Elementis 1: The Heir to the Stone (25 page)

"I will take you… if there will be no more death!" Solipa said.

The Zohr smiled with amusement. "Agreed, no more death."

Solipa gave an untrusting grunt, he knew very well that he had no choice in the matter. "Come, this way," he said, pointing with his stick and hobbling on past the Zohr.

*

Onboard the Utopious, Goldheart sat alone in the cockpit staring out to space. Jonas slid into the empty seat beside him, joining in the silent stare. Their quiet eyes flowed with the same dreaded thoughts, somewhere close by, in the space ahead of them there was a planet, upon which was hidden the Elementis, residing in the arms of no one knows who and hunted down by the one man who will use it to destroy every world that meets his path. Jonas, in keeping with his recent luck, had no choice; he had to reach the stone before Zohr Oreaus did, and he had to rely on hope that he would be able to find whatever was inside his mind to use its power.

"Are we close?" Jonas said to Goldheart.

"Not close enough," said Goldheart.

Jonas held his gaze through the windshield. "I hope we're not too late!"

*

Having snuck into the dydrid camp unseen, Twain couldn't resist having a closer look at the mounds of dydrid scraps lying about all over the place. He rummaged through a pile of junk metal, pulling out odd arms and helmets, making noises of delight at seeing the intricate innards of wiring and circuitry which made up the fantoms body armour.

Something moved behind Twain. The shadow of a fantom made him drop the rusting chest plate he held in his hands. He turned around, drawing a sharp, shallow breath as the capacity of his lungs seemed to have lessened with his intense fear.

"How did you get out?" a voice said through the faceless mask of the dydrid helmet.

Twain fell to his knees and sobbed like a helpless child. The soldier yanked him into the air by the scruff of his neck and began to walk, holding Twain away from his body with a straight arm like the boy was a bag of mouldy food. Twain didn't resist, he just cried.

"You’re going back in, I don’t care how much you cry," the soldier said, making his way to a metal door.

The door slid open and the fantom dropped Twain onto the mesh metal flooring inside. The door slid shut. Twain stood up, dusted himself down and smiled. "That was easy!" he said to himself.

A metal stairway led down into the unit, Twain heard voices.

Chapter XXI
Sinking

Casting a dark shadow over a field of white, the Nangus gathered a dusty covering of falling snow. A dozen geisendorfer men camouflaged in white furs scurried towards the ship. They gathered behind a mound of snow, their hearts beating with mischief at the size of the towering space carrier. Kile moved forward and crouched down at the head of the group as his friends did the same, huddling close together for orders. "Listen, men, just because we’re small it doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about these scrotum scratchers—let’s really tickle their nose hairs and cut through as many wires as we can. See if we can't get them lost on their way home. Got it?" he said in a high pitched voice, which most of the geisendorfers seemed to have.

Kile's followers nodded with a look caught somewhere between anger and dread on their faces, knowing full well that if they were caught they would meet the same fate as the others. However fearful they felt, they waved their hunting knives in the air with a cheery sneer.

"Okay, let’s go!" Kile said, moving off towards the ship.

The men followed behind, striding to the ship, knee deep through the snow. With the aid of some skilful grapple-hook throwing, the first few men clambered up the outside of the ship and disappeared into the holes of the lowest boosters. The others pulled themselves up higher and into the boosters above.

*

Twain crept down each metal step, assessing the room that came into view. Thousands of cythereans were packed between metal walls that penned them in on each side. Down a narrow gap behind the wall, Twain could make out the outline of giant pistons poised and lying in wait to push the walls together and crush whatever got in its way. At the end of the room was the rectangular light of an exit. Twain already knew what dangers lay beyond the edge of the conveyor.

He pushed his way through the crowd of bodies. "Excuse me, sorry," he said, squeezing through and looking up at the people around him. "Has anyone seen Lora Twain?" he asked, talking loudly in case she could hear. "She's my mother. Has anyone seen Lora Twain?" The people looked down at the boy, muttering amongst themselves, but they could only shake their heads at his question.

