Fury to the Stars (Universe in Flames Book 2) (21 page)

Panicked, he ducked behind the console. Sparks flew
around him. The jolt of adrenaline from extreme fear kicked in, his mind
racing. He was no sharp shooter, but now was not a good time to die. He had to
survive and access that file. He had to regain control of the station. But
first he needed to deal with this beast trying to blow his head off, preferably
before it tried to call for reinforcements.

Suddenly an idea crossed his mind, encouraged by
another laser impact near his scalp. He grabbed the life-signs detector and
inversed the polarity of the power source, sweat pouring down his face. It got
very hot fast and emitted an increasingly painful, high-pitched sound. In one
fluid motion Spiros slid to the floor next to the console, throwing the melting
detector towards the Zarlack. The creature reacted on instinct, shooting wildly
towards the incoming object. He hit the detector where it lay, less than three
feet away from him. It exploded with a fiery green flash that sent red-hot
power fluid boiling across the Zarlack’s face. The resulting screech of agonizing
pain he unleashed was unbearable. Spiros lurched out of cover, lined up the
sights of his pistol and fired three shots in rapid succession. The first two
missed, but the third one went straight into the Zarlack’s eye socket. The
screaming stopped instantly. With a loud thud, his lifeless body collapsed to
the ground.

Spiros’ heart was pounding so fast in his chest—he
feared a heart attack right then and there. He kneeled on the ground, trying to
catch his breath. But he could no longer wait. Without the detector he had no
idea what other confrontations he might expect, and he could not risk another
conflict in the open. Risky or not, he decided that his only option was to
climb up a ventilation shaft. He would crawl out of here, or die trying. So he
moved the crate he had been hiding behind earlier, carefully climbed it,
removed the paneling from the top of the wall and entered the shaft, carefully
replacing the paneling.

I’m too old for this
, he thought, crawling
awkwardly forward.

About ten minutes in, he heard a noise coming from
under him and decided to stop moving. He could hear the heavy breathing of yet
another Zarlack nearby. His body froze, but he could feel something going
wrong. He felt his leg starting to tremble, slowly and mostly inside what once
was his gluteus maximus, now mostly enhanced with nano-powered circuitry. Now
was not the time for a malfunction! But he could feel the trembling grow. He
knew from experience, soon he would lose control of his augmented leg and that
could be the end of him! Without hesitating, he grabbed a small knife from one
of his pockets and jammed it where he knew the control wiring met his remaining
old muscle nerves. The resulting pain was excruciating but he managed not
scream, though his head started ringing and his vision started to blur. He felt
the oncoming rush of darkness. There was nothing he could do to prevent it now.
He lost consciousness.

Tar’Lock looked at Ryonna across the shuttle,
watching her blue knuckles on the throttle. They were going somewhere in what
was once Nevada to find the man that Nina had identified as her handler. All
they had was a name and an address. Paul Trichson: a name with a deceptively
empty file. Ryonna had not spoken a word for quite a while when Tar’Lock
decided to break the silence.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Ryonna spat, clearly a little on edge.

“If you say so.”

“I’m sorry, Tar’Lock, I’m just preoccupied. We’ll
need to be careful when we land. This person could be extremely dangerous. And
we need him alive.”

“Somehow I doubt he is half as dangerous as you can
be. As for him staying alive, perhaps you’ll want to remind yourself of that,
in the heat of things? Your habits do seem fierier than mine.”

She cast him a warm smile and he smiled back. Of
course Tar’Lock was correct. Ryonna knew full well she had a temper, and that
it sometimes got the best of her. She laughed inwardly at the juxtaposition.
She was definitely not used to making friends easily, yet it kept on
happening... Both Chase and Tar’Lock had been so helpful in her quest to save
her son, and she was extremely grateful. She was interrupted in her train of
thoughts.

“Do you have a plan?” asked Tar’Lock, cautiously.

“Not really. We need to find this Trichson character
and make him talk, see if he is behind all this. Or maybe he’s just another
pawn, working for yet another shadow we’ll have to cast light upon. What’s
certain is, we need to find who is behind these attacks and make them stop. For
the time being not much info has bled to the public. But if these attacks
continue, the Earthlings might wonder if the alliance they made was the right
choice.”

“I think the Alliance has good values, better than
Obsidian. But that isn’t difficult, I guess.”

“The Obsidian are conquerors. They take everything
they want by force, and destroy whomever stands in their path. What worries me
is the fact that they’re acting as the pawns of the Zarlacks, though. If a
force as powerful as Obsidian could be enslaved so quickly, then the Zarlacks
are a real threat. I think my people came to the same conclusion, and that’s
why they are joining the Alliance.”

