Elementis 1: The Heir to the Stone (20 page)

Hawk bashed the radio button on his arm. "Uly, get out of there!" he said, "Oreaus is inside… Uly, get out of there! Do you read me?"

Hawk's muffled voice blared from a receiver inside the headquarters. The king asked for silence as the distorted message came through… "Out o' ere… Orea, ins… Do you re…"

"It's Hawk!" said Wingrise.

"I'm going out to find him!" Uly said, making strides for the door.

"Uly no!" Witakker cried out.

The last tier of the triple-levelled door slid open and shots rained into the room. Smoke from the heat of the blasts filled the doorway. The king fell and scrambled backwards, control men dropped dead at their stations from random blasts, and fantoms stormed into the command room holding their weapons aimed at every man in the room before the protectors could even draw their blasters. The Zohr walked in through the warm gust of smoke with a quiet, content air across his face. Mutus followed in behind. Oreaus stopped just paces from the king who now leant with his back up against a control desk.

"It is over, your grace. Hand the stone to me!" the Zohr demanded, holding out his black-gauntleted hand to the king.

Uly climbed to his feet and the two most powerful men in any living world stood face to face. Hate emanated from the faces of both men. Never in all of his long history had the Zohr been this close to the holder of the Elementis since it had been his own. He took in a deep breath through his icy nostrils, savouring the smell of Uly's humid skin. He wanted something to remember this moment by. The moment that he destroyed those who had taken away his only love. The moment he destroyed those who had tried to stop him from taking everything that belonged to him. His waiting was done.

Uly showed no mercy looking straight into the reflective eyes of evil in front of him. "I could destroy you and your race with a few simple thoughts. If you do not stop this, you will cease to exist." he said.

The Zohr was unconcerned with the threat. He showed no emotion in reply to the king's words. "I have in my possession half a million civilian captives of yours. If you so much as try to turn one strand of my hair to dust, they will all join me or die!" he said, moving closer into Uly's face. "Would you kill your own people, King Uly?" the Zohr pressed, pausing to wallow in the king's pity. "I doubt it!" he said, cutting into the kind nature of the king's heart. "But go ahead, let's see you try!" the Zohr stepped back, and held his arms open.

Uly held out the Elementis, pointing it towards the Zohr, his face enraged.

"Do it," said the Zohr, stepping closer, back towards him. Uly did nothing.

The Zohr took one more step, standing right in front of the kings outstretched arm, his eyes inches from the Elementis. "No?" he said, still waiting. "I didn’t think you had it in you!"

Mutus fired a blast into the side of Uly's body. He fell to one knee still holding his arm outstretched, shaking with pain in front of the Zohr.

The Zohr grabbed the king's arm. "You have never once shown me that you have the mind to control the stone," he said, clutching his fingers around the stone. He ripped the stone from the energy-star as a metal clasp rose from the forearm of his gauntlet. He placed the stone into the clasp. "Your mind has weakened, and now you will see the full power of the Elementis!"

His eyes lit up with the expected power. He held his hands to the sky to feel the energy complete his body. There was nothing.

Uly began to laugh, softly at first, but as the Zohr bore his silver eyes down onto the king, his laughter grew louder.

"You fool!" the Zohr cursed. "Where is the real stone?"

"A long way from here," Uly said, calming his laughter with a cough and pressing a hand into his bleeding side.

"Tell me!" the Zohr demanded, as he searched through the inside of Uly's mind for answers. His mind still had fight left in it. Had it not, the king would have told without a stammer and fallen into the service of Oreaus with his next heartbeat.

The room erupted in laser fire. Hawk and his men rushed in. Wingrise pulled the king to safety over the top of a control desk. The protectors and the Guard shot at the fantoms driving them out. The Zohr retreated, crazed by the decoy stone, which he crushed in his hand as he walked back through the corridor. Hawk, Tempo, Spirit and their men hounded the fantom soldiers down the corridors, driving the dydrid away from the king. Laser streams and plasma shots lit up the walkways. Tempo took a fatal shot to his neck and fell. Spirit charged the fantoms at the sight of his dead friend. His own body was riddled with laser fire until his forward steps saw him fall to the floor.