The crowd left a good twenty-foot gap from the end of the scrap-conveyor, staying well back and not wanting to be the first amongst those to topple off into the river below if and when the thing started to roll. Not favouring the idea of falling over himself, Twain steadily crept up somewhere near the edge and dropped down onto his chest, dragging himself across the floor for the last few inches. His head poked over the edge looking down at the river. Twain's heart raced at the height from which he looked down. He looked to the right, only one unit lay in that direction and about 100 feet away. He looked to the left where thirteen more units and thirteen possibilities of finding his mother were spread out across a sheer rock face. He looked above him and smiled. A metal shutter that he might be able to close lay at the exits of each unit. Twain knew that if he could open-circuit the wires to malfunction the pistons behind the walls along with the floor conveyors, he could then lock the shutters closed and keep the people inside safe, hopefully for long enough until Jonas returned with the Elementis to free them all.

Twain got to his feet and ran his hand along the metal wall. Wriggling past people, he tracked along a welded seal until he saw the sealed box for the main circuit to the pistons. He took out his tekron, flicked up one of the components, and activated enough heat to begin melting through the seal.

A man turned to him, seeing the glowing end of the tool. "What are you up to?" he said, as if Twain was doing something untoward.

"I’m disabling the conveyor, the wall piston system and getting that shutter down," said Twain, as he melted away the metal seal. "Then I’m going to climb across to the next unit and so on and so on."

The man looked down at him. "You're insane!"

"If you think living a little longer is insane, so be it!" Twain responded, smiling up at him as the metal plate fell from the wall exposing the wiring for the pistons beyond.

*

The snow stopped falling on planet Destus, though a biting wind had gathered under a clearing sky which brought with it a fresh coldness. Solipa lead the dydrid army through the snow-covered trees of an ancient forest of pines.

Floating above the powdered ground on a hover carrier, Solipa stood between the Zohr and Mutus as he grunted the directions to where the stone was kept. Dozens of carriers spread out behind the Zohr, carrying the colonels of the army. On the ground, thousands of infantry with their visors set to identify the Elementis waded through a foot of snow on the flanks and to the rear.

A roaring engine in the skies of Destus turned the Zohr's head skyward. He scowled with a memory that would never fade at the sight of the ten-sided ship. The thoughts of the night Valdoor had taken his element stone fed into his mind. The Utopious streamed across the dark-blue inner atmosphere as the Zohr kept his eyes fixed on the path of the ship. "Take care of them," he said to Mutus, who nodded in response to the request, transmitting the task of destroying the Utopious to the fighter pilots of the Nangus.

*

Kile and the other geisendorfers dangled on their ropes, dropping down out of the boosters of the Nangus. Shadow-walkers scrambled from the bellows of the ship, flying over the heads of the small men, sending them diving for cover. Kile lifted his head up from the snow to see that the fighters weren't there for them. Dozens of plasmic boosters flew off towards another ship in the sky. As he and the men got up to run, he watched with concern at the strange shaped ship, thinking that if the black soldiers didn't like them, they would surely be friends to the geisendorfers.

*

Without warning, the pack of shadow-walkers struck from a distance with guns and missiles tearing into several sides of the Utopious. Flames and smoke poured from its wounded hull. Alert sirens rang down the corridors. The Guard rushed to tackle the fires with foaming extinguishers. Goldheart pressed buttons to activate the lasers but instead smashed a fist into his dashboard when a malfunction message flashed up on the data-screen. The dydrid had shot out the ships weapons, and the fighter ship bay doors were jammed. The Utopious was defenceless being hounded through the skies by the dark minds of the shadow pilots.

Jonas ran into the cockpit holding onto whatever he could as the ship rumbled and turned taking a beating in the sky. The protectors, Willow and Calyx were already strapped in and holding on to their seats in the passenger hold behind Goldheart and Lynk. Jonas jolted into his seat as the ship tilted sharply. Dydrid fighters corkscrewed past the windshield outside, turning back to unleash more fire.

"Shadow-walkers," said Goldheart.

"How many?" Jonas said, as the ship's body creaked under the uneven pressure applied to the semi-destroyed hull.

"Too many!" Goldheart said. "We've lost all weapons and we're losing boosters, fast!"

"Take us down—anywhere!" said Jonas.

"We’re going down, but it’s nothing to do with me. Everyone hold on!"