“From what I understood from our briefing with
General Adams, I thought most criminals left Earth. I guess I’m wonder why this
is all happening.”

“Well, the Olympians gave everyone a choice between
two paths. But that doesn’t mean everyone followed directions. I’m sure some
people decided to make their own choices, bend the rules. As for why: Earth has
seen a tremendous amount of change in a short time. That can be scary! People
tend to do irrational things when they are afraid.”

“I guess. Looks like we are approaching the
coordinates given to us.”

“So we are. Commencing landing procedures.”

The shuttle landed on top of a building, nor far
from where this Trichson lived. They exited the shuttle and proceeded down
through the building and through the streets towards their target building. A
quick look at mailboxes in the entrance corridor told them that Paul Trichson
lived on the seventh floor. They took the elevator and soon arrived in front of
their target’s flat.

“Now what?” said Tar’Lock.

Ryonna clicked the doorbell.

“Is that wise?” inquired Tar’Lock.

Nothing happened. She swore she saw some light
change in the peephole. She rang again. A deafening explosion rocked the hall.
A hole had been blasted through the door, and sent them scrambling to the
ground for cover. She whispered over at Tar’Lock, “Are you okay?”

“Better than you, apparently,” Tar’Lock hissed,
pointing a finger at her abdomen.

She’d been grazed by whatever had blasted a hole in
the door. A bit of blood was flowing from the wound, but her armor had taken
the brunt of it.

“I’m fine. This is superficial. Stay down and I’ll
deal with this.”

“Be careful.”

She took her blaster, set it to stun and kicked the
door open. It broke easily. She took cover behind the wall.

“Wait...” said Tar’Lock.

“What is it?”

“I’m faster than you. Let me do a visual check.”

She nodded.

Tar’Lock quickly passed in front of the open door in
a split second.

“I don’t see anyone.”

That was all Ryonna needed to know. She entered the
flat with her weapon at the ready. She quickly scanned the main room and moved
to the next. As she stepped to the next room she tripped on an invisible wire
at foot level and heard a barely audible click. Tar’Lock didn’t hesitate an
instant. At full speed he charged towards Ryonna, pushing her out of the way of
an exploding grenade just in the nick of time.

A second later a tall man leaned carefully into the
room from a far doorway, with a shotgun pointed right at Ryonna. She’d lost her
grip on her blaster during the explosion, momentarily stunned. But before he
could fire the weapon pointed at her head, it was snagged from his hands by
Tar’Lock. Ryonna located her blaster nearby, jumped to get a clear shot and
fired freely at the man. His face was all surprise and pain as he hit the
ground with a loud thud.

“That was close,” said Tar’Lock.

“Too close. Thanks for the assist back there.”

“I must admit I did not like that clicking noise.
The rest was pure instinct.”

Ryonna hated to admit it but she had clearly
underestimated her foe. She had acted rashly. If it hadn’t been for Tar’Lock’s
super speed and keen reflexes, she could have been hurt or even killed. She
snorted in frustration, removing shrapnel embedded in her body armor.

They got up and installed the unconscious man on a
nearby chair. Ryonna changed a setting on her blaster and fired at the man. An
energy lasso encircled both his arms and the chair. With a second shot, she
bound his legs. A few minutes later he awoke and panicked, with crackling blue
energy restraining his every movement. The more he fought, the tighter and more
painful the pulsating grip became.

Ryonna walked towards her prisoner and took a knee,
so she could look him straight in the eyes. He avoided her eyes, instead
scanning his surroundings, trying to see if there was anything he could do.
Seeing there was nothing to be done, exasperated and clearly in pain, he
finally looked back at Ryonna. She hadn’t said a word yet.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Why did you attack us?”

“Have you been in front of a mirror lately?”

“Is it standard procedure for pathetic creatures
like you to shoot what you don’t know?”

“Pretty much,” said the man arrogantly.

Ryonna snapped her fingers in front of him and that
clearly startled the man. She knew right there he would break easily, much
easier than the poor soul he’d brainwashed to destroy the EAD
Hope
.

“Let’s be clear: I don’t want to lose any more time.
Your little stunts have immensely reduced my patience already, which isn’t that
great on the best of days. You hired a woman named Nina to blow up a ship in
orbit… Why?”

“Go fuck your—”

Ryonna didn’t wait. She anchored one leg on the
chair and swung her right fist at the man’s face before he could finish his
sentence.

Blood splattered against the wall from the force of
the punch, which nearly knocked him unconscious.