The Zohr, Mutus and the remaining fantoms walked freely out of the headquarters, with only Hawk pursuing them, his adrenaline taking over his mind in an effort to get to the Zohr. Mutus turned and fired at Hawk. He fell to the ground on top of a pile of dead soldiers.

The Zohr spoke to Mutus. "Kill them all," he ordered.

Mutus walked back to the entrance, firing on further attacks from the Guard and killing one with every shot. He removed a handful of metal balls from his armour and rolled them inside the entrance of the headquarters. The balls took on a life of their own rolling around corners and spreading themselves out around different sectors of the building. The Zohr and Mutus walked away into the city as the building behind them imploded and collapsed in a cloud of smoke.

Dust filled the air. Hawk coughed out a mixture of blood and phlegm as he regained consciousness. He tried to get up but stopped himself after feeling a sting in his shoulder. He composed his pain with a yell and rolled onto his back getting to his feet. The air cleared enough for Hawk to see that the headquarters was now almost nothing more than a mound of rubble. He rushed across to where the building had once stood, clambering over stone, glass and metal, sifting through the debris with his good arm as he went. He cried out in shock, revealing Witakker's body which lay half under a large beam. Hawk sunk his face to the ground, his mouth drooped open. Saliva dripped from his gums as his breathless stomach let out a cry of pain as he tasted the dust of war on his lips. A single tear cleaned a pathway of skin down the dirt on his face. He picked up an abandoned weapon nearby and got on with the battle.

Chapter XVI

Loss

The Zohr's determination to destroy the race which had constantly halted his rule only grew with malice when he learned that the Elementis was no longer under the protection of Uly. The stone was hidden, and its whereabouts may well have died with the king, but the Zohr had found it once on the remote planet of Lapia and he was certain that he would find it again during his endless rule. As much as he wanted it now, he still knew that with the cythereans powerless, leaderless and having hidden the Elementis from their own weak minds, there was now nothing that could stand in his way.

The fantoms continued to crush the city and the surviving cythereans retreated to a stronghold in the south-west corner of Enterra. For now, they managed to stem the enemy advance with heavy armament and anti-aircraft lasers.

Hawk felt dazed and weak with blood loss as a squadron of medics who scoured the area taking in the wounded carried him into a medical tent within the stronghold. A nurse took Hawk by the arm and sat him on the side of a bed.

"Let’s take a look at you," she said, removing Hawk's dented shoulder-pad and surrounding body armour.

Blood and sweat stained a large patch of his under clothing. The nurse cut into his shirt, tearing it apart, placing a clean white patch hard onto the pouring blood to stem the flow. "I'm not sure how you're still alive," she said, pushing more pressure on the patch.

Hawk grimaced. "It's just a scratch," he managed, composing his pain and taking over pressing the patch for the nurse.

She turned away to pick up a hand-held skin-sealer, glowing with blue at the tip. Hawk pulled the patch away as she ran it across the four-inch tear between the top of his chest and shoulder. The sealer soothed his wound, regenerating the skin as a final squirt of blood emerged before his nerves cooled with the sensation of fresh skin cells growing around his burn.

"Do you have any communications working around here? Anything at all?" Hawk said to the nurse through a grimace as the pain of the healing wound dug in for one last attack on his shoulder.

She turned to a male medic across from the next sickbed, "Hey Sigo, any comms working? Captain Hawk needs some, pronto."

Sigo looked up from shining a torch into the eyes of an out-cold guard. "Give me two minutes," he said, pulling a cover over the soldier's face and sliding the small torch into his pocket as he rushed from the tent.

Hawk looked up at the nurse as she wrapped a bandage under his arm and around his shoulder. "Captain Hawk?" he said, speaking clearer as his pain faded.

"You are a captain right? One of the king's protectors?" she asked.

Hawk looked into the comforting eyes of the nurse. "The king is dead. As it stands I’m highest in command. I must reach Prince Jonas," he told her.

"Are we all going to die, commander?" she said, not wanting to know the answer.

"Not at the hands of that metal brain!" Hawk promised.