The ship's power cut out. One thousand megatons of metal fell through the air at a frightening pace. Jonas held himself down in his chair, stopping his body from floating up in freefall as he pulled the strap of his seat-belt over his shoulders, fumbling around to clip himself in. The white ground below came closer and brighter. They braced for impact. Even Goldheart squeezed his eyes closed. The Utopious smashed into the snow. Jonas's blood rushed deep into his limbs as the ship went from falling under its own weight to ploughing into the ground. The pain was equal to someone hammering twenty burning nails fresh from a furnace fire beneath his toenails. The ship rolled across the ground. The crew screamed, screwing their eyes shut as their heads were thrown backwards and forward, knocking around from side to side. The windshield cracked, snow crushed into the glass with every rotation. One last creaking roll and the ship slumped to a stop. Everyone opened their eyes. At least they were alive.

The crew unstrapped their belts as their heartbeats settled and they caught their breath, stretching and cracking joints back into place.

"Do you still need those flying lessons I offered you?" Cortex said across to the cockpit, teasing Goldheart.

Goldheart shot a death stare at him, and Cortex put out a calming hand. "I was only asking!" he said, saving himself from a bloody lip.

The ship dropped to one side, and everyone grabbed onto anything they could to stop them from stumbling sideways. Willow fell back into her chair. The ship dropped again, and they heard what sounded like the cracking of ice.

"It's an ice field," Jonas said. "Everyone move!"

"Gladly," said Cortex, already halfway out of the passenger hold.

"Isn't he the brave one!" said Menace to the others as she followed after him.

Jonas held a hand out and pulled Willow up from her chair. "Are you okay?" he asked.

She said nothing but smiled at Jonas and ran out after Menace. Calyx rolled his eyes at his brother and shook his head in disbelief at Jonas's softness. Jonas lifted Lynk onto his back and followed on after Goldheart, Spectrum and Calyx.

As they made their way down the exit ramp to the surface of the frozen lake outside, the ship jolted, sinking a few feet deeper into the freezing water. Menace lost her footing, nearly falling over the side into the seeping water below. Goldheart yanked her back with a strong hand across her shoulder. Cortex was already sprinting at pace away from the ship, running alongside hundreds of scrambling Guard. One by one they stepped onto the safety of the hard surface. The unstable ship towered behind them poised to fall through the ice. Cracks tore across the ice beneath their feet as the ground began to move.

"Run!" Jonas shouted, watching the water surge out across the breaking ice.

With Lynk on his back, Jonas ran across the ground. Ice cracked and floated free all around them, icebergs rose into the air, twisting in the water and throwing soldiers into the water beneath. The ice surrounding the Utopious cracked further. The ship dropped through with a rumble and cracks rippled further and further out beneath Jonas's feet. The Guard who weren't fast enough duly screamed as they were sucked down into the coldness of the lake. Jonas, Willow, Calyx and Spectrum were clear of the most far-reaching cracks, catching up with Cortex who now stood, willing the safety of those still running. Jonas turned to see a flurry of Guard, most from the junior academy, running for their lives. Menace and Goldheart leapt from the peaks of rising icebergs in their bid to outrun death. Breathing heavily, Jonas watched as the Utopious sank down and became nothing more than oxygen bubbles and a riptide swirl beneath the dark grey water.

The pressure of the sinking ship sent one last rippling crack sideways across all the other cracks threatening to break free one giant chunk of ice. As the ice began to break away, the lump in Jonas's throat and the dread in his eyes told him that Menace, Goldheart and the others wouldn't make it. Jonas lowered Lynk down from his shoulders and shifted back across the ice faster than he'd run to escape it. He passed by a number of Guard as they reached safety. The bond between the breaking ice and the solid ice beyond weakened and the crack widened. If Jonas decided to cross it he would be pulled down with the rest of the men who weren't quick enough. He dove, sliding across the surface on his chest. Jonas yelled, tensing every vein in his muscled body as he smashed his steel fingers deep into the retreating ice berg, holding tons of frozen water. Goldheart jumped across the break and wrapped himself around the legs of Jonas as an anchor for the boy. Jonas held on tight, his muscles fought with every fibre. The cold crept up his fingers along to his elbows, weakening his grip. No matter how cold his nerve endings became, the focus in his eyes said that he would save every last man, woman and child that remained out there. Menace ran across; the ice was slipping from Jonas's hold.