“Let’s try this again?” Ryonna proposed with a
growl.

He spat three teeth to the ground.

“Or what?” said the man, with very little confidence
in his voice, his head still buzzing from the punch.

“Believe me… You don’t want to know what I’m capable
of doing to you.”

Tar’Lock took one step and added, “You’d better
talk. I’ve seen her pissed before; I have no doubt she’ll rip your arms out of
your sockets if you don’t start talking.”

He cast a look at Tar’Lock, then a warier eye at
Ryonna.

“Very well,” said Ryonna, before raising her hand
again.

“Alright, alright, let’s calm the fuck down.”

“Talk!
Now!
”

“I was hired to do a job. They gave me a lot of
money.”

“Money has been abolished. What good is it for?”

“Well, for one thing there’s still a black market in
place. Just because the Alliance came to Earth doesn’t mean everyone wants this
no-money crap way of living, thank you very much! And perhaps if we kill enough
of you, you may decide we’re not worth the effort and get the hell out of our
world. So let’s just call it an investment in our future.”

“At the moment, yours looks bleak,” Ryonna warned,
losing patience.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t bet on my chances either.
Nonetheless, if you let me live I will tell you all I know.”

“Who hired you?”

“I don’t know.”

Ryonna growled.

“I swear. I got paid a huge amount of bitcoins on
the shadow net. I got enough of them to buy myself a small country. So when they
told me to find a way to blow up the ship, I just used my computer skills to
locate someone who had lost somebody close. Last time ships were battling in
orbit, we lost a good number of souls down here… So I knew I could find
somebody with a grudge, who might jump at the chance to do the job for me. With
a little digging I was able to find someone who already worked on the orbital
shipyard, and I saw the opportunity to earn my treasure. I should never have
met that bitch here though. That was a rookie mistake. It’s the first time I
did something like this.”

“How do you get in contact with whomever hired you?”

“I don’t. They told me this was a one-time thing.
They insisted I have no way of contacting them in order to protect themselves.
So they created a thread on a seemingly abandoned forum on shadow net, and then
deleted the thread shortly after.”

“If that’s all you can give us, you’d better give me
a good reason not to kill you.”

“Don’t kill me! I told you everything I know!” said
the man, with clear panic in his voice.

“Then think. And think fast.”

“I suppose there must be enough information on my
laptop’s browser cache for you to try and run a trace to locate whomever did
this on the shadow net. Plus, since they gave me that laptop, perhaps they left
other info on it. I didn’t manage to access all of its storage.”

Ryonna looked at Tar’Lock. “Do you understand what
he’s saying? Should I throw him out the window?”

“Wow, wow, wow… no! Take my laptop. It’s in the next
room on my bed. It’s the only thing I can offer you. If I knew who my contact
was, believe that I would tell you!”

His face was dripping blood as he spoke.

“Something doesn’t add up. How come you had the
place booby trapped?”

“That was part of my orders. I was to make sure that
if someone came looking, I’d try and eliminate them. The shotgun, grenade and
laptop, as well as plans on how to install the booby trap, were all enclosed in
a package of instructions I received. I almost blew myself up installing the
thing. I’m a computer geek, not a terrorist.”

“Seems to me you’re part of the movement.”

“While I don’t agree with their methods, I must
admit they have a point.”

“Which is?”

“Since the Alliance came to Earth, our lives have
been changed so fast we didn’t even get time to realize what was happening.
Some of us feel like we lost our freedom. And I for one preferred my life the
way it was before. Sure the system was rotten and unfair sometimes, but it was
ours, it was our reality. How arrogant is this Alliance—coming to our world and
suddenly telling us we’re inferior, that we must change our ways? Fuck that!
Our way of life was ours to decide!”

“You had a choice to keep that way of life. Why
didn’t you go through one of the portals?”

“I didn’t like these choices: blue-pill, red-pill
crap. No way! I love my freedom. I had the right to make my own decision.”

Ryonna knew already from what General Adams had told
her: not only did the changes that happened on Earth take many people by
surprise, some of them felt overwhelmed by them. Which was understandable. She
could conceive that it must not have been easy for everyone, though apparently
most of the population relished the changes introduced by the Alliance, since
they would no longer need to worry about material possessions or health issues.
That alone had helped the planet convert to their new way of life quickly. The
sick got better; less people were dying. That was a strong argument.

“Look,” said the man, “I don’t want to die. I’m
sorry I attacked you. Can you please just take my laptop and go?”

“You’re coming with us.”

“What? Why?”

“Because as far as I know, you’re a menace to
everyone around you. I’ll let Alliance Security decide what to do with you.”