while, Carlos walked back to them.

He faced the cadets. “Would you all please follow this guy?” he said.

All the cadets followed the guy. But not before thanking Carlos and co. for saving them.

Carlos led the others to Demon Riser. As soon as he walked in through the door, everyone looked at him.

Q looked at the people in there. It looked like there was only one adult. Everyone else was just the same age as Q. He wondered if it was some sort of a teen paradise; a place without adults.

“Is that..,” a boy whispered.

“Oh, my God!” A girl squeaked.

Q could not understand why everyone was so obsessed with Carlos.

A guy walked up to Carlos with a pen in his hand. “Could I have your autograph please?”  Carlos smiled and signed his book.

Q’s mouth fell open.

They want his autograph!, he thought. Nothing made sense to him.

“Follow me, everybody,” Carlos said.

He took them to their rooms.

The whole room looked like the inside of a space shuttle. It was a pure white room while everything in it was pitch black.

There was a small half-floor in the room with a few bunks. The lower floor had a velvet couch that extended into an L and a large screen T.V.

Kai whistled. Q agreed with him. This place was awesome!

“So do you like the place?” Carlos asked them.

“Hell, yeah!” Kai said, obviously pleased.

Taylor turned to Carlos. “So what was all that fuss about?”

Carlos looked at her quizzically. “What fuss?”

“Those kids were like ‘Oh, my god! It’s Carlos’.” She mimicked a few voices.

“I just happen to be a well known person around here.”

“Why? Because you were at space?”

“No. I’m quite familiar with the place.”

“How come?” Kai asked with curiosity.

“Well, I kind of built Aliea Academy.”

Lights Out

“You what?!” Taylor said, in a mix of surprise and admiration.

“I’m the one who started the place.”

“Why do that when you’re already the commander at S.P.A.C.E?” Q asked.

“I wanted a place for teenagers to train,” Carlos said. “It seemed like a good idea so I built this place.”

“Do you even have that much money?” Taylor asked.

“My business on earth isn’t my only one you know.”

“You’re an intergalactic businessman?” Q laughed.

Carlos ignored the question. “I need rest,” he said and walked to the bunks.

“I wanted to take a look at the spaceships in this place. If a transport tunnel was so cool, I bet the ships are ten times more awesome!” Kai said and dashed out the door.

Q wondered why everyone was in a rush.

“You wanna go look around this place?” Taylor asked Q.

“Cool! Where are we going?” Q asked in return.

“I saw this fancy mall just a few blocks away!” she said excitedly.

Why would they need a mall at a secret training camp in the middle of nowhere, Q wondered.

Then he realized that there were teenagers there. A place with teens and no mall was just asking for trouble.

Q and Taylor walked out of the building. The roads in this colony were pure metal. They had a nice gray finish with electronic streaks of blue running through them constantly.

Q could see the various Zyxians walking along the road. There were hundreds of them!

Q had a hard time believing some of them were teenagers. There was this girl from another planet; at least he thought she was a girl, who was around ten feet tall!

If that was just ‘adolescent’ height how tall would she get when she fully grew up?

“So where is this place?” Q asked.

Taylor pointed to a large skyscraper that stood distinctly in the sky. It was a sheer glass building just like the Demon Riser, though this one was made of bluish glass as opposed to the Demon Riser’s black glass. It was about half the height the Demon Riser was.

“Hello? You there?” Taylor confirmed, knocking on his head.

Q grinned. He tended to escape into his mind a lot. It was like he blocked out the whole world and just focused on something. Sometimes he creeped himself out.

They walked on for a while till they reached the massive building.

Q could see teens walking in and out of the doors; all of them smiling broadly. Well, that was what a mall was for.

“You coming?” Taylor was already at the door.

‘How fast is she moving? Her ‘mall’ mode is impressive,’ Q thought as he followed her into the building.

The place was ginormous! Q couldn’t even see the ceiling! All he could see was the sunlight glaring in his eyes. The mall probably had a glass roof as well.

He walked beside Taylor, exploring the mall.

“You must be new here,” a voice said.

Q turned to look at the person.

It was a guy. He was a little bit taller than Q. His wavy auburn hair was roughed up. His face was quite square and his eyes were a deep black. He looked human though.

The guy looked at Q, his gaze shifting up and down. He pointed his thumb at Q.