Sigo ran back into the tent carrying a mobile telecoms unit with a built-in transmitter and receiver. "It's the last one we've got," he said, placing it on the bed beside Hawk.

Hawk began to program in the frequency for Obitrum, ready to transmit. "I just hope he gets the message!"

*

The junior Guard sped through space with uncertainty flowing through each of their young minds. Jonas and his protectors knew that it was too much to ask of these children to fight; as Dog-Star had so rightly said, they were not yet ready. But as the Guard on the ground would now honestly profess, there is no being ready when confronted with all-out war.

Spectrum's data-screen informed him as to their location. He pressed his communications button. "Approaching Aquilla. Decrease energides to one, zero, five," he ordered, adjusting his own speed to the given number.

Goldheart's voice came over the radio. "We have an incoming transmission from home, Jonas. All to receive?"

"All to receive," said Jonas.

Hawk's voice came through into everyone's receivers. "Jonas, this is Hawk. I don’t have much time. I am sorry, the Zohr has killed your father. Enterra is falling and quickly. We’ve lost the trade moons. The Elementis was a decoy. You must go to Mercron and find Calyx. He will know where the real Elementis is. By the spirits, find it. We must use it against the dydrid or we will all die."

Planet Aquilla came into view in front of Jonas's windshield. He stared at the green orb. The man responsible for killing his family roamed free somewhere down there planning the killing and enslaving of innocent beings. Jonas suddenly realised that the cause of every last bit of sadness in his life had stemmed from this one man. Oreaus had created men and women unequal in strength. The women of the dydrid could rarely live through the birth of a child, so it was Oreaus who was responsible for killing his mother, not him. And now his father was gone too, and no doubt poor old Witakker and countless of other lives were lost. All that remained of his family was the shell of his brother, though how much was his brother and how much was something else now he did not know. With every waking moment of Jonas's new-found life he grew to hate Oreaus more than he imagined he could hate anyone.

Spectrum's voice came into Jonas's cockpit. "I am sorry, Jonas."

"He was a great man," Menace added.

Jonas kept an intense stare as the planet grew bigger in the space outside his window. The green magnificence of the Aquilla reflected with revenge in his eyes. He pressed his communications button. "Everyone," he said, "Let's spill some metal!"

The dekapods burst into the atmosphere of Aquilla. A thousand orange glowing dots streamed with a white, smoking wake into the skies above Enterra. The swarms of shadow-walkers and bombers still droned above the city, and from high above the enemy, the junior Guard prepared for their ambush.

"Goldheart, Cortex, squadrons 6 and 3—take down every bomber you can see," said Jonas.

"Where do you want me, Jonas?" asked Twain.

Jonas knew exactly what Twain's strengths were. "You’re in command of the entire flight squadron, Twain. Your orders are to destroy and drive the shadow-walkers out of Enterra airspace."

Twain smiled. "I can do that!"

Twain directed his orders to the fighters, commanding a split into four groups, one group to attack from above, the other two to attack from the flanks, and the fourth from underneath. The dekapods broke into formation. Every kid knew what they had to do and followed Twain's plan to perfection. Jonas watched the boxed-in dydrid panic and scatter in surprise. The dekapod missiles and cannons sent shadow-walkers spiralling in black smoke, colliding with each other and their own bombers. The dydrid air force was ten times that of the junior Guard which only spurred the children on to celebrate every hit with a scream of triumph. Every pilot did as Twain requested. They flew without fear and they flew with such skill and cunning that they downed enough fighters to drive the shadows from the airspace of Enterra.

*

The air attacks did not go unnoticed by the thunderous face of the Zohr who watched the battle in the skies as his armies continued to trample the city. He wasn't troubled by the minor setback of his air force. He didn't, though, want these nuisance dekapods attacking his soldiers on the ground. The moons had already fallen, and reinforcements at the edge of the planet were ready for further battles.

"Bring the Nangus to the shadows, have them re-energized for further attacks," the Zohr ordered to General Mutus, who gave the usual preordained lowering of the head.

*

Hawk's voice radioed into Jonas's cockpit. "Welcome home kid! That’s what I call flying!"

"What’s the situation, Hawk?" asked Jonas.