“Hi I’m Jake. The Aliea Academy’s president,” he said.

“Nice to meet you,” Q shook his hand.

“So what are your plans for today?” he asked, turning to Taylor.

“No plans really. Just looking around,” she replied.

“Say, do you want to take a look at the academy?” he asked enthusiastically.

Q, on the other hand, didn’t look too enthusiastic about the whole idea. “Nah, I’ll pass,” he said.

“C’mon, Q. Let’s go see this place.”

“Not really in a mood,” Q gave a lukewarm response.

“You sure? We’ve got an amazing tech lab. It’d be a shame to not visit it.”

Q reacted to those words the same way a dog would react to a bone. His face brightened up and he instantly felt energetic. That’s what technology did to him. He was a seasoned tech addict.

“Okay then,” Q said, with a smile. Shopping with Taylor proved to be of some use to him after all.

“This way please,” Jake said and led them out of the mall.

They walked for a while until they saw a wall in the horizon. It seemed to stretch for miles.

Jake ran up to a solid metal door cut out in the wall. A small slot opened in the door. He seemed to be speaking into it. Q guessed that it was probably a security procedure.

“He is such a nice guy,” Taylor observed.

“There’s something about him……” Q began.

Jake walked back to them in a flash.

“Sorry about that; just a safety procedure. They usually don’t let outsiders in, but since I’m the prez I was able to pull a few strings.”

Seriously? Pull a few strings?, Q thought.

From his point of view, this Jake guy was throwing his ‘prez’ position in everybody’s face.

They walked past the door. The whole place was made of metal. The place stayed with the common theme of gray with shades of dark purple. Q had to admit that it was kind of cool though.

Jake raised his hand. Q didn’t understand what he was doing until a car came their way. At least it seemed like a car at first sight. On closer inspection it turned out to be a hovercraft.

It was a white vehicle with brush strokes of green and blue for decoration.

“It’s the president’s edition,” he beamed. “It recognizes its user through bio-metric sensors,” he continued explaining. “So how it works is that.....”

Q cut him off. “It sucks in the air from the top of the craft to create a vacuum above it so that the air pressure under the hovercraft is more than the pressure above it. So, the air under it lifts it up.”

“He’s a tech addict,” Taylor offered by way of explanation, though Q got the underlying feeling that she was embarrassed.

Jake just stared at Q. He didn’t seem pleased that Q cut him off. Though he had to admit Q knew what he was talking about.

They got into the hovercraft and took off. The buildings appeared blurred as Q rushed past them. He was amazed by the speed the hovercraft was going at. He was starting to get a taste of the tech on this planet.

He thoroughly enjoyed the ride to the lab, though Taylor couldn’t say the same. She knew she had sea sickness, now she found out that she had hovercraft-sickness as well.

Q looked up at the lab. It was a large dome-shaped structure. Oddly, it didn’t keep up with the grey metal trend. Instead it was made of a metal pitch black in color.

“So what do you think?” Jake asked Q.

“I’ll tell you when we get inside,” Q said, grinning.

“About that........” Jake started.

“Yeah?”

“We’re not exactly allowed in here right now. They’re working on some sort of a project, so I couldn’t get permission for a tour.”

“You couldn’t
pull any strings
?” Q asked.

He wondered why Jake offered to show him the lab, if the lab was actually off limits in the first place.

He stirs up excitement, and then deflates it as well, Q thought.

Q wondered if Jake did that just to irritate him, though his face wasn’t showing anything of the sort.

Suddenly they heard screams coming from inside the lab. Jake and Taylor rushed to the door, leaving Q far behind.

“I thought the lab was off limits!” Q yelled as he ran behind them.

He really had a sense of humor, didn’t he?

Taylor tried opening the door, but it was locked. A number pad hung on the wall next to it.

“We’re going to have to break it open,” Jake said.

Q took a few steps back and got ready to break it open. Before he could charge, Jake went down on one knee and randomly pressed buttons on the pad. The door clicked open.

“Easy pickings,” Jake smiled.

Q wondered if the door to a stronghold like this could be hacked so easily. To him it seemed like an efficiency problem.

They stepped inside the building. It was pitch dark. Q wondered if there were any nuclear devices under research over here. The last thing you’d want is to have a nuke in the room and not be able to see it. That would be a disaster waiting to happen.